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“After this?”
“After what?” I asked. Gunnar took my hand and rested it on the sheet over his package. He was hard as a rock.
“After you give me one last special treatment?”
I loved it when he spoke to me like that – dirty but not gross. He was more of an innuendo man, and it sent heat to my lower belly when he told me what he wanted. And so I gave it to him – one last special treatment.
It was the most civil,yet saddest breakup I’d ever been through. Usually breakups ended when the love disappeared, but with Gunnar, the day we split up was the day I knew that I was truly, deeply in love with him.
He left in his crappy car and I left in the chopper.
Back in the city, I headed to meet Ali. With the honking, the cars, and the smog, the night in the cabin seemed so far away, almost like it couldn’t have been real. But the discomfort between my legs from being fucked at least six times in the past forty-eight hours was a welcome reminder that the night was real.
The restaurant was buzzing as I stepped inside. I wasn’t an A-list actor, but I was a well-recognized figure in the city. I felt eyes on me as I made my way to the table where Ali was waiting. She stood and hugged me. “Holy shit.” She held onto my arms and stared at me. “You got laid.”
I shrugged out of her grip. “How many glasses of champagne have you had?” Slipping into my seat, I hoped that my face wasn’t turning as red as my lipstick.
“Just sparkling water.” She pointed to the glass. “But I ordered you a Manhattan.”
I held up the heavy glass and took a sip, hoping that Ali would forget her earlier comment. But she continued smiling like the Cheshire Cat.
“So? Who is he?” She pumped her eyebrows.
I took a deep breath. This was the moment I’d been dreading – the moment that I had to lie to my friend and future sister-in-law.
“You don’t know him. He’s just some finance guy.”
TWELVE
GUNNAR
It was finallythe day I could bring Norman back to the city with me. The intensive part of training camp was over and I could focus on my dog’s rehab. The last text I’d received from Everleigh had been a photo of the two of us in the cabin, and I looked at it every morning. In the picture her hair was messy, and even though she looked tired, her eyes sparkled.
The past week had been a blur. Between training camp, working out, and driving to see Norman, I felt drained. I hated the feeling I got every time I pulled into the King country home. I kept seeing flashes of blond hair around every corner, but it was always my imagination. Part of me hoped I would turn the corner and see her giving sugar cubes to Ralph.
Hearing her talk about her childhood and her constant need for her father’s approval had made me feel sad for her. I understood what it was like to wish for a father’s attention. Mine had left when I was too young to even remember him.
If I had one wish for Everleigh, it would be that she step away from hockey and do something for herself. If I had two wishes, the second would be to win the cup again – for meandher.
With Norman in the back seat and the peaks of the King mansion in the rearview mirror, I headed back to the city. Norman had an inflatable thing around his neck to keep him from biting at the bandages on his leg. But aside from the cone and bandages, he was his happy self and his tail thumped on the vinyl back seat the entire drive back to New York.
We had promised not to contact each other, but I couldn’t count how many times I’d had the text box open, with a message to her typed and ready to send, only to delete it.
The windy country roads turned to freeways and then to noisy city streets. Norman rested his head on the frame of the open window, his tongue hanging out as he panted. “Are you happy to be home, bud?”
He looked at me and his tail thumped even harder. He didn’t care if he was surrounded by pavement, stinky garbage, and smog, as long as he was with me. I snapped a picture of him over my shoulder and chuckled. He probably liked the stinky garbage part of the city. Before I could second-guess myself, I sent the photo to Everleigh. I knew we shouldn’t message each other, but technically it wasn’t from me, it was from Norman.
When we were settled in my apartment, I turned on one of the best hockey games from last season and cracked open a mineral water. It was the game that had turned around our season, and one of the rare times that our captain, Colton King, had fought. When I studied games, I picked one player and then watched their strategies. In that game, Liam Bradshaw had been about to get into a brawl with Colton. He was easily the most talented player on the opposing team, but he was scrappy and a little sloppy with his puck handling. If Bradshaw could get his shit together, he could be big – maybe even bigger than Colton, the King himself. I drifted off to the sound of the crowd cheering as Colton and Liam exchanged blows.
My alarm woke me the next day. It was dark outside and the blue light from the TV flickered on the walls. I rubbed my eyes and stretched, my neck stiff from falling asleep on the sofa. “Come on, bud.” I woke Norman up and took him outside for an easy and slow lap around the block before getting ready for my workout. I treated my workouts like a job, and if getting a leg day in meant getting up before the sun, that’s what I did.
The gym was empty when I arrived and because I’d run to the stadium, I was warm and ready to start banging some iron. With Metallica blaring in my noise-canceling headphones, I eased into the weights and was soon pushing the limit, my breaths coming harder and faster. I knew I was grunting but couldn’t hear myself and didn’t really care.
I turned and saw a strange man in the doorway. “Jesus.” I slid the headphones down around my neck.
“Sorry.” The man was lugging a giant bag and dropped it to the gym floor. “I was told the gym would be empty.”
“Who are you?” I asked. The man was fit, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that he wasn’t a hockey player. He was too thin, too lean.
