Page 85 of The Big Puck

“You’d beat Pollyanna for the gold medal if optimism were an Olympic sport.”

She smacks my arm and continues undaunted. “You forget that I’m a practical person and I’ve dealt with more than my fair share of pricks.”

Shit. I know she’s talking about her ex-fiancee and I can’t argue with that.

“Whatever Gavonza has in mind would make your small town scandal look like a fairytale. We’re an NHL team, national news with a social media reach in the tens of millions, Lainey.” I shake my head. The last thing I want to do is ask her to move out, but it’s either that or trust that I can withstand her seduction because hiding an affair is not only impractical, it’s impossible. There’s no way either of us could hide that kind of visceral connection between us.

Hell my team already suspects. Gavonza suspects. Besides, I know she’d feel the burden of being hidden away like a guilty secret whether she understands that or not.

The worst is if the secret gets out and Gavonza puts his nasty spin on our entanglement. I know better than she does how people will eat up the story, more than willing to latch onto the dirtiest possible version of us being together. It would kill me, but only because it would wound her. And the last thing I want to do is hurt her.

“Maybe this is a problem for aunt Hildie to help with,” she says. My knee jerk reaction is to say hell no, then I remember who set us up in the hotel room in the first place and swipe a hand through my hair as I take a long ragged breath.

“Fuck.” I didn’t mean to mutter out loud, but Lainey, in true Lainey form, laughs.

Chapter 33

LAINEY

The last thing I expected Aunt Hildie to say was that I should move out.

“It’s what people are expecting, dear. It was the arrangement. Don’t you think your brother will find it odd if you stay? You’re ready to be on your own. I know you are.”

“What about you? And Krissy?” My heart wrenches and I feel it bleeding so real that I glance down expecting to see a puddle of blood at my feet. And Spence? My heart screams.

“We’ll all still be here. You can come over every day—you’ve heard of a live-out Nanny haven’t you?”

“Are you sure—” Spence says, his grimace pained and concerned rather than angry. I wish he still wore his angry scowl, wish he still had his defensive armor up rather than allow such pain to ravage him. What have I done to him? To my knight in shining armor? Have I stripped him of his armor so that he can be stuck through with the sword of my own making?

Did I make him care too much, before he was ready, leaving him without any defense?

“I’ll move out, but I… can’t come back and visit every day. Maybe sometime—”

“It’s not like this will be forever, my dear. The season will end and—”

“And then I’ll return home. Where I belong.” I don’t know why I said that. To test out the notion maybe, to hear the absurdity of my original plan. Because nothing would feel more foreign to me than going back to Daddy’s house right now, to that small smothering town where my friends feel like strangers and there are so many fewer of them that I thought there were.

And where I will never see Spence again.

“Let’s get to the end of the season first, Lainey and see what happens.” Spence’s face is more rigid than I ever remember seeing it, his scowl back, deeper than ever.

“Why? What’s going to happen?” I won’t let him get away with saying something like that without explaining, as if he’s holding out some invisible line of hope, the kind he’s always avoided and mocked, the kind he’s always accused me of uselessly waving around.

He glances at Aunt Hildie and heaves in a deep breath. “I’m going to have a talk with Gavonza about what we have on him.”

“Of course you are. When?”

“It has to be at the moment when I have the most capitol, when we win the division.”

“That’s over a month away.”

“I’ll need to focus on the team more than ever, keep them focused with no letting up if we want to win. No distractions.”

“And what if we don’t win?” I can’t believe I’m taking the part of the Debbie-downer in a strange reversal of roles, but I can’t help myself, I know how his mind works, where it goes and I need it all spelled out.

“I’ll cross that bridge if I ever get to it.” He clenches his jaw tight, like he’s holding out against even a hint of defeat.

“That’s right,” Aunt Hildie says. “No sense borrowing trouble.”