That I’m not sitting here wondering what the hell just happened.
Later that night,after the kids are finally asleep and the house has settled into its familiar quiet, I find myself wide awake in bed with my laptop balanced on my knees. I should be working on the new audiobook script—three chapters due by Friday—but I can’t concentrate.
I keep replaying the moment when our eyes met across the rink after I finished singing. The look on his face—stunned, almost confused. And then what happened during the game, how he seemed to forget how to play hockey.
Did I somehow cause that?
The thought has been eating at me all evening. What if my singing was so bad it threw him off? What if I embarrassed myself and by extension embarrassed him in front of his teammates and the crowd?
Before I can talk myself out of it, I open a new browser tab and type: “Dex Malone Seattle hockey.”
The results are immediate and extensive. His official team photo appears first—all sharp jaw and confident smirk in hisuniform. Then the news articles: “Malone Leads Puckaneers to Victory,” “Star Forward Signs Contract Extension,” and buried further down, “Seattle’s Most Eligible Bachelor Strikes Again.”
I click on that last one despite my better judgment.
The sports blog post is from three months ago, featuring a photo of Dex in a perfectly tailored tuxedo at some charity gala. His arm is around a woman who looks like she stepped off a magazine cover—all legs and glossy hair and a dress that even pre-children I would never have dared.
“Sources confirm Malone’s latest companion is Victoria Carhart, the model-slash-influencer who recently graced the cover of Sports Illustrated. The pair were spotted at Il Posto’s VIP section, where Malone reportedly dropped four figures on champagne...”
Four figures. On champagne. For one night.
I scroll down to the comments section, despite knowing exactly what’s coming:
DaddyDex4eva: Still waiting for my turn
PuckBunny2023: Why does he always go for the same type? We get it, you like tall blondes with fake everything
SeattleFan: My ovaries just exploded
HockeyMom47: He can check me into the boards any day
The age and explicitness of the comments makes my skin crawl. These aren’t teenagers—some of these women mention kids, husbands. They’re talking about a man they’ve never met like he’s merchandise.
I close that tab and try Instagram, which turns out to be a mistake of epic proportions.
His official account has 2.8 million followers. The most recent post is from two weeks ago—a team photo after their last win. The comments are a wasteland of thirst:
Miss you
Still waiting for you to notice me
Daddy energy is STRONG with this one
There’s that “Daddy” thing again. I should stop, but like a train wreck I can’t look away.
I scroll through his photos. Expensive restaurants. Red carpet events. Charity galas where he’s always with a different stunning woman. There’s a pattern—they’re all tall, glamorous, the kind of women who look effortless in designer gowns while I struggle to find jeans that hide my mom-pooch.
In one photo from last summer, he’s on a yacht (of course he has access to yachts) with three women in bikinis. The caption reads: “Seattle summers hit different ”
The comments on that one are particularly brutal:
Pick me next
I volunteer as tribute
My DMs are open
I continue scrolling like I’m performing surgery on myself. More yacht photos. More galas. More gorgeous women who look like they belong in his world of private jets and champagne towers.
