At home later, I still can’t release the tension in my shoulders. My chest is tight, like I can’t take a deep breath, and there’s a kink in my neck I can’t shake. I try to forget about Phil as Hannah and I get ready for bed, but there’s something else in the room with us that I can’t quite discern. Hannah washes her face and brushes her teeth, but it’s like she’s watching me out of the corner of her eye. Her forehead is creased in that way it gets when she has something on her mind.
“What?” I say, spitting out my mouthwash at the sink.
She eyes my reflection in the mirror. “I didn’t say anything.”
“I can hear you thinking.”
“I’m not.”
“You look like you want to tell me something.”
“No. I swear.”
“Just spit it out.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Whatever.” If she’s going to be difficult, I don’t have the energy to fight about it tonight. I wipe my face with a soft towel and then wander into the master bedroom of our brownstone.
I get in bed, staring at the ceiling until Hannah slides in beside me and shuts off the light. She rolls onto her side and places her hand on my bare chest.
“Sorry,” she says softly. “I didn’t mean to act weird. I was just thinking about you and your dad. I know tonight was difficult for you, but for what it’s worth, I thought you handled yourself well.”
I pull her toward me, my hand playing with the hem of her thin tank top. “I swear I want to take a swing at him every time he puts his arm around me with that cheesy grin. He’s such a hypocrite. And they all love him.”
She goes silent for a moment.
“What?” I push.
“I don’t know…just thinking. Maybe it’s time to have that talk.”
“What talk?”
“Tell your father how you feel. That you’d rather he keep his distance.”
I can’t help but snort out a laugh. “How I feel about anything is irrelevant, as far as he’s concerned. It’s all about appearances.”
“You could try. If you don’t put down some boundaries for yourself—”
“Let it go.” It comes out more forceful than I intend, and I feel Hannah recoil. I draw her closer, quickly brushing my lips over her soft hair. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to snap. Trust me when I say if I thought talking to him would help, I would’ve done it a long time ago.”
“No, I get it.”
“He doesn’t care what I have to say. That’s why he traps me like that, corners me at parties with plenty of witnesses. He knows if I snub him, it becomes a story. A story that embarrasses me as much as him when it shows up in the press the next morning.”
Hannah grumbles with indignation. “I just hate seeing how much he gets to you. He shouldn’t get to have that power.”
“I know, babe.” I cling to her, because having her warm body curled against mine does a lot to chase the uglier thoughts out of my head. “And I really do appreciate you being there for me tonight. I couldn’t have gotten through it without you.”
“I’ve always got your back.” She kisses my jaw then settles back into my arms.
Minutes later, an hour, I don’t know, I’m still awake. Still staring at the dark ceiling and grinding my teeth as it all plays back in my mind. How smug he is, parading me around for his friends. Not an ounce of shame for what he did to me. To my mom. Not the smallest drop of remorse. What kind of man can be such a shameless bastard?
“Can’t sleep?” Hannah whispers. I don’t know what wakes her up, or if she ever fell asleep.
“I’m fine,” I lie, because there’s no sense keeping us both up all night.
She doesn’t listen, though. Never does, this stubborn, beautiful woman of mine.
Instead, her fingers trace the lines of my chest and down my abdomen. My muscles clench at the teasing sensation. I grip her tighter around the waist when her hand pushes my plaid pajama pants down to stroke me.
I’m hard the second she touches me.
“You don’t have to,” I whisper.
“That’s cute.”
“Not like I’m saying not to.” I smirk in the dark. It’s like when a friend offers to pick up the tab at dinner. It’s polite to refuse the first time.
Hannah pushes the covers back and drags her tongue up my shaft. I grip the sheets, biting my lip at the feel of her mouth on me. No sense arguing with her once she’s got her mind made up, after all.
When she reaches the tip, she presses an open-mouthed kiss on it and I nearly explode right then. I breathe in through my nose and silently order my dick to cooperate.
“Go slow,” I tell her. “I won’t last otherwise.”
“Figured.” And then her tongue comes out to gently circle the head of my cock. Slow and deliberate. A lazy, torturous exploration. I feel the tension ease from my shoulders. All other thoughts evaporate while I watch the outline of her going down on me.
With her ass in the air beside me, I squeeze a handful, which makes her work me a little quicker. Her delicate fingers glide up my shaft with each upstroke, then her warm, wet mouth slides down hungrily. Oh fuck. She knows I can’t last long this way. Hannah’s too damn good at this.
“Gonna come,” I choke out.
I feel her smiling around my dick, and that’s the trigger. I go off like a rocket, groaning from the rush of pleasure. She releases me from her mouth and strokes me through the release, as every muscle contracts and the knot in my gut unravels.
I’m out of breath and wiped out when she cleans me off and comes back to bed.
She cuddles up beside me and presses a kiss to my lips. “Better?”
I’m not sure I manage a response before I fall asleep.
I’ve still got a headache from last night and my phone’s blowing up when I throw myself on the couch with a bowl of cereal in the morning. Hannah was gone by the time I woke up. Lately she’s been pulling ten- to twelve-hour shifts at the studio producing an album with some new rapper.
TUCKER: Had a virtual watch party for your big night. We drank every time the camera cut to you picking your nose.
DEAN: Those were some tight pants you were sporting last night. Do they come in men’s sizes?
I roll my eyes at the messages popping up in the group chat. My friends are dicks. In response, I send them a photo Logan took last night, the one of me flipping him off while holding my award in one hand and a fifth of some expensive bourbon he stole from the bar in the other.
DEAN: Seriously, tho. Congrats.
TUCKER: Proud of you.
ME: Thanks, assholes. Really appreciate it.
LOGAN: How come nobody’s congratulating me?
DEAN: Did you win an award?
DEAN: Yeah, didn’t think so.
TUCKER: Better luck next year.
LOGAN: Speaking of my marriage—
DEAN: Not a single person was speaking about that!
TUCKER: Nobody.
LOGAN: Don’t lie. You were all thinking about it.
ME: We were not.
TUCKER: At all.
LOGAN: We’re debating whether this Paris trip is considered a honeymoon. I say yes, because, um, Europe. That’s honeymoon central. But Grace says it’s not because she was already planning on going to see her mom before we impulsively decided to tie the knot. But it’s a honeymoon, right?
DEAN: I’ll defer to Tuck on this one.
TUCKER: Not a honeymoon. Plan something else, you unoriginal bastard.
LOGAN: Uh-huh because a beach vacay is so original.
TUCKER: We almost died in a plane crash and then had a burial at sea for a haunted doll. Try and beat that.
DEAN: You asshole. I thought Sabrina was joking. Did you really throw Alexander in the ocean??
TUCKER: Sure did.
He punctuates that with a smiley face and the preaching hands emoji.
Wow. I wholly approve of someone finally taking the initiative to do what we’ve all wanted to do. Just didn’t expect it to be Tucker. I thought Logan would snap first. Or maybe Allie. But Tuck for the win.
LOGAN: Nice. GRTHR
DEAN: Wtf man. Why you always gotta do that?
ME: Wait, I think I got this.
I stare at the screen, my brain working to decode Logan’s acronym. He and I have a cosmic mental connection. Finally, I hazard a guess.
ME: Good riddance to horrible rubbish?
LOGAN: Close!!! Haunted rubbish.
TUCKER: Gotta go. It’s Daddy & Me day at the indoor playground.
DEAN: Lame.
I drop my phone next to my empty cereal bowl and collapse on the couch. With the post-season over, I’ve got nothing better to do than lie in front of the TV. I’m halfway through the original Jurassic Park trilogy when my agent calls.
“Hey, man. What’s up?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Landon starts, his normally brash tone replaced by a timid one.
“What happened?” A dozen scenarios flash through my head. I’ve been traded. The team is moving. We’ve been sold. Coach was fired.
“I need you to remember I’m obliged to bring you these offers.”
“Just spit it out.”
“I got a call from a producer at ESPN for that show The Legacy,” he says.
“That the one where they’re in somebody’s living room and the guy’s always crying?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s the one.”
“All right. So they want to have me on? I’m not about to bare my soul in front of a fireplace, but—”
“Here’s the thing,” Landon cuts me off. Then he doesn’t keep going.
I sit up and run a hand through my messy hair. This is the sort of opportunity that could raise the profile of my brand as an athlete, as Landon always put it. It’s the kind of thing we hoped would come along after the NHL Honors. Yet something’s off.
“Dude, what?” I demand. “You’re worrying me.”
“They want you and your dad.”
“Fuck off.” I bark out a humorless laugh.
“Hang on. Hear me out.”
Landon starts talking fast, explaining how they want some sort of then-and-now, father-son story comparing our careers. Which even if I didn’t hate the man sounds like a stupid idea. It’s hard enough growing up in a parent’s shadow. Getting compared to them our entire career isn’t a trope a son wants to play into.
“The angle they’re going for is a ‘where you came from and where you’re headed’ story. Throw some old family photos up there. You as a kid. On the pond where your dad taught you to skate. Then breaking records as a pro. That type of thing. It’s a two-hour segment.”
“Yeah, hell no.”
“Look, I get it,” he says with some sympathy. “You know I get it, G.”
Landon knows all about my history with Phil Graham, although I didn’t disclose it right out of the gate. It got complicated dodging these sorts of requests after I signed my rookie contract, and eventually I had to let him in on the sordid family secrets. Needless to say, the conversation was riddled with awkwardness. It was so damn embarrassing, confessing to my agent that my dad used to beat me. Fucking brutal.
Hannah always says I shouldn’t be ashamed of it, that it wasn’t my fault, I couldn’t have stopped it, blah fucking blah. I love that woman to death, but chicks have a bad habit of turning everything into therapy speak. I know it wasn’t my fault, and I know I couldn’t have stopped it—at least not until I hit puberty and grew bigger than him. Make no mistake, I stopped the hell out of it after that. But it took years to work through all those feelings of shame, all of which come spiraling to the surface each time I have to tell a new person about my history.
I’m tired of reliving it.
My refusal to do this show shouldn’t come as a surprise to Landon, so I wish he’d just take it upon himself to keep this stuff off my plate.
“With that said,” he continues, “I do think you need to consider how it’s going to look if you say no.”
“I don’t care how it looks. That’s your job.” I clench my jaw. “Smiling for a few pictures is one thing. I’ll behave myself and play nice. But I’m not getting in front of some reporter and a TV camera and sitting next to that man for hours, pretending he isn’t a monster.”
“I hear you—”
“Swear to God, Landon. The first time he brings up my mother in the interview, I’d end up slugging him. And then you’d have that to deal with. So why don’t you do one of your little risk assessments and decide which fallout will be worse. Saying no, or beating the shit out of him on TV. Take your pick.”
“Okay. All right. I’ll let them know we have to pass. Tell them you’re not doing press right now. I’ll think of something.”
After I hang up, my temples are throbbing even harder. I reach up to rub them and utter a string of silent expletives. Somehow, I know this is all my dad’s doing. I bet he pitched this idea to the network himself. Or if he didn’t, then he fucking willed the offer into existence. He does it on purpose. To mess with me. To remind me he’s always there, lurking, and always will be.
And it’s working.
