Page 33 of Slapshot Bride

When I finally stop talking, I realize he’s moved closer. Not in my space, but beside me.

“Riley.”

I turn to him.

“You are not a coward. You ran because some part of you, after six years, still knew how to. That is the part of you he could not get to.”

A small smile stretches my lips as I look at this stranger who believes in me, more than I do, myself. It’s not a happy smile either.

“My father controlled my mother for thirty-two years. He never raised his voice and never raised a hand, and somehow ran every single thing about her life. He was respected. He gave to charity. He was, by any external measure, a good man.”

My smile drops. The story he’s telling hits too close to home.

“She stayed because of me. She told me last year that she had decided when I was nine, that I would not grow up in a house that had been broken on her account. She did the math, and she stayed, and she paid for it with about twenty years of her own mind. She's out now. Finally, the divorce is ongoing.”

I don’t know I’m crying until he pulls me into his arms and firmly and protectively wraps them around me.

“When you got in my car, and you told me why you were running, I knew exactly the kind of man you were running from. Because I grew up next to one. And you got out in six years, and so far, you’re doing it without help.”

The tears keep rolling down my cheeks.

“I won't be that man to you, Riley. Not today, not ever.”

Those words, they stay with me, and somehow, hearing the conviction in them, I know I can trust him.

This man who I’ve just met is proving to be my safe space.

7

EASTON

Ass Handed

Idrive to the rink on autopilot.

Who is the Sinclair bride?

The exact words from Coach Brennan’s text. They still ring in my head, word for word. I haven’t answered it. Something tells me I don’t need to.

The jury of Coach Brennan and PR director Diane Mercer is probably already assembled, waiting for me to make my appearance.

I tape my wrists, lace up, and take the ice. The second the puck drops, the part of my head that has been arguing with itself since five this morning goes quiet. That is the trade. You give the sport everything, the sport gives you eighty minutes of not having a life off the ice. It's the cleanest deal I've ever made.

I play sharp. Coach watches me from the bench with his arms crossed and his face unreadable. Kai pulls me aside during a water break and says, low, “You good?” and I say, “Fine.”

He nods like he believes me, even though he doesn't. Kai doesn’t ask twice. He merely taps my shoulder and returns to the game.

Theo skates past me once and says, “Heard you had company,” and I nearly take his head off with my stick on the next shift, which I think makes him laugh.

If Theo knows about Riley, and the photos, then the entire team knows it too.

We finish two hours later.

I'm sore in all the right places, clean and emptied out the way I always am after a good practice. For a brief lit-up second on the way to the locker room, I'm almost the Easton Blake from last weekend again. The one before a certain petite green-eyed woman barrelled into his life. But it doesn’t last.

Courtesy of the locker room.

I know the second I walk in, that they’ve all seen it. My instincts are right.