A start. A real start. “Okay. I’ll keep being honest.”
“Not just with me though. With others. Like Lake. Do you think you were honest with him?”
It’s like a kick in the gut even though I don’t think she meant it that way.
Because the answer is no.
53
SUPPOSED TO BE
LAKE
My lungs are burning, my thighs are screaming, and my shoulders want to murder me. I’ve been knocked into the boards more times than I want to count, and I’ve got nothing to show for it. We’re still scoreless in a rough, messy game. I’ve missed shot after shot.
I chase the puck with one minute left on the clock, hoping for a goddamn miracle—both in the game and in me. But I don’t know that I can do what I’ve done in the past: Put all my emotions into the game. Because there’s someplace else they want to be.With her.
She’s where I want to be.
But I’m here on the ice, so I line up and take a swing. Their goalie blocks it like it’s nothing. The clock eats up the rest of the minute, and we trudge off the ice to the visitor locker room. I toss my gloves on the bench, yank off my helmet, and try to rub out the knot of tension in my neck.
Riggs pats me on the back. “We’ll get them next time,” he says.
The guys have been nice to me. Because they know. Theysaw the blowup, the admission, the beer on the dress. They watched the stupid live stream.
I’ve barely said a word though. I grumble something like “thanks,” then hit the shower, stewing in my aloneness once again.
I’m good at that. Being alone.
It’s where I’ve been for the last three years.
I’m an expert at going solo. I could teach a master class. So I should be able to handle this—the inevitable end of a fake romance.
Too bad my chest is hollow, and it aches more than my bruised body.
Soon I’m boarding the team jet so we can fly back to San Francisco, but as I slog up the steps to the plane, dread coils in my stomach. I have to face my father for the first time since the wedding.
He doesn’t know what happened. Shocker: he doesn’t watch advice shows that are live streamed. He likes theProperty Brothersand sports.
When I reach the cushy faux leather chair in the second row, I sink down into it, my jaw tight, my mind a traffic snarl.
Corbin pops up behind me, Miller in front of me, Ivan in the aisle, Riggs by my side.
“Is this a clown car?”
No one takes the bait.
“Dude, what are you gonna do?” The blunt question comes from Miller. And it’s a valid one.
And I could blow them off, make a snarky comment, grump my way out of the conversation.
But I’m tired of being lonely, I’m worn out from my own inner grouch, I’m exhausted from thinking only of her. “Besides pay all you assholes?”
It’s an admission, all right. They won the bet. I fell ass over skates in love.
Ivan gives me a wise look—the look of a happily married man. “You could just tell her.”
Is she even ready, though, for all these fucking feelings inside me? Does she need a guy like me who’s madly, outrageously, ridiculously in love with her when she’s a mere month and a half out of a toxic relationship? I can’t just be a rebound with her. I can’t take it day by day. I can’t be casual. I want everything. “She broke up with that fucknozzle less than two months ago,” I say, like that proves my point. “And the night of the wedding, she thanked me for being a good boyfriend—that was it. She acknowledged it was fake. I was only ever supposed to be a rebound.”
