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“You’re disgusting, man, but thanks.”

TJ moves to the bed furthest away and throws himself down on it, arms behind his head. “This is my side. You can sleep with a pillow over your dick and clean your feet before you top and tail me.”

Showering feels like a monumental task right now. Instead, while I wait for their bathroom to clear, I slump down into the one chair in the corner of the room. “I shouldn’t be surprised, should I? This was never going to work out between Sienna and me. I mean she’s smart and like a real, genuine adult and I’m— I thought I was changing though. Not everything, but the annoying shit. And I felt, I feel, calmer with her. Then Dad at the charity gala, defending me for once… I was like, the fuck, you know?” I lean my head back and stare at the ceiling that’s ugly and clinical despite the arty décor of the hotel. “Then that dick goes and gives her a reminder of the guy I really am. Or was. Fuck, I don’t even know what’s going on in my head but I know that I… I’m in…”

I open my eyes and turn to look at my brother – he’s always been better at expressing himself than me. I see my lost words all over his face.

I’ve hurt the one girl I’ve ever loved.

“Call me your kid brother who’s been hit into the boards too many times but has it occurred to you that her ex can’t hurt you if the people around you know the truth? He’s a dick and deserves to meet like, Jon Wicks, in a dark street, but he tried to expose a marriage you’ve hidden from Sienna’s family – and our parents, for the record – and he’s trying to embarrass you with a secret you’re trying to keep to protect someone else’s kids. Someone who wasn’t thinking about her kids when she wanted to bed the hockey star.”

Zach pads out of the bathroom and flops down on his bed. “Hard agree with Teej,” he says.

I shake my head. “So what, you think I need to own it all? Publicly? I can’t do that to Sienna and those kids.”

“Not publicly,” TJ says. “They have no right to know what’s going on in your life away from hockey, but maybe it’s time to own the truth with the people who care about you both. Clear the slate and see if there can be a Sienna and Jax.”

“Slim chance when she’s kicked me out of our room,” I grumble.

“For what it’s worth,” Zach says, picking up the controller and turning on the TV like this sibling pep talk is drawing to a close. “I saw you two tonight. There was nothing made-up about the way either of you was looking at the other.” He settles on, ironically, Jon Wicks. “She likes you.”

I wash and climb into bed with my brother – head by his feet. Under the covers, he’s rolled the bed throw into a sausage and placed it between us. Morning wood is clearly a hard line (pun intended). We spent a lot of time as kids topping and tailing in beds on the road, before we made pro, mostly because TJ played up a couple of years at junior level. He’s actually a better player than me, or will be after another season at the top of his game. But as I stare at the hard skin of his man-feet, I wish I was in bed with Sienna.

Maybe that’s why I spend the night tossing and turning, willing the day to come so that I can see her again, fix this somehow. I lose count of how many times TJ tells me to, “Go the fuck to sleep.”

36

OCTOBER

Sienna

Punishment

When Carl and I ended, I was angry about the way it happened. Annoyed about losing a future as a power couple with a nice pad in the suburbs that I’d never get. But I think with distance, I can appreciate that I was also relieved. I know now there had been an inevitability about it. If he hadn’t screwed Marcela, it would have been someone else. If not adultery, then he’d have done something equally abhorrent. Or maybe it would have been as simple as me waking up one day and realizing that he’s a piece of shit human.

As I pound the streets of Columbus, music plugged into my ears, running so hard sweat is pooling in my sports bra and streaming into my eyes behind my shades, it strikes me that I’m not angry at Jax, or even disappointed in him. I feel both those things, plus frustration and resentment, but all the negative emotions I’m holding on to are aimed at Carl.

The reason I have avoided Jax as much as I can for the last two days is because I’m sad.

The Dragons played Columbus again last night and after breakfast today, we’ll head back to New York. Jax had his worst game of the season. He spent nine minutes in the sin bin. Nine. He lacked precision and pace. Didn’t backtrack. And when I have seen him, he’s looked like crap – as tired and out of sorts as I feel.

All I want to do is make things better between us. Go back to the pool bar, touch him because I can, enjoy the way he was looking at me, feel his hands and lips on me, flirt with him in the near sure knowledge that I was going to make a move on him.

But these past two days have been a slap in the face. We’re vastly different people. I forgot myself. Forgot that I’m with the Dragons to do a job, that I’ve let my parents down and been forced to drag Mitch back to work on Monday, tomorrow, so that I can fly to Canada and try to make things right with Mom and Dad.

Though Lauren has tried to talk me into spilling everything I’m thinking and feeling to Jax, I can’t get it straight in my own head, let alone articulate it.

The fall leaves don’t seem like pretty colors of a rainbow this morning; they look like they’re dying. The clouds in the sky that I’d thank for keeping me cool on a long run are grey, dull, too close and ominous. I’m just… sad. It’s alien and chest tightening and I can’t shift the sense of being out of control of my emotions.

So how in God’s name am I supposed to relay this to Jax? Who, thanks to me making him feel as if this whole thing is his fault somehow, even as I believe it’s all my doing – my relationship with Carl, my need to stay in the country, my making us lie to our families – is playing like crap and, clear from the dark rings under his eyes, is not currently performing his usual role of The Incredible Sleeping Man.

Hang that guy upside down from a streetlight and usually he’d still be able to nap. Not this weekend. Maybe he’s sad, too, and it’s breaking my heart that I’ve made him feel this way. But I’m in flight mode and I don’t know how to pull myself out of it.

* * *

“Where are you going?” Jax asks from the doorway of my bedroom in his apartment.

I stop packing my luggage on the bed and hold out my arms. “Jax, we’re lying to everyone we love. It doesn’t feel good or right for me and I know it doesn’t for you, either.”