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Tig knew her well enough to know what that tone meant, and his blue eyes went wide.
“I know you’re mad,” he said. “I get it. But I can’t get married right now. I’ll only be able to play hockey for so long before injury or age sends me into retirement. We have our whole lives ahead of us to get married, have kids, and whatever, but the hockey clock is already ticking down on me.”
Whatever. Did he really just say married, kids, and whatever? Like the life they were planning to have together was just a shrug of a whatever?
Whatever?!?
Anger blotted out her vision for a second as she tried to process what in the fuck was happening. She hadn’t been the one who’d pushed to get married. Nor had she been the one who’d talked about how cute their kids would be. And she most definitely had not been the one who’d insisted on a huge church wedding with photographers from Entertainment fucking Weekly documenting every moment.
She sucked in a breath and blinked her vision clear until she could once again see the man she’d thought she was going to marry. He was still running his mouth. “Stop. Talking. Tig.”
Her ice-cold tone should have gotten the message through, but it didn’t. Tig continued, holding the mic of his plug-in headphones close to his mouth as he plowed forward.
“Astrid, babe,” he said, his tone so obnoxiously calm and reasonable. “I have to focus a hundred percent on my game now that I’ve gotten this Ice Knights contract. You’re a coach’s kid—of course you understand.”
Her left eye started to twitch, and her grip on the phone tightened until the tips of her fingers turned white.
Fucking. Hockey.
If it hadn’t been a part of her life since her dad popped a mini-puck in her mouth instead of a teething ring, she’d hate anything that had to do with ice skates, vulcanized rubber, and penalty boxes.
“And it’s not like you can move to Harbor City with me. You have to stay for your job with the Rage,” he continued. “You know your dad would be lost without you. I can’t do that to Coach.”
Astrid almost dropped her phone she was so taken aback by his words.
He couldn’t do that to Coach?
To. Coach.
Disbelief and anger swirled through her, kicking her heart into overdrive so much that she could hear her pulse in her ears like a dull roar. He was jilting her, but he didn’t want to hurt her dad?
If Astrid wasn’t so pissed she couldn’t form words, Tig’s ears would be burning right now from a string of curses in a mix of Czech, Russian, Swedish, and English, along with some French Canadian slang thrown in for good measure. She’d learned about more than hip checks and how to fire off the perfect slapshot from the guys who’d played on her dad’s teams, because the rink had been his version of an after-school program.
As it was, though, Tig had shocked her back into total silence for the second time in the past half hour. It literally was a record.
“Astrid?! Can you hear me?” he yelled into the mic. “I’m going to fucking flip if this fucking call got dropped.”
He continued to holler into her earbuds as she pulled herself together, catching sight of herself in the kid-height mirror as she sat on the closed toilet lid with her shoulders slumped and spine curved forward. She looked like the Halloween version of a haunted bride. Her mascara had run. Her cheeks were red and blotchy. A strand of hair had come free from the bobby pins and stuck straight out. Plus she had a glass-eyed stare that definitely gave off possible zombie vibes. She looked bedraggled and unhinged—so pretty much exactly like she felt on the inside.
Someone pounded on the bathroom door, yanking her attention away from her reflection.
“Honey, are you okay?” her dad asked, his distinct Canadian accent coming through the church’s simple hollow-wood door as if he was talking through a megaphone. “I don’t want to worry you, Button, but no one can find Tig. Do you know where he is?”
She opened her mouth, but still nothing came out. Not even a squeak for help. And Tig— at the sound of her dad’s bellow—had finally smartened up enough to shut his trap.
“Button,” her dad said with a weary sigh. “It’s going to be all right. I’ll find him.”
Tig flinched on her screen. “Make sure Coach knows I hated having to do this.”
Another single tear slid down Tig’s cheek—an effect he ruined by doing a quick chin-lift greeting and wink at someone off camera who hollered across the Sky Lounge, “Jonesy! We’ll miss you on the Rage!”
He looked back at the camera, not bothering to wipe away the tear this time. “I really am sorry, Astrid.”
Then he hung up, his tearful face replaced on her screen by a picture from her eighth-grade Sadie Hawkins dance, when she’d finally worked up the courage to ask Tig to be her date. They were both in braces and wearing what now were embarrassingly cringy outfits but back then were the absolute must-haves. She had a hockey puck–shaped wrist corsage. He was already working on growing his blond mullet, the flow that would become his signature look. They were looking at each other as if the whole world was theirs and they were going to conquer it together.
That had been the beginning of it all. Sure, she’d gone out on dates now and then with other guys, but it had never meant anything. She’d fallen in love with Tig Jones when she was twelve years old, and no matter what had happened between them, she had never fallen out of love with him.
Well, that ended now.
