I nodded and slumped onto the hard timber bench, resting my elbows on my spread knees. “Everyone always walks away,” I whispered with a shrug of my shoulders. No matter how much I tried to play it down, it hurt.
“So you pushed first.” He didn’t need a response. Gauthier knew exactly what I’d done. He sat down next to me and nudged his shoulder into mine. “I won’t,” he promised. “Neither will the rest of the team.”
“You can’t promise that.” I sighed. “Even though we needed to end it, Cara ran out as soon as she heard the word cheater, and Roe looked like he wanted to break my face. A stupid part of me wishes that she’d given me the benefit of the doubt, you know? She jumped to exactly the same conclusion that the media did.”
“You hadn’t spoken about it with her?”
I shook my head and Gauthier hummed.
“I tried to tell her, but she brushed me off. She told me we could talk about it later. I should have insisted. Instead, I walked into her room and started shouting at them for not telling me about Roe’s family. What a fucking mess.”
“So the first she heard about it was when she saw her name going viral on social media with the hashtag cheater?”
“Yeah.” I nodded and exhaled heavily.
“Carina, her mum, told me that she separated from Cara’s dad. He cheated on her. Cara walked into his office and caught him in the act. It was recent too—only a month or so ago. I’d imagine that it’s a pretty sensitive topic for her, especially now.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, all the pieces falling into place. Cara had told us that her parents were splitting up, and I knew there were tensions with her dad, but I’d had no idea what happened. “Fuuuck,” I groaned again, carding my fingers through my sweaty hair and tugging on it until it stung.
“I know you wanted her to give you the benefit of the doubt, but Hux, by the sounds of it, you were an asshole and she’s hurting. She’d just woken up to thousands of comments about her looks and her motivations for being with you. She was already vulnerable, and then she found out that you were accused of cheating with your teammate’s wife within weeks of her dad doing the same to her mum. I can understand why she’s distancing herself from you.”
“Yeah,” I answered, my voice strangled. I owed her an apology—Roe too.
But how?
twenty-one
Monroe
We were avoiding one another. I was angry with Alec. He hadn’t even given us a chance to talk about things like adults before he started on Cara and me, accusing us of lying to him.
But I was even angrier with myself. Alec was hurting. He’d said some pretty revealing things, and I’d glossed straight over them. I’d focussed on entirely the wrong part of the conversation. He’d told me not to walk away from him because that’s what everyone did—either that or they gave him attitude. In the heat of the moment, I’d focussed on the latter rather than the former.
Then I’d told him to fuck off, Cara had run out, and I’d gone looking for her.
We’d both done the exact thing he’d asked us not to do.
Cara said she needed some alone time. She’d needed to write, to disappear for a while. I was too damn angry at Alec to face him again. I’d wiled away the day, trying to keep myself busy but was really counting down the hours until the game.
I’d talked myself in and out of going to the stadium so many times that I would have been late, even if my final decision was ayes. But when I logged into my streaming app for the third time in the first period, I knew I had to get out of the hotel. I locked my phone in my room and went outside, needing to burn off my excess energy. The path from Darling Harbour to the Opera House was an easy one to run—flat and paved the whole way—and long enough to get me out of my head.
At least I thought it had been.
I couldn’t recall a single thing about it except the burn in my lungs then and the ache in my legs today.
By the time I’d arrived back at the hotel, the game was well and truly over, and I hadn’t known whether the team was out celebrating or commiserating behind closed doors.
This morning I’d ordered room service instead of eating breakfast with the team, then snuck onto the bus before anyone else. We were about to fly to Melbourne for the final two games of the series. But I had some time.
I opened my streaming app, figuring I’d at least find out what the final score was and watch the highlights. But every second of reel was brutal. The Kings had wiped the floor with them. Alec had been off all night, not gelling with Gauthier or Hewitt. When they could actually get their sticks on the puck, they’d fumbled it. My heart hurt for Alec when I saw pass after pass being intercepted. He’d tried so hard, but his frustration bled through into his game, and it was epically bad.
I sighed and closed the app. The last thing I wanted was for the team to see me watching it. They were up two games to one, but it was anyone’s series. None of them needed to be reminded of how close to a shutout they’d come.
The only reason the score wasn’t even worse was a fluke of a goal from Korhonen, the fourth line forward, and Rune having the game of his life, saving bullet after bullet. The guy must be black and blue this morning.
I gave Cara a small smile as she slipped onto the bus. The line of players boarding behind her stopped as she hesitated. When she moved past me, sitting a few rows behind, a band tightened around my heart, squeezing it tight. I hated this tension, her needing space, and my being unable to fix any of it. But I understood. She’d been through a lot in the last six weeks. I’d never crowd her if she genuinely wanted space. But I also wasn’t going to sit idle and watch her slip out of my hands.
I just didn’t know what to do with Alec. Cara didn’t want him to walk away. I didn’t either.
