Page 10

CHAPTER TEN

Carter

“I fuckin’ hate those guys.” Our goalie Isaac tosses his jock back into his locker. “Bunch of hosers.”

We’re playing Montreal tonight, and Isaac is still salty about the last time we played them, which was at their arena. Our equipment manager stacked all our equipment bags outside the visiting team locker room there and some Montreal players fucked with Isaac’s equipment.

They covered his jock with Vaseline, and no amount of cleaning got all of it off.

“I heard Mariano’s getting divorced,” Bash says.

Montreal’s team captain is actually a really decent guy. I played with him for about two months at the start of my career.

“No shit?” I say.

“Yeah, I don’t know anything else about it.”

“I’ll have to text him and see if we can catch up sometime.”

“You gonna give him some marriage advice? With your twenty-four hours of experience?”

“Yeah, what’s up with that?” Isaac asks. “You never mention this woman at all and now you’re married ?”

“Whirlwind courtship,” I say, sitting down with my stick and a roll of tape.

“She’s his nanny,” Bash explains.

“Ah. Okay.” Isaac grins.

I scowl at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I get it. My sister’s nanny is hot as fuck.”

“Whatever, man. Suki and the girls are coming to the game tonight, so don’t be an asshole to her.”

He looks offended. “When am I ever an asshole to women?”

“Only when you’re dating them,” Leo quips.

Isaac flips him off and turns back to me. “Suki, huh? Is that an Asian name?”

“She’s named after her great-grandma, who’s Japanese.”

It’s one of the few personal details I know about Suki. We’re both working on lists about ourselves for each other that we can study on our fake honeymoon this weekend.

“Wonder if anyone ever pronounces it sucky ,” Leo ponders aloud.

“I’m sure emotionally immature dipshits like you can’t resist the urge,” I say.

My phone is sitting next to me on the bench, and I pick it up when the screen lights up with a new text. It’s a photo from Suki of the girls, all three of them smiling and wearing Crush sweaters. Charlotte is holding Darling, who’s wearing a little Crush hoodie, the sleeves rolled up to accommodate his short legs.

From the background of the photo, I can tell they’re in the family room, where our families and close friends can go before and after games. There are snacks, drinks and games for kids. The team even has childcare there for young kids who aren’t interested in the games.

For fuck’s sake, that damn pig is smiling again. I close my eyes for a second, then text Suki back.

Carter: You brought the pig??

Suki: I had to. He got into the pantry earlier and made a huge mess. He spilled Cheerios everywhere and got into some other food. There’s nowhere I can keep him where I know he won’t ruin anything.

Carter: I can’t believe you got through security with him.

Suki: I told them he’s yours. The security guys are the ones who gave him the hoodie.

Carter: How’s his house-training going?

Suki: Not great. He peed once on our walk earlier, but he peed three times in the house. One of those times was on your shoes that were in the laundry room.

Carter: What an asshole.

Suki: The girls are feeding him cupcakes. He’s had three in the past three minutes. I better go.

I set my phone back down, then pick it back up and look at the picture she sent me. Darling is growing like crazy. I swear he’s put on ten pounds and we haven’t even had him for two weeks.

Several teammates are laughing, and when I glance over at them, I see that Bash is part of the group, and he’s looking right at me.

“Bro, you didn’t mention that your new wife sells sex toys. Has she introduced you to the anal invader yet?”

I furrow my brow. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Bash grabs Silas’s phone from his hand and brings it over. “Some hockey blogger wrote about you getting married. He’s got a photo of the marriage license and stuff he dug up online about Suki.”

I take the phone and read the post, which includes several photos taken from Suki’s social media and lists Olivia, Charlotte and Hallie by name. There are also photos of her with a man named Tyler McCane, and business paperwork for a company called Naughty by Nature.

Fuck. If this is legit, what have I done? I’ll be the laughingstock of the league. Parents of the kids at the girls’ schools will see this. And it sure as hell won’t help my custody case.

But I can’t let on to my teammates that I’m shocked by this. I keep my expression neutral as I pass the phone back to Bash.

“Yeah, she doesn’t do much with the company anymore.”

He just looks at me as I pass the phone back. I know him well enough that I can tell what he’s thinking. He’s my best friend. Not only is he wondering whether or not I knew about this, but he also realizes it’s not something to laugh about when the custody case hangs in the balance.

“Let us know how you like taking the Shake n’ Quake up your poop chute, Stanton!” Silas says, poring over his own phone screen with several teammates.

“Jesus fuck.” Isaac looks at the screen. “For a hundred and fifty-nine dollars, that thing better do more than just get people off. You could get like ten handies for that.”

Bash takes Silas’s phone back to him, not laughing anymore. As soon as Silas opens his mouth to make another comment, Bash silences him with a look.

“Move on,” he says.

He comes over to the bench and sits down beside me, not saying anything for a solid thirty seconds.

“Did you know?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I lie. “I didn’t ask for details, but she told me.”

“Okay, good.”

I keep taping my stick, hoping he won’t notice the tic in my jaw. That and a reddening face are dead giveaways that I’m seriously pissed, and Bash knows it.

“You good?” he asks me.

“Yep.”

I’m not. He gets up, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Suki is part owner of a sex toy company. She should have told me. And who the fuck is Tyler McCane? Am I getting scammed?

Suki thinks I’m cold and brooding now, but she has no idea how pissed I’ll be if she puts the custody case in jeopardy. My nieces are the last pieces of my sister in this world, and they were more precious to her than anyone.

I have to get it together so I can focus on the game, but tonight, Suki and I are going to talk.

At least we won. When I walk into the house through the garage and type in the code to re-arm the security system, I realize I’d be in a much worse mood if we’d lost.

The house is quiet, which is typical for 11:45 p.m. It’s a school night. So Suki and the girls left the game around nine. She said they had a good time in a text earlier.

I’m fixing a plate of grilled chicken and roasted vegetables to heat up as a snack when I hear the beep of the security system. The French doors that lead from the family room to the patio and back yard are opened and I hear someone step in.

“Good boy, Darling,” Suki croons. “You get a cookie.”

The keypad beeps as she rearms the security system and then she comes around the corner.

“Hey,” she says, smiling. “Congrats on the win.”

“Thanks.”

I take off my suit jacket and loosen my tie, watching her as she gets Darling a treat from the jar on the counter. He scarfs it out of her hand with a few snorts and then gives her a pleading look, wanting more.

She’s still wearing my jersey. It’s hard to be mad at her when she looks so good in it. The sleeves are rolled up and it hangs down to midthigh on her. It surprises me how much I like seeing her in it.

I’ve only had two girlfriends since going pro with hockey, and they both came to games and wore shirts and jerseys with my name on them. It was stuff they bought that any fan can buy, though. This is the first time I’ve seen a woman in one of my actual jerseys that I’ve also worn.

Suki is wearing it over black leggings, her hair up in a messy bun with little strands of hair around her face. She sits down to take off her snow boots.

“You should’ve told me about Naughty by Nature,” I say, my tone a lot milder than it was in my head when I thought about this conversation on the drive home.

She sits up, her eyes widening. The boots are forgotten.

“What did you hear about it?”

The microwave beeps to tell me my food is done, but I ignore it. I walk over to the table she’s sitting at, leaning against the island counter.

“Are the girls all asleep?” I ask softly.

“They were when I checked on them at ten thirty.”

Her cheeks are slightly flushed from the cold. She was beautiful, all dressed up for the wedding, but tonight...there’s something about seeing her so comfortable and casual in my jersey, looking so fresh and pretty, that makes me want to kiss her.

Even though I’m mad as hell at her. I don’t get it.

“A hockey blogger looked into you when he heard we got married. He posted business paperwork for a company called Naughty by Nature and it says you’re a co-owner.”

She looks away, guilt in her expression.

“And you’re pissed because of what the company sold.”

“ Sold? Past tense? No, Suki, I’m pissed because you didn’t tell me about it. Because I had to find out in the locker room from my teammates seeing it online.”

When she meets my gaze again, I see resolve in her eyes. “It’s not like I’m proud of it. It was my ex-boyfriend’s business and he asked me to cosign on some loans and be listed as a co-owner. He told me it would give me legal protections to be a co-owner.”

“Legal protections?” I shake my head. “And you believed him?”

“Obviously.” She shrugs, her tone icy. “Then, when the company didn’t do well, he left the country and now I’m responsible for all the debt.”

I arch my brows, surprised a woman as savvy as Suki ended up in this situation.

“You should’ve told me.”

She glares at me. “Did you tell me every secret from your past? Every mistake you’ve ever made?”

“No, but I’m...I guess, for lack of a better word, I’m the employer in this relationship. The one writing the check, not the one cashing it. I’m the one under constant public scrutiny because of my job. And if the company sold watches or something, it would be no big deal.”

“Do you want out?”

I furrow my brow, confused. “Out of what?”

She holds up her hand and points at her ring. “This. You’re the employer , so are you firing me?”

“Look, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“If you want out, it’s fine.”

That’s the last fucking thing I need. A quickie wedding followed by a quickie divorce or annulment less than a week late won’t help the custody case.

“No, I don’t want out. But we need to talk about this and anything else that could bite us in the ass. You’re living under a spotlight now.”

She nods, looking angry but also defeated.

“Is the company still open?”

“No. I never had anything to do with running it. When he left, I had to change the business address to my apartment so I could pay the bills and receive the inventory. I have a storage unit where I keep it all.”

“How much debt do you have?”

She narrows her eyes. “That’s none of your business. I’m current on the payments. That’s all you need to know.”

“Is there anything else that could hurt us if it came out? Like him selling his shit to minors or getting arrested?”

“Not that I know of, but he’s a man, so he was probably hiding and lying more than I ever knew about.”

Wow. Bitter, party of one. Suki seems to have decided to blame my entire gender for what her douchebag ex did.

I unbutton my dress shirt, suddenly tired. I just want to eat and go to bed. The rest of this conversation can wait.

“Are we done?” she asks, her tone curt.

“Yeah.”

She scoops Darling up from the floor and walks away without another word.

I eat my food in silence, wishing I’d gone for the postgame snack I really wanted. Lucky Charms cereal.