Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Asher
The guest house is quiet in a way that should be relaxing but somehow isn’t.
It’s older, kind of spartan—clearly doesn’t get used much based on the way everything feels slightly stiff, like furniture that’s been sitting empty for months.
But it’s comfortable enough. Clean sheets, working heat, no neighbors within shouting distance.
Everything I thought I wanted when I booked this trip.
I finish unpacking my bag, hanging a few shirts in the small closet and tossing my toiletries into the bathroom.
The whole process takes maybe ten minutes, which leaves me sitting on the edge of the bed with nothing to do but think.
I rest my elbows on my knees and run a hand through my hair, trying to shake off the restless energy that’s been building since I got here.
Ever since I stepped off that plane this morning, everything has been a whirlwind.
There was no time to process anything, just react to whatever curveball Kat threw at me next—her panic at the airport, the whole fake boyfriend situation, meeting her family, and navigating conversations where I had no idea what I was supposed to know about her life.
Now that the stillness surrounds me, all the familiar thoughts start churning like they always do when I have too much time on my hands.
My career is in limbo. My agent said he’d have news soon, but “soon” in hockey terms could mean anything. Pretty soon, I’ll see Edward for the first time in over three years. We haven’t been in the same room since Mom’s funeral, and even then we barely spoke.
Without thinking, I roll my shoulder, testing the range of motion.
It feels fine. Has been feeling fine for months now.
The doctors cleared me, the physical therapists cleared me, everyone said I was good to go back to full contact.
But I never really got my groove back after the injury.
Couldn’t seem to play at the level I know I’m capable of, couldn’t find that zone where everything clicks and the game slows down.
Every tiny twinge, every moment of stiffness, sends my brain spiraling into worst-case scenarios.
My career could be over at twenty-nine because I can’t get my head right.
I grab my phone from the nightstand and scroll through it, looking for any message from my agent even though he told me yesterday it might take a while to get a bite from interested teams. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.
“Focus on your visit home, let me handle the business side.” Easy for him to say.
He’s not the one whose entire identity is tied up in whether someone wants to pay him to play a game.
The phone screen shows nothing new. No missed calls, no texts, no emails that matter. Just the usual promotional crap and a few messages from my old teammates that I haven’t bothered to answer yet.
I’m not doing well with the quiet.
I check the time on my phone. Still about twenty minutes early for dinner, but I find myself wanting the company more than I want to sit here overthinking everything. At least talking to Kat will give my brain something to focus on besides the endless loop of career anxiety and family bullshit.
I change into a cleaner shirt, run a hand through my hair to make it look less like I’ve been lying around, and throw on my jacket. The walk to the main cabin takes about thirty seconds across the snowy yard, but the cold air feels good after being cooped up inside.
I knock on the back door, shoving my hands into my pockets while I wait. The sound echoes a little in the quiet evening air.
Kat opens the door after a moment, seeming a bit flustered. Her dark, wavy hair is coming loose from the ponytail she’s tied it back in, there’s a streak of what looks like tomato sauce on her left cheek, and her eyes have a slightly panicked look.
“You’re early,” she blurts.
I clear my throat, suddenly wondering if I should have stayed in the guest house after all. “I can come back in a bit if you need more time.”
“No, um, it’s fine. Come in.” She steps back to let me through, wiping her hands on the dish towel she’s holding. “It’s just… I may have been a little overly ambitious with the menu.”
Dinner is clearly in progress, but it looks like it’s not going great.
There are a few pots on the stove, a cutting board with a red pepper and half-chopped onion sitting next to some garlic peels, and an open package of pasta and some herbs scattered across the counter.
A wooden spoon sits in a puddle of tomato sauce, and the sink is already piling up with prep dishes and a few utensils.
“So,” she says with a sheepish grin that’s actually pretty cute, “maybe I bit off more than I could chew here. I’m not exactly what you’d call an amazing cook. Or even a competent one, apparently.”
“I can help,” I offer, already rolling up my sleeves. Standing around watching someone struggle while I do nothing has never been my style.
“You don’t have to do that. You’re supposed to be the guest here.”
“I don’t mind. I like having something to do with my hands.” It’s true. I’ve never been good at sitting still, and right now the idea of being useful sounds a lot better than making small talk while she stresses out.
She glances at me, her cheeks flushing slightly. “Yeah. Me too, actually.”
“So what do you need help with?”
She surveys the disaster zone that is her kitchen, then points to a pot of what smells like the beginnings of tomato sauce. “Can you take over the sauce? I was trying to do too many things at once and I think I’m about to burn it.”
“Sure.” I move to the stove and take the wooden spoon from her, stirring the mixture and adjusting the heat. “What else are we making?”
“Pasta with homemade sauce and meatballs. Very fancy, I know.” She gets back to work, rolling what look like reasonably decent meatballs between her palms. “I figured it was hard to screw up, but apparently I found a way.”
“Smells good so far,” I tell her, and it does. Whatever she’s got going in this sauce has garlic and herbs and something else I can’t quite identify. “What do you want me to add to this?”
“There’s some basil in that bowl, a red pepper to add to it, and maybe a little more salt? I kind of lost track of what I’ve already put in.”
I start chopping vegetables for the sauce while she works on the meatballs, and we settle into a rhythm that works. The kitchen fills with the sound of sizzling and chopping, and gradually the chaos starts looking more like an actual meal in progress.
After a few minutes of working in companionable silence, she speaks up. “So we should probably go over the basic stuff about ourselves. Just so we won’t be caught flat-footed if people ask us questions tomorrow or whenever we see my family again.”
I nod, tasting the sauce and adding a pinch more salt. “Makes sense. I’ve never done this fake dating thing before.”
“Really? I would have thought someone like you would be an expert at managing complicated social situations.”
“Someone like me?”
“You know. Professional athlete, probably used to dealing with media and public appearances and all that.”
I consider that while I stir the sauce. “I guess I’m used to interviews and team events, but those are different. Everyone knows why I’m there and what my role is. This is more like improv theater, and I was never good at that shit.”
She laughs, and the sound is natural and relaxed. “Well, we’ll figure it out as we go. What do you think we should cover first?”
“Basic stats? Age, birthday, that kind of thing?”
“Good idea. I’m twenty-seven, which also happens to be my lucky number. And my birthday is March fifth. You?”
“Twenty-nine, my birthday is October nineteenth.” I pause. “Favorite color?”
“Blue. You?”
“Green.” I glance at her as I say it, noticing that her eyes are exactly the shade I’ve always loved—vibrant and deep, like the leaves of a rainforest plant. It’s the kind of detail a boyfriend would probably remember.
“Got it. How long have you been playing hockey professionally?”
“Since right after college. Been playing seriously since high school, but I’ve been on skates since I was a kid.” I turn down the heat under the sauce. “How long have you been doing illustration work?”
“Professionally? About five years. But I’ve been drawing since I could hold a crayon.” She pauses in her meatball rolling. “Although I definitely don’t make the kind of money you probably do.”
I shrug. “Not everything should be about money, right? You have to pursue your passion, no matter what it pays. Hell, I’d play hockey for free if I had to, just because I love the game so much.”
Even as I say it, something twinges in my chest. I mean it, but lately I feel like I’ve lost touch with that part of myself.
At some point, the business side of things kind of took over, and hockey stopped being about the pure joy of being on the ice and started being about contracts and statistics and whether I’m good enough to justify my salary.
But Kat smiles at me as if I’ve said something particularly wise. “That’s exactly how I’ve always felt about art. Not that my family really sees it that way.”
“They don’t approve of your career?”
She sighs, dropping a few meatballs into the hot pan where they immediately start sizzling. “It’s not so much that they don’t approve. They just don’t understand it. They see it as this risky, impractical thing instead of a real job. They’d be happier if I was a teacher or a nurse like Josephine.”
I can tell it bothers her more than she’s letting on, but I don’t push. Everyone’s got family shit they don’t want to dig into with someone they just met.
“Your mom mentioned you’ve only been in Philadelphia for eight months,” I say instead. “Where were you living before that?”
“Chicago. Before that, Boston for about a year. Portland for a few months before I realized I hated the rain.” She’s focused intently on the meatballs, not looking at me. “I’ve been moving around a lot ever since I left Maplewood after Daniel broke up with me.”
“What made you want to move around so much?”
She hesitates, her hands stilling for a moment. “I don’t know, really. Just like trying new places, I guess.”
I nod, although I’m not entirely sure that’s the whole story.
“Fair enough,” I murmur, checking on the sauce. “I think this is ready. How are those meatballs coming?”
“Almost done. Can you get the pasta started?”
“Sure.”
I grab the package of spaghetti and get a pot of water boiling while she finishes with the meatballs. Within another ten minutes, we’ve got everything plated and are sitting at the small dining table Sam has set up near the window.
“Thanks for the help,” Kat says as we dig in. “I probably would have burned half of it without you.”
“No problem. This is really good, by the way.”
She looks pleased. “So what’s your favorite type of food? Italian, obviously, but in general?”
From there, we start trading basic information about ourselves.
I learn that she and Samantha almost got matching tattoos right after her breakup with Daniel, but Kat chickened out at the last minute because she’s squeamish about the sight of blood.
She tells me Josephine is two years older and has always been the responsible one, the one their parents never had to worry about.
Her favorite movie is some animated thing I’ve never heard of, and she admits she’s terrible at remembering to return phone calls.
I tell her about growing up in Wisconsin, about playing hockey in high school and college in Ohio. I keep the family stuff vague, just mentioning that my dad lives in Virginia now, which she already knew, and that my mom died a few years ago.
She asks what it’s like playing professional hockey, and I find myself telling her stories about road trips and the weird superstitions that players develop during playoff runs.
She tells me a bit about illustration work, something I know basically nothing about, and her eyes light up as she talks about how she sees things in her head and then has to try to translate them onto paper.
At some point, I glance down at my phone and realize it’s after nine. We finished eating at least an hour ago, but we got caught up talking and neither of us made any move to clear the table.
“Shit, I should let you get some rest,” I say, standing up and starting to stack plates. “I didn’t realize how late it was.”
She looks startled when she checks her own phone. “Oh wow, neither did I. Time kind of got away from us.”
She tries to wave me off when I start carrying dishes to the sink, but I ignore her protests, so she insists that she’ll help too.
We set up an assembly line where she washes and I dry.
As I stand next to her at the counter, I can’t help glancing down at her, our arms almost brushing.
She’s shorter than I first thought, maybe five-six, with a soft roundness to her face that matches the rest of her.
Her eyes are a bright green that seem to light up when she gets excited about something, the way she did when she talked about her art, although right now she’s wearing a slightly serious expression as she focuses on scrubbing pasta sauce from the inside of the pot.
She walks me to the back door once the dishes are done and put away, looking slightly awkward, as if she’s not sure how to end the evening.
“I’ll probably see you tomorrow,” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
I chuckle. “I can’t function without coffee in the morning, so you’ll definitely see me. Assuming you don’t mind me raiding your kitchen again.”
She grins at that, and I find myself grinning back. “I think I can handle that.”
I head across the snowy lawn toward the guest house, my breath visible in the cold air. The temperature has dropped since this afternoon, and I can hear the wind picking up in the trees surrounding the property.
It’s only as I’m letting myself back into the guest house that a realization hits me.
Our dinner was supposed to be about learning basic information about each other so we could sell our ‘relationship’ to her family—but somewhere in the middle of all that talking and laughing, it started feeling less like preparation for this fake dating thing and more like an actual date.
I shake that thought off as I hang up my jacket. Dating is the last thing on my mind right now, the last thing I need in my life. Between the uncertainty with my career and whatever’s going to happen when I see Edward, I’ve got enough on my plate without adding romantic complications to the mix.
Besides, I swore off love years ago.