Page 4 of Don't Puck Up

“Why? You’ve made your decision.” I shook my head and exhaled heavily. “What about Hux? This is going to hurt him. He doesn’t deserve this.”

Chris sighed and nodded. “I know. But we don't have a choice. We can't get drawn into this. We can't give them any hint of what really happened. It’s better this way. If we don’t comment, if we don’t give them anything, they won’t suspect otherwise.”

“We should at least call him and give him the heads-up in case he hasn’t already heard.”

“No.” Chris slowly closed his eyes, his entire being looking defeated. “We can't. We're done. It’s over.”

I gaped, my mouth opening and closing like a fish’s. “You can't be serious. We can't just do nothing. We can't not even contact him.” Chris was running scared, terrified of being outed. I understood why. I understood the catastrophic effect doing so would have. But that didn’t excuse his behavior now. If nothing else, Hux was our friend.

“That’s exactly what we have to do. Please. You know what's at stake.”

“I can’t agree to this, Chris. I can’t sit back and watch you destroy him and possibly his career too. How will you live with yourself if management trades him because of this?”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that.” He looked down at the charcoal carpet underfoot and ran his toe along the parallel lines of loops. “Kam, please trust me. Please let me handle this. Don’t call him. I’ll speak to him.”

My heart was breaking, and anger surged through my veins. He’d betrayed me. He’d promised we’d be there for each other through every trial life threw our way. But the moment things got complicated, he ducked for cover and pushed me into the line of fire.

My husband had just shattered my trust in him.

I didn’t have the words to respond to him—at least none I would utter when he was about to fly halfway around the world for a few weeks. So I turned and trudged downstairs, a war raging inside of me with every step I took. Instinct told me to go to him, but I needed the space.

Coffee. I needed that just as much.

It was a triple espresso kind of morning, and I feared it would only get worse.

two

Kamirah

A few months later

Itwirled the ice floating in my lemonade. Sitting out here on the patio while watching the afternoon sunlight dancing on the surface of the glassy pool was supposed to be relaxing. Instead, all it did was remind me just how alone I was out here. Chris was working out—he’d been doing that a lot—and I was sitting here.

Waiting.

I had no idea what I was waiting for, but that was all I seemed to do of late—sit around and wait for something to change. Months after TMZ broke the news, and the tabloids were still printing headlines about us.

When would it end?

Whenever one of us went out alone, there were rumors of a divorce. When we went out together, the paps questioned whether we’d mended the rift. God forbid we went out with what few friends we had left.

The headlines were a farse—“Chris Minns: Newly Single and Ready to Mingle?” and “Seeking Solace From friends? Kamirah Minns Mourns the Marriage She Destroyed.” My personal favoritewas: “Forgive but Never Forget: Chris Minns Gives His Cheating Wife One More Chance.”

The Seals’ trip to Australia was supposed to give us time for things to die down so we could move on, but apparently not addressing the false rumors gave the media license to make up whatever shit they like. Who would have thought?

Hux came back from that trip in love.

Chris came back miserable.

I’d gone into hiding. Months later, I wasn’t sure I’d come out of it. I was a shadow of my former self.

When I saw that Gauthier, the team’s captain, got married in Vegas, I’d hoped it would redirect the press to focus on them. But they went to ground, hiding out in the paradise of their ranch.

I… didn’t even know what to feel anymore. I was bleh. Everything was grey. Nothing excited me. My passion—my charity work—had dried up. No one wanted me to spearhead anything while the media questioned my morals. I got it. I would have made the same calls myself. Not being able to defend myself sucked donkey dick. It was the one thing Chris and I fought about, and we were constantly fighting—the tension between us was so thick it could be cut with a knife. Gone were the days of us laughing together or even having a conversation without sniping at each other. We’d lost the spark between us.

The thing was, even though I was angry at Chris, I knew his reasons for not coming out. I’d accepted them when we were teenagers, and despite the circumstances, I hadn’t wavered. I just wished his fear wasn’t so deep-seated that it blinded him to the fallout I’d been hit with.

I was angry at how he handled things.