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“I know. I’m going through the motions, Jax. I’ll take care of it as best I can with limited resources.” She moves to the desk in the room, where her laptop is open, puts on her reading glasses and sits into the desk chair.

“I’m going to be a while, and you have another game tomorrow night, so it might be a good idea for you to see if you can room share with TJ or Zach tonight,” she says without looking at me.

She starts typing and I’d put money on it that she’s not typing a real sentence, doing anything to avoid having to look at me. Disgusted.

I take a tentative step into the room. “Si, I’m not that guy anymore.”

She continues typing and I think being ignored by her might be worse than if she was screaming in my face. So I get closer to her still. “Sienna, talk to me.”

She pushes out of her chair and comes to stand, yards away from me but facing me now, glaring at me. “What do you want me to say, Jax? People don’t change in seven weeks. This, between us, this sham, is a hiatus.”

Her volume is rising with every word, her stare becoming more fixed and intense. I’ve never seen her like this before. “In a few weeks we’ll get a divorce. You can go back to screwing everything with a pulse and I’ll… get on with my life.”

“That’s unfair, Sienna. I have changed. Before you, there was no reason for me to change. I didn’t want to and now, I do. I might leave the toilet up sometimes and make a mess of the condo, but I haven’t so much as looked at another woman since Las Vegas.”

She scoffs. It doesn’t suit her but she’s hurting. I’ve hurt her.

She throws her arms in the air. “Well, I’m flattered, Jax, that you’ve kept it in your pants for seven fucking weeks. But thanks to the other guy who recently screwed me over, not only do my parents now know that I got married to a hockey player, who wasn’t my fiancé” – she drops her face into her palms, shaking her head – “dressed as a fucking minion and wasted on sambuca, without telling them, they now think that my husband is the kind of man who messes with a woman with two kids and a husband behind my back.”

She moves her hands and her eyes are red as she lowers her voice. “Shame, embarrassment and fucking disappointment don’t even cover it, Jax. So I don’t give a damn whether you think you’ve changed by not being randy for a few weeks, because I just blew up my parents’ life.”

She paces the floor, hands on hips. “Do you know what my mom said to me? She told me that she’s never been more disappointed in me. In her fucking life. All she wanted was for me to get out of a small town and make something for myself, a better life than she and my dad had, scrimping and scraping to make ends meet. That’s what I’ve tried to give them for years, the perfect daughter. In the space of two men and two affairs, everything I’ve worked to be for almost three decades has been ruined. So please, I’m asking you politely to find somewhere else to be right now, while I at least fix this for you.”

Of all the times to be lost for words, this seems like a pretty bad one but I honestly don’t know how to make this better for her.

“We should consider making a statement,” she says, turning her back to me and staring at the window. “So think about what you would want it to be. We can keep pushing the marriage story and say that an old video surfaced. Or we can use this as an opportunity to call it off, publicly. It’s your reputation, your call.”

I don’t want to call anything off except the pain in my gut but something else occurs to me. Obvious.

“What’s the time?” I ask, clenching my fists. “Do you think Carl put out this video?”

She sighs. “I’d stake my life on it. He’d have had access to it from the company files and clearly, he has a vendetta against me right now.” She turns around but she doesn’t look at me, focusing on the ground somewhere in front of me. “For my part, I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this mess.”

I drag a hand down my face. “You didn’t invite your dickhead ex to do this to you, Sienna, and if I wasn’t the guy I am, he wouldn’t have the ammunition to use against you. So, we both know this is on me.”

Right now, I’m too devastated to argue or talk anymore.

I grab a pair of shorts and go in search of my brother’s room, leaving behind the woman I am more fucking in love with than I could have ever imagined. She, justly, hates me.

* * *

I knock on the door to TJ and Zach’s room, though I don’t expect them to be back from the bar yet, so I immediately turn and press my back against it, trying to figure out how tonight went from being great to so disastrously wrong.

My legs give out and I start sliding down the door to take a load off.

Only… “Jesus!” TJ shouts as he flings open the door and I fall against him, knocking us both to the ground.

We both groan and moan as we roll away from each other. “I knocked!” I gripe at my brother.

“People knock then wait for the door to be opened, dude. Why were you lying on it?”

“I wasn’t lying on it. I was—” We get to our feet. “You know what, it doesn’t matter.” I locate my shorts and pick them up from the floor. “Can I stay with you tonight?”

The look he gives me could be disappointment (I get it) or sympathy (I don’t deserve it but it’s welcome).

“’Course you can,” Zach says, coming out of the bathroom, mid-ablutions. “There’s only two doubles, though, and I’d go in with someone else but the other rooms are full.”

At least, that’s what I think he says. Mostly, I’m distracted by the rivers of paste and saliva running out of his mouth as he speaks.