The mood shifts. It feels somber as I look down at the list and the two remaining items—number three, which iscamp under the stars, and then…number five.
And that’s when I know. If I want anything more with her, anything that might feel remotely real, there’s something else I need to do. Something I need to say. Something I’ve held onto for a long, long time.
I didn’t think now would be the moment to say it, but as I’m sitting here with her doing something as pedestrian as having breakfast and cleaning it up, I’m sure there’s no time like the present.
Since this is number five: Share a secret.
I look at the list, then at the woman across from me.
“I wasn’t in love with Heather when she died. We were getting divorced.”
42
MY PROTECTOR
REMY
Even if I had my Notes, Complaints, and Existential Crises notebook handy to map out potential outcomes of this conversation, I’d never have picked that one. That Lake and his late wife were divorcing before her motorcycle crash. But he did tell me when we played The Naked Truth that he wouldn’t have dated her again.
I just didn’t think they were breaking up back then. Why would I have?
I’m thoroughly unprepared for this moment, but I desperately want to say the right thing. Judging from the way he’s leaning closer to me, holding my gaze, nerves flickering in his beautiful blue eyes, that wasn’t easy for him to say.
I can hear the clock ticking. More so, I can feel it in my chest. “I don’t know what to say.”
But that might be the exact wrong thing because he rolls his lips together, then nods. His expression turns hard and eerily familiar. This is the Lake in control. This is the Lake who’s inscrutable, broody, a closed book.
The Lakebefore. I don’t want him to go back to being aclosed book. I try again, reaching forward, taking his hand. “But I want to understand you,” I say.
His shoulders relax. His jaw unclenches.
I keep going, wanting to help him along this uncharted road. “You don’t really tell that to anyone, do you?”
He scrubs a hand across his bearded jaw. “I don’t.”
“Not even your dad?”
“Especially not him. He liked Heather. I didn’t want him to take on another worry. He was rocked by her death, by how it happened. I didn’t need him to deal with my guilt or my feelings or whatever. I was trying to help him deal with his own stuff.”
Oh, this poor man, keeping it together for everyone else—his family and, I presume, the world at large.
“What about your teammates? Or your brother? Do they know?”
“With Gavin, I maybe said something offhand to him once while we were working, like things were rough there at the end. But that was it. With my teammates, there was no point. Once you say that, it’s out there.”
Boy, do I ever know what that’s like—for everything to be out there. “I hear you, but it’s a lot to carry.”
“I had to carry it. It was one of the last conversations Heather and I had, and she also said she wanted to keep it quiet. Wanted it to be as private as possible while we were going through it. Then she died unexpectedly the next day and all at once the media and fans immediately constructed the story of mygrief. It seemed wrong to say anything else then. What would be the point? Just to correct the public record?Hey, Heather Axelrod was killed today, and guess what—she and her husband were splitting up?No one needed to know that. The media had already decided I was the grieving widower.” He takes a second, looks away, then back at me. “Which was maybe selfish too. I didn’t need to beheld up as some fucking sad saint. But what was the alternative? She didn’t want our split to be a big thing while she was alive, so I didn’t want to turn it into a thing once she’d died. It seemed like a mean thing to do to her family too, you know?”
That makes perfect sense. “That’s why you don’t like talking to the press?”
“Exactly. I only want to talk about hockey. That’s it. I didn’t want the image they foisted on me, but the truth felt worse. Both were selfish choices, but exposing the truth felt more selfish. So I kept it to myself.”
This man is such a protector. Sometimes he does it quietly, like for his late wife. Sometimes publicly, like for me when he knocked the stuffed foxes into the stands, and then drove me home.
“You’ve always been the protector, haven’t you?”
He tilts his head, as he’s giving that some thought. “Maybe.”
