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“What about that guy you were seeing? Will he be there?” Alison deflected, avoiding committing to the family dinner. She was probably waiting to see whether today ended in tears or flames. So far, neither had erupted.
“There’s no guy.” I patted her shoulder. “Cocktails start at six.” I slipped my phone into my handbag and tried not to run out of the bridal shop. “Bye.” I threw my hand in the air but didn’t look back. Once in the fresh air – and by fresh, it was like a literal sauna – I put on my oversized sunglasses and wished that I was anywhere other than sweating my ass off in the city, helping my dad pick out his future ex-wife’s wedding dress.
The air-conditioned seats in my Range Rover couldn’t work fast enough. Beads of sweat had started to trickle down my spine, and I rolled down all the windows to get a little air flow until the temperature could go from fiery inferno to plain inferno.
My phone rang deep in my handbag and the car’s system picked up the signal, the name of the caller flashing on the screen of the dashboard.
It couldn’t be.
We had decided to never speak to each other again, at least privately. What was he doing calling me? Especially after all this time. Months had passed since we had last seen each other. I had been dreading training camp for one reason – him. And now, he was breaking the rules and calling me.
How dare he?
I almost let the call go to voice mail but that wasn’t my style. Confrontation was my best friend. I jabbed at the answer button on the screen.
“H-Hello?” I cleared my throat, crossed my arms, and hoped that my voice sounded intimidating, not shaky.
Nothing.
“Hello?” I repeated.
Muted shuffling and distant voices were all I could hear. I should’ve hung up, but I waited for two seconds too long. It was clearly a pocket dial. I felt like an idiot for answering, but just before I hung up, I heard a clear voice. Only it wasn’t his. It was a woman’s, and she was saying his name.
Gunnar.
My instinct was to disconnect the call, but I was seeing red and for no reason. I had no claim to the player. Of course he’d be with a woman. It was his summer holidays, after all. I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.
I hadn’t updated my phone contacts and the nickname I’d had for him while we were fooling around – Hardwood, flashed on the screen.
The muffled sounds disappeared and the voices in the room became clearer. The music got louder, along with laughter and the sounds of splashes – like a pool party. “Oh, shit. I think I butt-dialed someone.” Gunnar’s deep voice was unmistakable.
Shit.
I quickly disconnected the call and dropped my forehead to rest on my knuckles, my hands still squeezing the life out of the steering wheel. What was wrong with me? I didn’t get nervous around men, but they shook in their boots – or their skates, or whatever the hell they had on their feet when they were around me.
I took a deep breath and angled the vents to point at my face, cranking the ice-cold climate control, my hair whipping in its breeze. He wasn’t the one who had broken things off. It had been me, and he hadn’t taken it well. So why was I the one suffering? He was off drinking mai tais with puck bunnies draped all over his arms, while I was working ninety-hour weeks and hadn’t been laid in over a year – long before him, since Gunnar and I hadn’t gotten that far.
Before I pulled out into the stop-and-go traffic, I scrolled through my contacts and placed a call.
“Wow. It’s been five minutes. Did you miss me?” Alison’s voice was light on the other end of the line.
“Dinner at the country house is canceled. I’m coming to your cottage and we’re getting drunk.”
TWO
GUNNAR
The weekbefore summer training camp was like the week before school started. I was both excited and nervous, and also wanted to get in as much fun as I could before enacting my serious nutrition and workout regime. There was no room for alcohol or staying up late when I was in game mode. I definitely wouldn’t be drinking beer at a pool party a week from now.
“Come on, Lockwood. Loosen up a little.” Smitty, one of my teammates, handed me a plastic cup filled with a little beer and a lot of foam. My definition of partying was a lot different from the rest of my team. When I’d played in the Northern Professional Hockey League, I’d heard the players and even the coach call me Mr. Perfect behind my back.
I took a sip of the not so cold beer. “This is me loosening up.”
“Don’t go overboard. You might actually have some fun.” Smitty exited by chugging his beer and then performing a backflip into the pool.
Jamie, one of the more senior players, sat beside me and handed me another cup of beer. “Don’t let him get to you. He doesn’t have the same will power as you, and it shows in his game.”
I didn’t want to agree with Jamie and sound arrogant, something I’d also been accused of in the past. Keeping to myself had become my self-preservation strategy. I played the game, didn’t showboat, didn’t hog the puck; I just did my job and then went home for a good night’s sleep. Being a star brought about the wrong kind of attention, the kind that I didn’t want. I just wanted to play the game.
