Page 45 of Game Changer (Wynn Hockey #5)
Molly
“It’s the fuckening.”
Jax’s silence greets my comment. “What?”
“The fuckening. You know when things are going too well, and you don’t totally trust it’s going to last and shit goes down? That’s the fuckening.”
Jax falls over on his couch laughing. “Jesus.”
“It’s not a laughing matter.” I could cry over what I just read online. About me. I press my fingers to my mouth. “We thought things were okay with you and Steve about us being together. But we didn’t take into account the rest of the world.”
I found a blog online that posted about Jax and me being a couple, one of those “Hottest Wives of the NHL” things, and some jerkface commented and called me a hockey whore because I’d been engaged to Steve and left him at the altar to run off with one of his teammates.
It’s true, though.
“I’m sorry I’m embarrassing you. Both of you.”
The comments also implied that there was bad blood between Jax and Steve now, causing tension in the dressing room and on the ice. That part is not true. I think? Unless Jax hasn’t been honest with me…
“Christ, Molly. It’s not you. Haters are gonna hate. People will say all kinds of shit. You have to get used to it.”
“Are things really okay with you and Steve?”
“Yeah. It’s weird, but we weren’t best buds before all this. We’re both professionals.”
“Okay.” I pout, still unhappy about what people are saying and thinking about us. “You’re right, I know. We can’t pay attention to this stuff.”
I knew that when I was dating and engaged to Steve. But I never really gave people anything to gossip about; I’m just a midwestern school teacher who loves kids and trivia. Then I did a crazy thing. I guess I deserve the backlash for that.
“Ignore it,” he says. “All that matters is us.”
My eyes fall on the framed photo sitting on a shelf in his living room.
The first time I came here after we got together, I nearly cried seeing it.
It’s one of the photos he took on the whale watching cruise, but it’s of me, rosy cheeked, bright eyed, beaming a smile of pure joy directly at him, the ocean glinting behind me.
The fact that he had printed that image, framed it, and put it up in his condo brought me near to tears again.
It nearly matches the photo I took of him, capturing his happiness as he took pictures that day.
I had it on my phone and kept looking at it.
After I’d decided not to date anymore, I got a print made of it, just a small one, and I too had framed it and set it in my bedroom, a bittersweet reminder of the summer I learned what love really is, in case I never found it again.
Now our pictures sit side by side, as do we. Hopefully for the rest of our lives.