Push (Colorado Storm Hockey #3)

Chapter 16

16

HUX

Holy hell. As I lay beside Ada, my heart is pounding so hard I’m wondering if I need to step up my hockey conditioning. It’s been too long since I’ve done this. And the blowjob? I don’t even remember the last time that happened. The women I’ve been with have been too intimidated by the size of me. And it was completely off limits with Debbie. Ada, this goddess, didn’t bat an eyelash. She was incredible. No, not incredible, magnificent, and being with her, being inside her. There are no words I can think of to describe it. I already feel myself wanting her again.

But as I turn to look at her, it’s immediately clear that the feeling is not mutual. Her lips are pressed into a thin line, and her eyes…they’re a far cry from when we started. What is this hurt? What is this confusion I’m seeing? Did I do something wrong?

“Ada?” I ask, barely recognizing my voice. “What’s wrong?”

She sits up, covering herself in the process. Why is she hiding herself from me? “Who’s Debbie?” she asks, her tone is…accusatory .

“What?” I reply, my mind searching for why she could possibly be asking this.

“You said her name,” Ada says. Her voice is chilling, just above a whisper. “When you... finished. You said ‘Debbie.’”

The realization hits me like a punch to the gut. How could I have let that happen? How could I have been so careless, so thoughtless? My stomach twists with a sickening combination of guilt and shame. I sit up, running a hand through my hair as I search for the right words. What can I possibly say? “Ada, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to?—”

“Is this what you meant by ‘revenge’ when we got married in Las Vegas?” she asks, her eyes drilling into mine.

“Ada—”

“Was I just a substitute for her? A way to get back at Debbie? Whoever the hell she is.”

The pain in her voice is like a stab to the heart. I have to come clean. She deserves the truth, no matter how difficult it might be to hear. “Debbie is my ex-wife,” I explain.

“You were married?” she asks.

It occurs to me I never made it clear that the ex I referred to was my ex- wife .

“Yes. We were married for a few years, but it ended badly. We got divorced.”

“So, how does that lead you to marry me for revenge?”

Fuck, I hate myself for this.

I pull my hair back away from my face. My skin feels like it’s burning. “She recently asked me for an annulment so she could remarry in the Catholic Church.”

Ada shakes her head, still not making the connection. I’m not going to get away with simple answers where she can draw her own conclusions.

“And, well, it hurt me more than I wanted to admit, and when I met you in Vegas, I let my anger and pain cloud my judgment. I thought that by marrying you… ”

“What, Nik? What did you think?”

I swallow hard. “I thought I could somehow get back at her. I wanted to prove to her I could throw away our marriage, too.”

Ada’s eyes fill with tears, and she looks away. “I’m such an idiot,” she says for the second time tonight. “You said you were doing it for revenge. You were honest. Why am I surprised by this? This was all a lie tonight, anyway, and I let myself get caught up in it.”

“No!” I exclaim, reaching for her, but she flinches away from my touch. “Ada, please, you have to believe me. What we have, what we just did…it’s real. I know I made a mistake by not telling you about Debbie sooner, but all of this was genuine.”

She shakes her head in anger. “I don’t know if I can believe that, Nik. Not after this. Not after hearing you say another woman’s name when you’re having sex with me.”

My heart implodes at the sight of her pain and anger, and I know no words can undo the damage I’ve done. I’ve broken her trust, shattered the fragile bond we’d begun to build, and I have no one to blame but myself.

“I think you should go,” Ada says bluntly, her voice barely audible over the pounding of my heart.

I nod, swallowing past the lump in my throat. “Ada?—”

“Just go, Nik. And please, for the love of God, get those annulment papers from your attorney or I’ll hire my own attorney to do it.”

“They’re in my car,” I confess.

“You’ve had them?”

“Yes,” I reply simply, not wanting to tell her just how long I’ve had them.

“Okay, whatever,” she says with a wave of her hand. “Just bring them to me and then go.”

I rise from her bed, take care of myself, and gather my clothes from the floor. I dress quickly, silently. My movements are mechanical, and the numbness I’ve used to protect myself all these years spreads from my core.

Before I step out of her bedroom, I look back at Ada. She’s curled into a ball on the bed, her hands covering her face.

Bastard .

Hurting this beautiful person is one of the worst things I have ever done.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, knowing that the words are woefully inadequate. “For everything.”

I make my way down to my jeep and retrieve the annulment papers from the glove compartment. These papers are the epitome of everything that is wrong with me. When I return to the apartment, I find Ada sitting on the edge of the bed in a robe, her eyes red and puffy from crying. She looks up at me and all I see is hurt. I’d give anything to rewind twenty minutes and go back, to erase the way I hurt her, to see her looking at me the way she did before I made such a foolish mistake.

“Here,” I say, holding out the papers.

She takes the papers from me, her fingers trembling slightly. “Thank you,” she murmurs.

I linger for a moment, wanting to say something, anything, to ease her pain. But I know there are no words that can mend what I’ve broken. So, with a heavy heart, I turn and walk away, leaving behind the woman who had briefly brought an unexpectedly bright light into my life.

As I step out into the cool night air, I let myself breathe for a full minute before I get in my Jeep. I’ve lived at altitude for years, but suddenly the air feels too thin.

As I drive away from Ada’s apartment, my father’s words echo in my head. He always said I was a screw-up, told me I was worthless, selfish, arrogant. I told myself that he was projecting his own anger at himself onto me. But now, I think he was right all along.

I had something real with Ada, something maybe precious and rare, and I threw it away because of my selfishness and inability to let go of the past. I let my anger and pain control me, just like he always did, and in doing so, I hurt the one person who had started to mean something to me again. The realization is a bitter pill to swallow, but I can’t deny the truth any longer. I am my father’s son.

As I make my way home, my anger at myself spreads into anger at everything and everyone, even Ada. She’s right. I told her from the beginning that I was getting married for revenge.

She may be right about being an idiot for letting her feelings get in the mix, but I am too. I should have never accepted her invitation to the wedding. I should have known better that I wouldn’t be able to separate reality from pretend with her. So I’m the biggest idiot of them all.

I reaffirm my earlier belief that I need to focus on the only thing that’s ever truly been there for me—hockey.

It’s the one constant in my life, the thing that’s never let me down, even when everyone else has. I’ll pour all of my energy into the game, into being the best player on the Colorado Storm. I’ll leave it all on the ice until the day I finally hang up my skates for good. Because in the end, that’s all I have left. And I’ll be damned if I let anything, or anyone, distract me from making the most of every single moment I have left in this game.

I trudge into my house, still angry and frustrated at myself, Max at my side, clearly concerned since he’s staying so close. All I want is a hot shower and a cold beer to put everything that just happened behind me, but as I’m about to head into the kitchen, my phone buzzes in my pocket.

I glance at the screen and see Christopher MacCormack’s name. With a heavy sigh, I answer, “What’s up, Mac? ”

“Hey man, we’ve got a situation,” he says, his voice tense.

“What’s that?” I say and press my fingertips to my forehead.

“Have you heard about what happened at Alexandria Bliss’s art opening tonight?”

“No, what’s going on?” I ask, suddenly alert. Shit. I knew this was going to end badly for Hawk. Coach must have found out about his relationship with his daughter. “Did Hawk get busted?”

“Yes, but not the way you’re thinking.”

“Then how?”

“Smitty’s wife, Brandi, showed up at the gallery and caused a scene. She announced in front of everyone that she slept with Hawk last year.”

“What the fuck?” I exclaim, my jaw clenching. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, and that’s not all. Smitty was there too, and he lost it. He and Hawk threw down, right there in the middle of the gallery.”

I run a hand over my face, trying to process the information. “Jesus Christ. How bad was it?”

“Pretty bad, from what I hear. They destroyed one of Alexandria’s paintings in the scuffle. Coach Bliss had to break it up.”

“Fuck,” I mutter. “This is going to be a nightmare for the team. Especially right now. Every game fucking counts for positioning, and now this?”

“I know,” Mac agrees. “We need to figure out how to handle this, Hux. The locker room is going to be a mess.”

“You’re damn right it will be. Smitty’s going to be out for blood, and the rest of the guys are going to take sides.” I pause, considering our options. “We need to talk to Coach, see how he wants to play this.”

“Agreed. I’ll set up a meeting with him first thing tomorrow. But, Hux, we need to make sure the team stays focused. We can’t let this derail our season.”

“I know, I know,” I sigh. It would suck to get knocked out early and retire on such a sour note. “I’ll do my best to keep the guys in line, but Hawk better have a damn good explanation for this.”

“He better,” Mac echoes. “But get this, apparently the secret about Hawk and Coach’s daughter, Alex, that came out too, before this all went down.”

“Shit. How did that go?”

“Well, it turns out Coach wasn’t mad about that at all. So that’s a relief. But that’s what drove Brandi to confess. Apparently, she’s been stalking him. What a fucking psycho.”

“Fuck, no kidding,” I reply. My brain does its best to process all this information. What a fucking day.

“Alright,” Mac says. “I’ll let you get some rest. We’ll tackle this head-on tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you then,” I reply before ending the call.

I toss my phone onto the couch and head to the fridge, grabbing that beer I wanted. As I take a long swig, I feel a sense of dread washing over me. This team is like a powder keg, and Hawk just lit the fuse. It’s going to take every ounce of leadership Mac and I have to keep it from exploding and taking our chances at the Cup with it.

The aftermath has been just as bad as Mac and I predicted it would be. The locker room is in a shitty state. Everyone, including me, is mad at Hawk for doing something so atrocious. It’s a universal rule that you don’t mess with a teammate’s partner. If someone touched my wife, I’d put him in the ground. And unbidden, Ada’s anguished face comes to mind. I shake it away .

And for as terrible as it is behind the scenes, the downstream effects are very apparent on the ice. They suspended Hawk for three games. Three crucial games to give us home ice through the playoffs. We lost all three games. We barely pulled it out in our last game of the regular season against Dallas. But the damage was done. So we’re on a plane and headed to Vancouver for the first two games of round one and I got the lucky option to sit next to Hawk on the plane because no one else besides Mac would ever dare.

“Hey man, don’t you usually take the window seat next to Mac?” Hawk asks. I flick my head in that direction and Hawk sees the mane of braided blonde hair peeking up from the window seat. “How did Summer get that seat?”

“As if Mac wasn’t already crazy about Summer, ever since she got pregnant, he will basically roll over anyone that prevents him from being close to her. That includes me,” I explain.

“How long will she keep working?” he asks, referencing Summer’s work as a video marketing specialist for the team.

“I’m guessing through the playoffs,” I answer.

“Love is a funny thing,” he sighs.

His words catch me off guard and Ada immediately comes to mind. I’m forced to think about how she opened up to me, how we shared an incredible connection, and how I threw it all away because of my baggage.

“Yeah, it is,” I agree, tilting my head back against the seat as we taxi to the runway.

“How’s the marriage going?” Hawk asks and I’m tempted to nut punch him for the audacity, but I find myself feeling bad for the guy.

“Complicated,” I mutter, not wanting to delve into the mess I’ve made of things with Ada.

“What’s her name again? ”

“Adaline,” I murmur, her name feeling both sweet and bitter on my tongue.

“And your ex, how did she react to all that?” Hawk prods further.

I turn my head to look at him, staring for a long moment. Suddenly I’m not feeling nearly as kind. “You think this is what we should be talking about?”

“Yeah...” he admits, sensing my reluctance. “What do you want to hear that you haven’t already heard from me? I’ve given locker room speeches. I’ve apologized. I’ve taken a beating. Tell me what more I should do and I’ll do it.”

“There’s nothing else for you to do. You experienced your comeuppance, I’d say.”

“So? Now what?”

“Now, we win this fucking cup and the only way we win is if we do it as a team. How are you going to make us a team again? Because you can’t carry it all on your shoulders,” I challenge him.

“That’s not true. I can stop every single puck,” Hawk declares confidently.

“You’re probably the only goalie in this league that could probably do it, but you know that’s not actually possible. And that just sounds like a lot of overtime periods to me and you know I’m way too old for that shit,” I counter, trying to bring him back to reality.

“Fair enough. Any ideas of how I might make us a team again?”

“Rolex watches would probably do the trick,” I deadpan, testing his resolve.

“Fuck off,” Hawk laughs, but I can see the gears turning in his head.

“But you get my drift.” Done with the conversation, I pull out a book from my satchel.

As the plane evens out and the seatbelt light goes off, Hawk rises to his feet. “Excuse me,” he says, heading up the aisle to address the team.

Hawk turns to face everyone, and I close my book. Let’s see if the boy can be a man. He starts up, apologizing again for what happened and giving a special apology to Smitty. Then he makes an offer—he wants to treat us all to an expensive meal tonight, just like we made him do as a rookie. It’s a small gesture, but it’s a step in the right direction. As the guys respond, some more receptive than others, I feel a twinge of envy. Hawk is owning up to his mistakes, trying to make things right. And here I am, running from my issues, burying myself in hockey instead of facing the consequences of my actions with Ada.

As Hawk returns to his seat, I catch his eye and give him a small nod of approval, and turn my attention back to my book. It’s time to put this disaster behind us and win the whole damn thing so I can retire a champion.