Page 47 of Daddies on Ice

“No, are you serious? Jake, the Boomer, Sorenson?” one woman says, voice raised with excitement.

I freeze, holding my breath as the other responds.

“My cousin works at the diner by the hotel. She said the woman was there last night and had sonogram pictures of her baby.”

“And she said it was Jake’s?” the first woman asks.

“Yeah, Jake. She says he won’t even acknowledge it’s his. He’s just…ignoring her.”

The first woman scoffs. “Hockey players! They always think they can skate away from anything.”

I grimace. Great. The word is already spreading. I’m going to have to get on this fast.

16

JAKE

A summons to Coach’s room in the middle of a road trip never means good news. We’ve barely checked into a new city.

There’s a game tonight.

A few hours of rest is all we’re supposed to get before warmups. Instead, I’m riding the elevator up with a knot sitting under my ribs.

The door is already cracked, propped open with a man’s large tennis shoe, when I reach it.

Inside, Carl stands by the window with his arms folded. Ash leans against the dresser, jaw working.

Tish sits at the table with an iPad in front of her. Seeing the three of them together flips the knot tighter.

This isn’t a systems talk or a quick video review.

“Close it and grab a seat,” Carl says. I toe the shoe out of the way then close the door and walk over to the table.

The chair across from Tish scrapes as I pull it out. She won’t quite meet my eyes. That tells me more than the grim set of Ash’s mouth.

Carl doesn’t waste time. “Tish overheard something yesterday at the rink. Two women were talking in the bathroom about you. The exact words were that you got a girl pregnant and you won’t take care of the baby.”

“From player to deadbeat daddy,” Ash quips.

I shoot a glare his way. Ash just shrugs his shoulders. “That’s not true.”

“We know,” Ash says, voice even. “But the story’s moving.”

Tish slides the iPad across the table and keeps her hand on the edge so it doesn’t fall. “I needed to see how far it traveled, so I ran a quick listener poll and pulled a sentiment snapshot. It’s not scientific, but it’s big enough to matter.”

The chart is simple and brutal. A green line drops over twenty points in twenty-four hours. A red line climbs to meet it.

“What am I looking at?” I ask, though I have an idea.

“Favorables for you, last week to this morning,” she says, steady but soft. “The steep part is last night after the clip went around and a couple of local blogs repeated the rumor. It’s worse among women eighteen to thirty-four, which is a big chunk of our fans. Men are holding, but the comments shift is ugly there, too.”

Carl taps a knuckle on the table. “You pull fans in two ways, Jake. Women want to see you. Men want to see you put someone through the glass. When half of that base turns on you, our gate turns with it.”

Air leaves my chest and takes a second to come back. “That rumor isn’t true. I never dated Krista. I only talked to her that one time, at the party. Where I turned her down. I didn’t sleep with her.”

Tish keeps it steady. “We know. The lawyers are already on it. They sent letters to save any evidence and to stop the false posts. Her lawyer agreed to a court-ordered paternity test as soon as a judge signs off.”

“So we say that to the press,” I answer. “Let legal handle the rest.”