Page 17 of The Alternate Captain (Elite Hockey #3)

“Has that happened before?” I ask Johnny.

He pulls out into the flow of traffic and heads for the link road towards my place. The traffic is minimal, so we glide through the streets with ease.

“I struggle with my emotions sometimes. I’m sorry,” he says.

“You don’t need to be sorry for feeling something, Johnny.”

He keeps his eyes on the road, his jaw clenched. Whatever that was back there, has pushed away the Johnny I was having the most incredible time with, and brought out a stranger. Because that wasn’t even Captain Johnny.

“I haven’t seen Sarah since we broke up. I thought she moved back to Canada. It caught me off guard, that’s all.”

“Was it a nasty breakup?” I ask, wondering if I’m being too nosey—I mean, he’s mentioned her before, but I don’t know any details.

“It wasn’t great,” he says, still looking at the road as he drives.

Since it seems like our conversation is over, I switch my attention to the passing scenery illuminated by the streetlights. I’m not sure how much time passes before Johnny talks again .

“I was playing a road game, and we got all the way there to find that they’d cancelled it because the ice was patchy and unsafe.

It was a last-minute thing, but we got back on the coach and headed home.

I called her, but she didn’t pick up, then I got back to our place, and she was riding the guy who lived across the hall.

Fully going at it right there in my goddamn bed.

Turned out, it’d been going on for months and I was too dumb to notice it.

“Wanna hear the worst part? I didn’t even care.

I was glad to have a valid reason to free myself from her—from her ways.

And if he wanted her? Then happy fucking days.

Ultimately, I ended up moving out that night.

I went to stay with your brother, actually, before I moved to where I am now.

” His hands clench the steering wheel as he talks.

“Did you love her?” For God’s sake, Kelly—why did you ask that?

He scoffs. “If you ask her, she’d tell you I’m incapable of love.

But I guess I did at one point, at the very beginning, when she made me feel special.

When I caught her cheating? No. It was probably the complete opposite.

She wasn’t a very nice person, Kelly. But I fell for the show she put on.

She followed me around for months before we started dating.

Came to all my games, made out she was really into me, and I fell for it.

But she didn’t want me. She wanted money and the status of being a ‘WAG’ or whatever—except, she didn’t want me to play.

She didn’t want me to have friends. But you probably know yourself, when you’re with a guy on a team like ours, you’re not just with the guy.

It’s like one big family. The guys are back and forth, and that’s how it is. ”

“I’m so sorry that happened to you. She must have really broken your trust. No one deserves that,” I say.

“Well, I’m a fucking failure, aren’t I? So, what does it matter?”

His words hit me hard, knocking the air out of my lungs. “What do you mean by that? ”

“Forget it,” he says, and he reaches for the dial of the stereo and turns the music up. Volume twenty-five hits different when there’s a bad mood in the air.

I twist the dial down again. “You don’t get to do that, Johnny,” I say. “You can’t lay that one on the table, then refuse to talk about it.”

“I need some time,” he says, setting the volume back to twenty-five.

Volume down.

“Why are you shutting me out?”

I realise I have no right to ask him that. Because, after all, who am I to Johnny?

And as if the evening couldn’t get any worse, the console of his car chirps with a new text message.

Sarah

Can we talk?

He glances down at the screen, then straight back at the road, still choosing to say nothing.

As much as things simmer under the surface, I realise he’s retreated twenty steps from where we were an hour ago—this is an alternate version of Johnny that I don’t know.

And by the time we pull up outside my place, I’m on the brink of tears, frustrated and upset that I started to think that Johnny was becoming comfortable with me, and that he was enjoying my company. And I was really starting to like him.

I’ve got my hand ready on the door handle, so as soon as he stops the car, I’m climbing out.

“You’re right, Kelly. I am emotionally unavailable. I’m sorry I ever put you in a position where you thought this may become something. I’m sorry that I led you on.”

I hold back the tears. “It was all a show anyway, right? ”

I don’t wait for him to reply. I climb out of the car, slamming the door shut behind me just in time for the tears to come.

I can’t get to my front door quick enough, just like a replay of that night I saw Johnny’s poster at the rink. I get inside and press my back up against the door as I sob.