My time in the penalty box is up with three minutes still left before the buzzer sounds to end the second period. To no one’s surprise, Coach doesn’t put me back on the ice. He also doesn’t even look at me when I get back to the bench, so I know how pissed off he is. I’m the steady one, the player he can always depend on, the one who’s a role model for the other players. Until these last two games.
After this last penalty, I can’t afford to let my temper get the best of me. With a new contract on the line, I also can’t afford to make these kinds of mistakes.
I keep my head down as we march through the hallway toward the locker room. No one speaks to me, and I don’t blame them. Anaheim scored two more goals during the power play, so we’re down three to one right now. I can’t even convince myself it isn’t my fault, and my own guilt and my teammates’ silent accusations hang heavy in the stale air outside the locker room.
There’s a holdup at the locker room entrance as we enter single file, each player’s shoulder pads taking up the full width of the doorway. At the end of the line, I’m a couple players away from the door when Thompson steps out of the way and Coach steps through the door. He’s followed by my agent, Jameson Flynn, who was apparently in the locker room. Shit, this is not good.
Jameson has never once come to see me during a game. I can’t imagine why he’s even down here unless it’s to rip me a new asshole and remind me that I’m costing him a lot of money right now by not getting my shit together. At this moment, that’s the last thing I need.
“Ivanov,” Coach barks. “Go with Flynn.” My agent turns to head down the hallway.
“Wait, what?” I ask, glancing between my agent and my coach, and eyeing the locker room behind him. “I need to know what the plan of attack is, I need to come back into this game with my head on straight.”
Coach reaches up and puts his hand on my shoulder. “There’s a family emergency, son. Go with Jameson.”
My stomach roils and I feel like I could throw up on the spot. Stella. What’s wrong with Stella?
I turn toward Jameson, the question poised on my lips.
“It’s not Stella,” he says, his voice level and firm. “Let’s go.”
I dip my head toward his as we walk down the hall together. “What the hell is going on? I don’t have any family aside from Stella.”
He stops in front of a conference room. There’s a window, but the shades are down so I can’t see inside. “This is about you getting your shit together. You’ve got five minutes.” He opens the door and with a strength I wouldn’t have guessed he had, he pushes me inside.
I stumble as my skate slides along the carpeted floor, but I right myself with my hand on the back of an office chair that’s sitting at a table. I toss my helmet and gloves on the table and turn back toward the door to demand Jameson explain himself, and that’s when I catch sight of her.
Petra, my heart screams.
She fucking left you. Really left, with no intention of returning, my brain argues.
I’m so dumbfounded with the fight that’s happening inside me—the tangible need to grab her and hold her is at odds with the instinct to protect myself—that I just stare at her stupidly.
“What the actual hell do you think you’re doing out there?” she asks as she pushes her chair back and stands.
“If you’re here to lecture me about a crappy game, you have some nerve.” It’s a struggle to keep the emotions I’m feeling—the anger, the sadness, the hopelessness—out of my voice. But I’m good at being unreadable, so I school my face into the neutral mask I usually wear and make sure there’s a solid layer of armor around my heart.
“This is not a crappy game. This is a career ending performance when it should be the pinnacle of your year: another Stanley Cup championship and your choice of where you want to go when your contract’s up.” Why the fuck does she sound mad? I’m the one who should be mad here! I open my mouth to say as much, but she powers on. “Instead, you’re showing all these clubs that you’re not serious about your game, that you can’t keep it together when the pressure’s on.”
“And why do you think that is? Why do you think I’m struggling to keep my shit together right now, Petra? Are you here to accept the blame?”
“Yes.” The word is so simple and small, and yet it carries a note of hope.
My eyes rake over her, trying to determine her meaning. She’s wearing a black formfitting dress that hits at her knee. She’s got black heels with those red soles that I know matter to lots of women. She’s sexy and sophisticated and looks like she came straight here from a business meeting. Meanwhile, my hockey uniform is practically stiff with dried sweat and my beard is damp.
“What does ‘yes’ mean in this context?” I let my eyes drift back to her face.
“It means I accept that the likeliest reason for your utterly piss-poor performance”—she shakes her head—“is that I left you last weekend after we’d committed to moving forward in this relationship.”
A scoff bubbles up out of the back of my throat. “And now what? You think showing up at my game and yelling at me about my performance is somehow going to make things better?”
“No, I came to apologize. I’m sorry I left like I did last weekend. I needed time and space to think. I’m . . .” She stumbles with her words and glances around the conference room like more options for what to say will appear in front of her. “I’m used to being alone, making decisions at my own pace, without having to think about how they affect others.”
I get that. I really do. She’s essentially been on her own since she went to boarding school at sixteen. She’s avoided serious relationships. She doesn’t have any family. She doesn’t do commitments unless they’re of the work-related variety. But that can’t be my life because I have Stella to think about.
I reach over to prop my stick up in the corner, then lean back against the wall. “ I can’t be with someone who’s going to run the moment things get hard. Yes, I kept something huge from you, and I should have come clean much earlier. I own that, and I know it will take time to rebuild that trust. But you didn’t even give me a chance you explain. You just left.” Obviously loving her was too big of a risk. I should have listened to my own advice from the beginning—for Stella’s sake, and for mine too.
“I’d like to point out that you left like I did, and you didn’t come back for fourteen years. I just needed a few days to think, to work things out. I didn’t wait fourteen years.”
“For fuck’s sake, Petra. The two situations are not the same. We were children back then. We weren’t adults who’d just decided to commit to making a marriage work. There wasn’t a child involved. How do you think Stella took it when I had to explain to her that you left? And then when Avery came to get your bags and Stella began to understand that you weren’t coming back?”
Her lower lip trembles. “But I was coming back.”
“Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that?” My voice is so loud the shades shake in response, or maybe that’s from the way the air shifts as my hands fly up in a sweeping gesture. “I am not a mind reader. You disappeared. And now, what? You just want me to pretend like that didn’t happen? That you didn’t break Stella’s heart? That you didn’t break mine?” As if it wasn’t humiliating enough to have just admitted she broke my heart, my voice has to go and crack on the word mine. Now there’s a lump in my throat, but with some effort I swallow it down.
She doesn’t back down when I start yelling at her. Instead, she takes a step closer to me, so I step away, sliding along the wall toward the back of the very small room. “I was in Laguna Beach tonight when I saw the game on the TV at a restaurant as I was leaving,” she says, her voice low, and soft, and husky as she takes another step toward me.
I just stare at her, then raise my eyebrows in question, because what the hell does this have to do with what we’re talking about?
“I was in Laguna Beach because that’s where the president of the studio lives,” she says. She won’t stop making eye contact and I don’t like the way it breaks down this armor I’ve erected around my heart, so I look down at my skates instead. “I met him there for dinner because we needed to talk about the show. He let me know it was being picked up for a second season, and I let him know the only way I would sign on for Season 2 is if we can move the show to New York.”
My head snaps up, my eyes meeting hers. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” she says, and takes another step toward me, crowding me into the corner. She reaches up and runs her fingers along my cheek. “So tell Jameson to stop talking to LA and go back out there and make sure New York signs you for a few more years.”
She takes another step toward me and I’m fully backed into the corner. There’s a table against the wall to my left, and she’s advancing on me from the right. She steps up so close we’re breathing the same air. Her scent is heavy and heady and literally all I want to do is take her in my arms, but I can’t. I can’t let her hurt me, or more importantly, Stella, again.
“I don’t know how to get over you acting like a child and running away the minute things got hard. Things are hard, Petra. Life is hard. You can’t go running away every time you’re scared or hurt. That’s not how relationships work.”
“Show me how they do work, then,” she says. “Show me how to be the person you need me to be, and I’ll do the same. We’ll figure it out together.”
That armor falls away, even as I will myself to be strong—to not be taken down again by this woman. She’s owned my heart since I was a teenager, though. There is no point in resisting.
Instead, I drop my head down and rest my forehead on the crown of hers. “Petra, we’re married. If we’re going to make this work, we’re going to make good on that commitment we didn’t know we’d made so long ago. I can’t do ‘we’ll figure it out.’” My voice is barely above a whisper, but I keep my words firm. “I need you to be all in . . . or I’m out.”
She lifts her head so I have to pull mine up as well, and she tilts hers back so she’s looking up at me. She locks her eyes on mine and cups my jaw in her hands.
“I’m in. All in. And we have a kid to think about now too, so we’re going to have to be mature adults and talk about our problems when they come up. We need to set a good example for Stella. I know that, and I can handle it. I’m ready for this.” She pauses. “But first, you have to go out there and kick some ass and remind New York why they’ve kept you around for the past eight years. Okay?”
“No,” I tell her. “First, I have to do this.” I lean down and take her mouth with mine, gently sucking on her lower lip until she opens for me. The kiss is relatively chaste, then I wrap her in my arms and hold her to me. I have to get back to work, but I’m not ready to let her go yet.
“Sasha,” she murmurs against my chest.
“Yeah, love?”
“You stink.”
My chest rumbles with laughter. I’m sure I do. I pull back and as I slide my hands down her shoulders, my finger catches in her bra strap. It’s lavender lace.
“You wore sexy undergarments to go to your meeting?”
“Do you think I have any other kind?” she purrs with that sexy-as-fuck voice of hers. “I’m looking forward to showing them to you after you win your game tonight.”
That’s a bribe if I ever heard one. “And if I don’t win?”
“You will,” she says decisively. Then she runs a thumb over my lip, hands me my helmet and gloves from the table and my stick from the corner, turns and opens the door, and ushers me out. “He’s ready,” she tells Jameson.
“Coach is expecting you in the locker room,” he tells me. I head down the hall and when I look over my shoulder, he’s leading her out of the conference room and toward an elevator that will take them back up to the stands.
When I open the door to the locker room, Coach is standing there waiting for me. “You good?” he asks. I nod. “Your head on straight?” I nod again. “Good. Don’t ever again let me see you play like you’ve been playing these last two games.”
“Understood,” I say.
He reaches across the short space between us and grasps my forearm. “You’re too valuable a player to waste your time and energy on fighting. Go out there and show us what you’re made of.”
“I will, sir.”
And then I do.
“Stella’s going to be up any minute,” I tell Petra as I rub my nose against the back of her head, inhaling the intoxicating smell of her hair. The light is already filtering through the curtains at the edge of my room, the rays of sunshine reminding us that even though Petra’s flight arrived in the early hours of the morning, we still have a six-year-old who will be bouncing off the walls to see her the minute she wakes up.
“Let me sleep until she wakes up, then. You already kept me up all night. I only closed my eyes five minutes ago.”
My chest shakes with easy laughter. “You’re so dramatic. We got at least four hours of sleep.”
“Four hours . . .” she half mumbles, half groans.
With the arm that’s already wrapped around her waist, I pull her even closer. I love having her pressed up against me when I sleep, but somehow in the early hours of the morning she managed to scoot away from me half a foot. I know she thinks my body temperature runs too hot and that she needs her space, but I hate the distance between us. I’m okay being the clingy one—she needs to know she can trust me, that I’d never leave her, or lie to her, ever again.
She curls into me. “More sleep.”
I bury my face in her hair and smile—something I seem to be doing a lot these days now that my contract in New York has been renewed and there are only four more weeks until Petra is back here permanently. She’s here this weekend for our games, and assuming we don’t lose both, I’m bringing Stella with me when we head back to Anaheim next week for the end of the series.
I’m actually surprised Stella slept at all last night. I fully expected her to come out of her room, still wide awake, when Petra got in. But I guess one in the morning is later than she can stay up, even with all the excitement of the surprise we’ve planned for this morning. I think she might be as in love with Petra as I am.
I lie there for probably twenty or thirty minutes, listening to Petra’s rhythmic breathing as she sleeps in my arms. Ending up here, together for real—forever—is like having all my dreams come true.
When Stella finally cracks the door to the bedroom open, I raise my arm and wave her in, careful not to wake Petra. She tiptoes across the room and around to Petra’s side of the bed, where she climbs up on top of the comforter.
“Hey,” I whisper into Petra’s ear. “You’ve got to wake up now.”
Across from us, Stella’s practically shaking with excitement, her smile almost splitting her face in half as she holds our gift out in front of Petra’s face.
“Hmm,” Petra murmurs, but I can tell she hasn’t opened her eyes yet because she’d be having a much different reaction if she had.
“Open your eyes, sweetheart,” I coax.
“Too early.” The words are a mumbled whisper, and as much as I want to let Petra go back to sleep, I can’t deny Stella this opportunity. I never pictured myself balancing the needs of two high-maintenance women in my life, and yet these moments are the ones I now live for.
“Petra,” Stella says softly. “Open your eyes.”
Petra stiffens against me as she jolts awake, her breath swallowed up by a gasp. “What the hell, Stella?”
My chest is shaking with laughter. How did I not anticipate that response?
Stella laughs, too, holding the open ring box out so Petra can see it better. I prop myself up on my elbow so I can watch this scene play out, and Petra turns her head to look up at me, her eyebrows knit together.
“Are you proposing to me?” she asks.
“We’re already married,” I remind her. “But I figure my wife ought to have a ring. And a wedding, if you want one. And whatever else you want, as long as it’s in my power to give it to you.”
She pulls me down and gives me a quick kiss, then turns back to Stella. “This is what you want too?” Petra asks her, because of course she does. She’s never not thinking about what’s best for Stella.
“More than anything,” Stella says and launches herself at Petra. They wrap their arms around each other, and I fold them both into mine. I take a moment to send a heartbroken prayer of thanks up to my brother and sister-in-law. I will never not feel guilty that their death gave me Stella and led me back to Petra. I will also never stop trying to prove myself worthy of this life.
Stella pulls away first and then hands Petra the ring box. My wife gazes down at it like she’s paralyzed over what to do next.
“Do you like it?” I ask. Stella and I had picked it out together.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Are you ready to be wearing my ring?” I ask. “I won’t be offended if you want to wait.”
She looks up at me with so much love in her eyes. “I appreciate that you asked, and didn’t assume. And yes, I’m ready. I don’t want to wait anymore—for anything. I’m ready to accept all these blessings—you,” she says to me, then looks over at Stella and taps her on the nose, “and you, and this amazing life we get to live together.”
I pluck the ring out of the box and slip it on her finger.
