“She’s everything you could want in a woman. She’s kind, she’s funny, she’s beautiful, and she makes me laugh like no one else has ever made me laugh. My main focus in my life has been hockey. Getting to this point in my career. I didn’t have time nor did I want to make the time for it. But with her—” I look down. “I’d give it all up to have her.”
“If you hurt her,” he warns me.
“For the record, she’s left me more times than I have left her.”
“Good.” He nods. “Keeps you on your toes.”
“That she does,” I agree with him. “I promise to keep her safe.” His eyebrows go up at this. “I mean from now on.” I shake my head. “We should have expected it.”
“I have to agree with Nico, someone is out to get you. You have my daughter now in the crossfire.”
“She shouldn’t even be there,” I admit and for the first time today, I sound defeated. I know I should be holding strong but the articles that have come up since this morning are horrible.
“I know that and you know that.” He points to himself and then me. “Now it’s time for you to tell them that.”
“If I see Timothy,” I mention the veteran reporter who leaked the story, “I’m going to throat punch him.”
Manning laughs. “That’s what he wants. They want you to fuck up. The best thing you can do is put out a statement and then you say nothing.”
“I’ll take your advice on that.” I nod to him and Victoria comes into the room.
“Uncle Nico says the wheels have to be up in thirty minutes,” Victoria reports, walking into the room. “Which means you have to go.” She makes a sad face. “It was nice to see you.” She makes her way over to him, hugging him. “Next time, maybe you can stay a few days.”
“Next time?” He exhales. “There will not be a next time, Tori, because you will be telling us if you are dating anyone new.”
“There is not going to be a next time.” The words come out of my mouth before I can stop them, and Manning smirks when he looks over at me while Victoria chuckles.
“Yes,” she agrees, “my current boyfriend is saying no to whatever future boyfriends want in.”
“Current boyfriend,” I hiss then say her name, “Victoria.” Making everyone laugh, except me.
We leave at the same time as her parents and Nico, going straight to her house so she can pack a bag and then head back to mine.
“Are you ready”—she walks into the kitchen with her phone in her hand—“for us to draft up a statement?”
“I’ll post whatever you want me to post,” I tell her. “I want you to draft it because it matters to you.”
“I honestly don’t even want to put out a statement,” she states. “The only people who really matter are the people who know us.”
“We have to put out something.” She cocks her hip. “Everyone we know has been dropping statements on social media defending us.” Ken was not wrong, every fucking hour on the hour he was posting a comment from one of the guys on the team. I’m sure there were a few people who were pissed off by this, but I couldn’t care less at this point. My main focus was to make sure Victoria was okay.
“I know.” She comes to me and puts her head together with mine. She smiles at the camera; I don’t. “This is perfect. I’m going to caption it. “Put a finger down if you read that misleading article about my dating life.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” he says to me. “How about, drowning out the noise?”
“I guess we could use that also. Would that make you feel better?”
“It would,” I tell her as I grab her hips. “Now hurry up, time for me to get inside of you.”
She gets on her tippy-toes, wiggling her ass in my direction. “That sounds like a good time,” she throws over her shoulder. She posts something on her phone and then reaches for mine, doing the same thing on mine.
“Okay, now that this is taken care of”—she turns in my hands—“time for you to get inside of me.” She winks. “My throat feels a little dry.”
I head into my office the next morning, my head down as I look up and see Eric standing outside my door. “Well, that was an eventful day off.” He snickers at me, and I shake my head.
“Press is coming in today,” I inform him, “to film the practice, apparently.”
“Yup, Ken sent the email out this morning.”
