CHAPTER 1
TREV
“What the fuck?”Standing in in my kitchen, I stared at my ex-husband’s face on my phone screen. “You can’t just… drop that on me!”
Bryan gave a sharp shrug. “And you can’t just expect me to live my entire life around your schedule anymore. Enough is enough.”
I raked a hand through my hair and exhaled. “For fuck’s sake…”
“If you want partial custody,” he declared, “then you need to step up. It’s been long enough.”
“Step up?” I glared at him. “I’m doing the best I can. It isn’t like I can ask the League to lighten up my schedule so I?—”
“You can figure it out,” he snapped. “Either lock down some consistent, reliable, in-home childcare while you’re on the road, or I’m petitioning for primary custody.”
And child support,he didn’t say.
“I…” My head was spinning with everything he’d just thrown at me. “You know training camp is in two weeks, right?”
He smirked, adding to the fiery ball of rage in my chest. “Of course I know that.”
Yeah. Of course he fucking did. Since his new piece of ass wouldalsobe going to training camp.
I gritted my teeth. “Okay, so you know two weeks isn’t really enough time to find someone, vet them, get them started, make sure?—”
“Figure it out,” he said, “and let me know what you come up with.”
Before I could answer, the call ended.
I very, very nearly hurled my phone across the kitchen, not giving a damn in that moment if it shattered into a thousand pieces. Instead, I dropped it beside the sink and, with a groan, I pressed my elbows into the granite countertop.
I was done. Just so, so goddamned done.
Our divorce had been messy, co-parenting had been a bear, and at every turn it seemed like he wanted to make things worse. Like he got some thrill out of trying to make me regret divorcing him. Right, because the divorce was my fault. Sure, I’d been the one to initiate it, but I wasn’t the one to put my dick where it didn’t belong, take photos and videos, and “accidentally” sync them with the shared cloud.
“Jesus fucking Christ on a Zamboni,” I muttered into the stillness.
I cringed inwardly, fully expecting one of my six-year-olds to pipe up and say,“You said a swear, Dad!”
Neither of them did, though. Because they weren’t here. They were with Bryan this week, and my house would be painfully empty until I picked them up on Tuesday per our custody agreement.
You think Iwantedthis, Bryan?I scrubbed a hand over my face.You think I enjoy being away from my kids this much?
That was only going to get worse during the hockey season. It always did; being away from them sucked when I was on theroad, and now they were gone sometimes when I was at home, too.
And if I don’t appease Bryan, then they might be gone all the time except like one weekend a month.
My blood ran cold.
Bryan wasn’t one to bluff. If I didn’t figure out some kind of in-home childcare solution, he would absolutely be in his attorney’s office, making sure we had to drag our asses back to family court. The judge last time had already been salty with me over being gone so much throughout the year, but Bryan had assured her that we would make it work during the regular season, then resume a normal custody schedule during the off season.
If we got that same judge again… fucking hell.
And wasn’t it just my luck that for all Bryan hated being at the mercy of the hockey schedule, he had a serious thing for hockey players. Now he was quite openly dating one of my teammates—something the tabloids and social media were having aballwith.
Fuck my life.
How the hell did he even still have a libido? Because mine had been dead and gone for months before I’d finally dropped the hammer on the divorce. I couldn’t even jerk off these days, whilehewas sending my teammate to games and practices with a very smug smile on his stupid fucking face.
