Page 78 of Holding Penalty

Worry knots through me. Just thinking about ending this fake marriage with Piper and watching her leave our house for good is already making me feel like shit.

I mean, I just called it our house, for fuck’s sake. How much worse will it be after I’ve grown more used to living with her, months from now? After succumbing to the temptation to share my bed with her a couple more times?

This is by far the most important season of my career. Everything’s coming together on the ice, we’re off to an incredible start, and lifting the Stanley Cup feels so tantalizingly possible.

I can’t let the end of my fake marriage derail that.

I can’t let myself get more attached than I’ve already become.

I need to get serious about setting guardrails for myself with Piper. And holding myself accountable to them.

Which means locking the bathroom door every time I take a shower, and damn sure not making suggestive comments if my wife walks in on me fisting my cock to the thought of how she felt in my bed.

“Maybe you guys are starting to see why I always say this relationship stuff isn’t worth it,” Cooper adds.

Noah sighs in disappointment. “Nash has been playing like crazy since he got married. He’s living proof of the power of love, and you’re still a cynic?”

I tune out the rest of the conversation. My fake marriage isn’t proof of anything about love.

But now I’m worried that if I’m not careful, I could damn sure become living proof of the power of a breakup.

36

PIPER

I’m tired down to my bones when I come back from an opening-to-closing shift at the bakery.

I was on my feet all day long. My hips and knees and ankles are screaming. Nash’s place is really nice, but this is one of those days I really wish he had a bathtub instead of just a standalone walk-in shower.

Four days ago—the last time we were in this house together, before he left for a string of three away games in a row—he even overheard me mention it while I was on the phone with Hallie. I just told her that I wished I had a bath to soak in, and he gave me an odd look. I hope he didn’t take it the wrong way or anything.

I like to think I’m not a particularly demanding person to live with. Well, except for that time I marched him at hockey-stick-point into the bedroom and forced him to sleep in his own bed.

Considering the sequence of events that followed it, that was probably a mistake. Though things have mostly gotten back to normal, except for a new tension that often thickens the air when we’re close to each other in the same room. We basically have a tacit agreement not to talk about … any of it.

Not about sharing the bed, not about waking up tangled together, not about me walking in on him rubbing himself off in the shower, and not about the salacious words that dripped from his mouth after we made eye contact.

I haven’t even told my sister about it, which feels like a mild betrayal.

She’d no doubt call it a colossal betrayal. But I just don’t know how to process what happened. I’d rather try not to think about it and move past it, hoping that it doesn’t change anything.

I don’t know why I hear a tiny, sarcastic laugh in the back of my head at that thought.

A moan of relief escapes me when I kick off my shoes. Even if I can’t soak in a bath, zoning out under the high-pressure stream of Nash’s shower will be a nice consolation prize.

When I approach the bathroom door, I knock, even though I know Nash is literally in another state. Can’t be too safe. After two seconds, when of course there’s no answer, I push it open.

But when my eyes take in what’s in front of me, I’m almost as shocked as I was when I walked in on Nash stroking himself.

This literally isn’t the bathroom I saw just this morning when I used it before going to work.

Is it possible that I worked so hard today that I’m hallucinating?

I screw my eyes shut for a long count of five seconds and open them. I still see the same thing.

I step out of the bathroom, close the door, and then open it again. Doesn’t change what’s in front of me.

The bathroom, somehow, has fundamentally transformed since I left the house early this morning when the sun was breaking over the Texas horizon.