Page 70 of Score Her Heart

I had no idea what I was in for when I got to Dinah’s. Fi getting drunk with Dinah made me nervous. If that's what she did when Finnegan told her I was in love with her, maybe our marriage was doomed to fail. Maybe we should have gotten a divorce the day after our wedding. Maybe it would have made this hurt less.

When we got over to Dinah’s place, the two of them were quite the drunken pair. Fi was lying on Dinah’s couch with the bottle of whiskey in her hands while Dinah was lying on her floor. Noah and I shared an annoyed look; maybe it was a bad idea to introduce the two of them. He helped Dinah into her bedroom, and I took that as my cue to get my wife out of there.

I held out a hand, and I was surprised when she actually took it and let me pull her to her feet. I took the bottle gingerly out of her hands and set it down on the coffee table, then put an arm around her shoulders.

She leaned into me. “Riley?” she asked.

“Come on, sweetheart, let’s go home,” I told her.

She slipped her hand in mine, and we walked together back to my SUV. She fell asleep on the ride back to the condo, and it took a bit of encouragement to get her to come upstairs with me. I ended up carrying her inside and to our bedroom.

I placed her gently on the bed when her small hands grabbed the lapels of my shirt. “Aaron? I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I asked softly, nearly melting at her calling me by my first name. It was a small gesture, but it made my heart pound loud in my head. “Do you want to get out of your jeans?”

She flopped back on the bed and squirmed out of her jeans, kicking them onto the floor. “I’m sorry I’m a bad hockey wife,” she moaned.

My heart softened at that. I sat on the bed next to her and stroked her hair. “You’re not, I promise. Maybe we should talk about this later. You had a lot to drink today.”

“Mmmhmm,” she moaned softly and closed her eyes. I kissed her forehead and moved from the bed. I picked up her jeans off the floor and put them in the hamper before quietly closing the door behind me and going into the kitchen. I cracked a beer and gulped half of it down while standing at the sink. I didn’t know what was going on in her head, but I knew it was nothing good. I also knew that I couldn’t really focus on that right now.

Normally, I would have let myself be consumed by watching game tape to figure out how to prepare for our game tomorrow, but now our season was toast. We had to play a couple more weeks of regular season hockey for nothing. It kind of sucked, but there was nothing I could do about it now.

I finished my beer and decided it was time for me to go to bed too. I grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen and left it on the nightstand beside Fi. She was probably going to need that in the morning. She was on her back when I climbed into bed beside her and, being paranoid, I checked that she was still breathing and then promptly shifted her so she was on her side. She shifted and pulled my arm around her, holding her close. I knew she was asleep, but I nuzzled her hair and kissed her neck softly before clutching her to my chest and falling asleep.

When I woke for pre-game stuff, Fi was still dead to the world, but the glass of water on the nightstand was empty. I dressed for the game and refilled the glass, leaving a note to her that I would see her when I got home.

She stirred when I leaned down to kiss her goodbye. Her eyes fluttered open, but she still looked half asleep. “Hey, where are you going?” she asked.

“Shush, go back to sleep. I have to get to the arena,” I told her. I sat on the bed next to her and pushed her hair out of her face.

“Don’t be mad at me,” she cried in this sad small voice, and it gutted me that I had to leave her right now. I thought she might still be drunk.

“Sweetheart, I’m not. We’ll talk when I get home, okay?”

She kissed my big hand lying on her face, right on the silver wedding band that I only took off when I was playing hockey.

“Aaron…”

“Shush, sweetheart. Go back to sleep,” I urged and kissed her on the forehead.

“Aaron, I’m sorry, please don’t leave me,” she urged, and then she was crying.

I wiped the tears from her face and pulled her to my chest, not caring if her tears wet my suit. “Aw, sweetheart, don’t cry. I’m here. I’m only leaving because I have a game to go to. Get some sleep, okay?”

“Baby, I’m so sorry,” she said and pulled away from me.

I smiled at her and gently pushed her back down on the bed. I kissed her forehead again. “Sleep, sweetheart.”

She yawned then but finally did go back to sleep, and I had a feeling she wouldn’t remember the conversation we just had.

I pushed all the things out of my head about what her day drinking with Dinah meant and left for the arena. I was nervous, and I was scared, but not because of hockey. I did my normal pre-game rituals, but I was so on edge that I ended up taping and re-taping my stick way too many times. Like way more than normal. My usual visualization of getting the puck to the back of the net wasn’t working either. I knew I wasn’t the only one on edge when I locked eyes with Noah. I didn’t even want to bring up whatever was happening with him and Dinah.

All my thoughts of anything other than the game melted away as soon as my skates hit the ice. I’m sure therapy really helped a lot of people, but for me, my therapy had always been this game. I took my place on the bench and watched the starting line take the first face-off, and of course, we lost the puck to New York. There was a tightness in my chest, and I suddenly had a really bad feeling about this game.

On the change-up, I hopped over the bench with my line and struggled to bat the puck away from our opponents. I made a big hit on one of the lumbering defenders, a six-foot-four massive Swede that I was sure actually hurt me more than it did him. I couldn’t get the puck out from under his stick. When I did, I put too much pressure on my stick and flung the puck all the way down the ice. I hung my head at the icing call and skated down the other end to watch as Noah took the face-off. I think we were both off our game because the other team got possession and tried to one-time it into Metzy’s net. Metzy—the fucking beauty—saved all our asses on that play.

I skated my ass off in the game, taking big hits and giving them back just as hard. It was my job to be that big tough guy on the ice who protected the net at all costs. Coach lit a fire under our asses after the second period, so we rushed the net hard and tied the game with a minute left in the third. It ended up not being enough, and we lost 4-3 in OT. It wasn’t like this game mattered anyway.