Chapter 4
4
A Knight in Shining Armor or another Man with a Temper?
Sydney Malloy sure has a type. Remember Paris?
You don’t want to end up in trouble again, do you?
--Celebrity Truth
Wyatt
T yler was an asshat.
I wasn’t saying that out loud, but my face was probably making my feelings clear. We’d called a silent truce and sat on the deck. Beatrice served tea like we were in one of those British crime shows I liked to fall asleep to. We drank from delicate cups. There was a matching pot of steaming hot tea on the table next to some pastries and cookies on a fancy dish.
I really appreciated the snack.
The tea was great. The view beyond the deck was amazing. The company was questionable, but I was rolling with the punches.
When Tyler and Beatrice walked in and pulled Sydney into a private conversation, I excused myself and called my coach to tell him there would be an explanation forthcoming and not to panic. I’d called my dad and told him the truth. He’d called me a plum idiot, as opposed to a normal run of the mill idiot.
I’d called Liam and could still hear him laughing in my ear. I knew he would find this whole thing hilarious. I’d told him his one job was to keep his mouth shut and not say a word to anyone. He promised he would lock it down.
My brother was a lot of things, but if I needed him to have my back, he would.
And now we sat with Tyler.
He was a tall, stylish man of unknown years. Could be thirty something. Could be fifty something.
He wore tight white pants and a bright coral silk shirt that enhanced his tan.
I was a dude on a team with a lot of other dudes. Mostly I didn’t notice shit about how anyone looked, but there was no way around it. This guy was flat out good looking. Like he should be in the movies, and not managing movie stars. Everything about him was turned up too loud. His tan was too tan. His teeth were too white. His hair too perfect.
He looked like a Ken doll.
Tyler began with a deep sigh, like we were already so disappointing. “We’ll have a two-pronged approach. First, we’ll start with the truth so we know what potential information is currently out there, then we’ll go over the story as it was fabricated by Mr. Hockey Player over here.”
Sydney was next to me on the sofa, leaving the two chairs for Bea and Tyler. I noticed she was careful to make sure no part of her body touched mine.
My man-spreading wasn’t intentional, just a natural result of being a big guy with thick legs who didn’t fit anywhere. I easily took up seventy-five percent of the space on the couch, but she’d managed to make her entire body less than twenty-five percent.
I don’t know why I did it, but I man-spread a little more until my thigh was touching hers. She didn’t get up. Didn’t say excuse me or shoot me a look. She just let the contact happen, and for some reason I thought that was important. Whatever came next in this debacle we’d gotten ourselves into, and as everyone had been making very clear – I made worse - we were facing it together.
“I’ll start,” I said. “You know she was at the Foundational Classic Golf event playing with Baker Gafford. The guy’s a dick in general, but he was drunk and he was getting too handsy. Like sexual assault handsy. I stopped it and told her to play with me and my teammate instead.”
“Stopped it?” Tyler asked, like he was looking for more.
“Stopped it,” I repeated. What else did he need to know?
Syd explained the Port-a-Potty.
“Okay, so we need to see if there is video of that happening,” Tyler said, stroking his eyebrow. “But that could feed into our story of you already being a couple. Jealous boyfriend and all that. The teammate, he’ll keep his mouth closed?”
“Of course,” I said. Hadn’t this guy ever been on a team before?
“And then what?” Tyler asked, and Syd explained the afternoon at the pool.
“What about the hotel staff?” Tyler asked. “Do you think it was obvious to the servers, bartenders, anybody waiting on you, that this was the first time you’d met?”
I shrugged.
“Not helpful,” he said. “Sydney?”
“We spent most of our time on floaties in the middle of the pool,” she said. “It was nice. Nobody bothered us and we just…floated.”
It had been nice. Real nice. I’d been buzzed, relaxed. Not thinking about Liam, the team, potential future retirement, my grieving dad.
Nick, the mysterious other brother.
I knew there wasn’t anything I could do about Nick’s past. There wasn’t anything I could do to fix what had happened to him or what he suffered. I could only move forward with the relationship.
Still, it ate me up inside. For years, while I was growing up with the best dad a kid could have, he was getting the shit beat out of him by his.
But Syd was right. It was just us on some floats, feeling good. Talking about everything and nothing. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt that free. Like all that messy shit was far away.
It was probably why neither one of us had wanted the day to end.
She’d about dropped me to my knees when she walked outside the hotel in her barely there white bikini.
But there was this… and it sounds crazy in my head, given that she was a smoking hot twenty-something global pop star… innocence about her.
She’d blush and blink when I complimented her. She’d reach for my arm, but then pull her hand away when I noticed. She did not like physical compliments. But she beamed when I told her that my favorite song of hers was Backroads.
“And after,” Tyler said with a snap that brought me back to the present. “At the club?”
“We danced,” I said. “We drank. We didn’t really talk to anyone there.”
“Hmm. Videos have surfaced. It looks like,” he rolled his eyes. “New love, I suppose. Like you couldn’t keep your hands off each other.” He cast a very dark look at Syd and I curled my hand into a fist just in case he said the S word. “I think we can work with this. Which makes our next steps obvious.”
“I can’t wait,” I muttered, and Syd, who’d been so tense since the second Tyler walked in, relaxed enough to laugh at my lame joke.
“A sit down,” Tyler announced.
“A what now?”
“A sit down with Tricia Yonish.”
Sydney flinched.
“You know you have to,” Tyler said, like he didn’t care about Sydney’s reaction.
“She doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to,” I said. “Do I need to remind everyone no actual laws were broken?”
“Really, Wyatt, it’s okay.” She touched my wrist. It felt like a butterfly had landed on my skin. “I don’t have the best opinion of Tricia. She’s a bit ruthless, but that’s probably what we need right now.”
“Excellent,” Tyler clapped. “I’ve already arranged it. She’ll be here at eleven am sharp. Be ready for makeup by ten.”
“What if I didn’t want to do it?” I snapped.
“Well, you put us in this mess, so I’m not sure you get a say.”
Tyler stood as if this was the end of the discussion. This was not the end of the discussion.
Number one, I didn’t do makeup. Two, where the hell was I supposed to stay around here? Three, was this what Syd really wanted? A sit down with a woman who sounded just as mean as Tyler.
Beatrice followed Tyler out of the house. They were having a heated conversation and I heard another sneering hockey player come out of his mouth.
When they were gone it was quiet. Just the sound of waves and gulls crying over the beach. Syd and I sat next to each other in total quiet, like we understood what we needed. The peace of this place worked fast, and after a few minutes it was like Tyler hadn’t even been there.
Eventually, I turned to look at a clock mounted on the wall inside, surprised to find it was dinner time. Other than our breakfast this morning and a few cookies I’d managed to snag off the fancy tea serving plate, I hadn’t eaten nearly enough and I was starving.
“I need to find a hotel,” I said. “Is there anywhere close?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Syd said quietly. “We can’t spend our second night as a married couple separated.”
Married couple .
Marriage was always something I imagined I’d do after hockey. When I could devote myself to my wife and family.
Which wasn’t the case for a lot of players. Coaches and ownership actually encouraged marriage. They believed, especially with some of the younger players, it settled them down. Made them less likely to get in trouble or want to party too hard.
Wives helped players manage their professional careers off the ice. Charities, attending the right events. Team outings. Family days.
But I wanted a partner, not a personal assistant.
My parent’s marriage was rough in a lot of ways, but my dad loved my mom, full out. Sacrificed a lot to be with her. Compromised even more. Mom did the same in her way too.
I looked at Syd, staring out at the water from this home she’d bought, with money she’d made from her music. She was a first-class talent with a massive career. Fame and popularity. Maybe some tarnish on her reputation from the media, but wasn’t that always the case with someone who shined so bright?
She would make a lousy hockey wife.
Her work would absolutely take priority over managing my boring life. She would attract all this attention, which would be a terrible distraction during my season. She’d be on the road touring instead of coming to home games.
None of that was in the WAGS handbook.
Could I be a music star’s husband? I imagined there’d be parties. Some red carpets. I hated the sound of that. I wasn’t good at parties. And red carpets seemed stupid. But, there would also be lots of concerts in foreign cities. That didn’t sound so bad.
Our kids would have to wear those big headphones to protect their hearing.
Holy shit, man. Get it together.
One day in this fake relationship and I was thinking about kids.
A little girl with Syd’s adorable elfin face…
“I have two bedrooms here,” she said. “You can take the guest room. It’s not like we’re strangers, given that we slept in the same bed last night.”
There was that blush again. It started at the base of her neck and moved up over her cheeks. I wanted to run my thumb against her skin to see if I could feel the heat of that blush.
“Are you hungry,” she asked, and stood up to go into the kitchen. “I haven’t been here in a few days, but I keep the basics around. Spaghetti, okay?”
My stomach rumbled. “Spaghetti sounds great.”
She got out a pot and I took it from her to fill it with water. I set it on the stove and turned the gas to high. I wasn’t much of a cook, but I could help her out. She seasoned the water with salt and then took a box out of the cabinet. She pulled out a handful and looked at me as if to gauge my reaction to the serving size.
My brows lifted.
“More?”
I nodded.
She doubled the handful and I grimaced.
“More?”
“Any chance you have another box? You know, if you want some too.”
“Oh,” she said, and then looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. “Oh. Right.”
She pulled meatballs out of her freezer and a jar of sauce from her cupboard.
“No bread?” I asked, looking around for just regular sandwich bread I could toast and butter.
“Carbs are a luxury, not a necessity. You’re lucky pasta is my cheat meal.”
When it was all done and assembled we sat down at the kitchen island that was positioned with the best view of the ocean.
“This is great. Thanks,” I said, as I tucked into a pile of spaghetti.
“You’re welcome. I don’t want to scare you, but Tricia can be tricky.”
“I’m not scared of Tricia,” I said around a steaming mouthful of noodles.
“She’ll start with some softball questions, but there will be some wicked curves in there too. We need to know each other or she’ll catch us in a trap.”
I forked a meatball into my mouth and waved my fingers at her. “Ask me anything. I’m an open book.”
“You have a brother? Luke?”
“Liam.”
“And he plays hockey too?”
“Center for the New England Bruisers. He’s a beauty.” I said, using old Canadian hockey lingo. We’d grown up going to hockey camps and tournaments in Quebec, the vernacular stuck.
“That’s a good thing in hockey?”
I laughed. “Yeah, that’s the best thing. An excellent player, charming, charismatic. Team loves him. Fans love him. A franchise guy.”
“You’re proud of him,” she said, reading my expression.
“He’s a more gifted athlete than I am. Big, agile, skates like the wind and he can bend the puck in mid-air. Lately, he’s become a team leader. Which is not always easy to do when you grow up as the younger brother. The guys on his team know who he is at his core. They know he’ll always have everyone’s back no matter the fight.”
“Loyalty is an amazing quality,” she said, poking at her pasta. “And your parents?”
“My mom recently passed. Cancer, but she also suffered for many years with mental health issues. So things were never easy for her. For us. My dad is…struggling, but he’s doing the best he can.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. There was that touch again. The light touch on my forearm that felt like gently flapping butterfly wings. “How are you doing with your mom’s passing?”
“Fine,” I lied. There were days I couldn’t believe she was gone forever, and days when I wanted to bring her back from the dead so I could rail at her. How could she leave her son behind? How could she not tell us about him?
Shaking those thoughts away, I turned to her. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Parents? Siblings?”
She laughed like I’d made a joke, only I didn’t get the punchline.
“I’m such an asshole,” she chuckled. “I forget that there are people out there who don’t give a shit about my life, who don’t know every detail of it. No siblings. It was just me and my mom growing up. But things got complicated when the money started coming in. I was seventeen when I had to go to court to apply for emancipation.”
“Fuck. Seriously?”
“ Grow Up Fast. All true, sad to say.”
I knew the song. The planet knew the song. Had I ever paid attention to all the lyrics? Did I think any of it was real?
The lines of the song ran through my mind.
You raised me, hated me, loved me, tried to sell me but you were always leaving me.
“What did you mean when you said she tried to sell you?”
She shook her head. “Tricia won’t ask any questions about my mom. That’s old news.”
“I’m asking,” I said.
“I hate talking about it. You’ve heard the songs, you get the gist. It’s all good now. No pity party for me. Look at where we are. I won life. Right?”
She sounded like some of the old timers my rookie year. Guys who wouldn’t complain because, “who wants to hear a millionaire athlete complain about his back pain.” Like the bad didn’t count because there’d been so much good.
Seemed to me if your back hurt or if your mom was a monster to you growing up – you could complain a little.
I thought of Nick sitting across from me and Liam in that dive bar, telling us how great it was that it all worked out for him. Like the bad shit never happened because everything was cool now, but I didn’t buy it from him and I didn’t buy it from her.
You didn’t forget your past. It was a part of you. The good and the bad.
However, I appreciated her not wanting to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about my secret brother. We were allowed some privacy, even in a fake marriage.
“Wow, all that pasta made me sleepy.”
She picked up our plates to take them to the sink. I got up and helped rinse them and load them in the dishwasher. Then I took over the dishwashing since she’d cooked. She hoisted herself up on the counter and watched me scrub the pans.
“Or maybe it was our wild night out last night,” she said. “I have to say, it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like that. I’m always scared I’ll get recognized and there will be a scene. But no one paid me any attention!”
She said it like it was the best thing. Except she clearly didn’t remember.
I had stiff armed a bunch of people as we’d entered the club. I’d also paid the bouncer to basically act as a bodyguard to keep the crowds at a distance. Anyone who got too close got the patented Locke Brother death glare.
It had worked and that corner of the dance floor had felt very private.
“I’m glad you had fun,” I said, regretful now that I hadn’t had a drink or two fewer. Maybe if I’d had a clearer head I might have just taken her back to her hotel room. Then we both could have woken up with fond memories of the night before instead of all of this chaos. “I’m sorry it couldn’t have just been that.”
She shrugged. “Hey, I was right there with you. Whose idea was it anyway? To even go to that chapel?”
Another thing she didn’t remember. At the club before the kiss, she’d thrown her hands up in the air and cried, “Marry me!”
That’s what I thought she’d said anyway. Her expression was so sincere in that moment, so happy. I’d felt exactly the same. Loose and free and happy.
Why would we want that to end? At the time it made so much sense, I’d said yes.
Then the kiss. Then it was an Uber on our way to the Chapel of Love.
“Mine,” I answered, feeling some need to protect that memory. Yes, it was her idea, but I’d executed it. “It was my idea.”
“Oh. Well, okay,” she said softly, then looked down at her hands like she wasn’t sure what to do with them. An uncertain little pixie fairy. “I’m going to head for bed. Towels are in the linen closet next to the bathroom if you want to take a shower. The hot water takes a minute.”
“Okay, thanks. I think I’ll just stay up a little longer and stare at the ocean.”
“Hey, don’t be nervous about tomorrow.”
“Why would I be nervous about tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. An interview with a woman who is trying to poke holes in the very flimsy lie we’ve told?”
“She doesn’t scare me.”
“Lucky,” she said. “She terrifies me.”
“I’ll protect you,” I said.
“It’s so sweet that you think you can.” She hopped off the counter, and then to my surprise, she pressed a kiss to my cheek.
My hands flexed, itching to come up and cup her waist, hold her close. I wished I could turn my head, meet her lips with my own. Taste her again, see if she was as sweet as she’d been last night. Instead, I just stood there and took the kiss.
“Goodnight, Wyatt.”
“Goodnight, Syd.”
I watched her leave the kitchen. Heard her bedroom door close, and sighed.
Yeah, if I’d had just one or two fewer drinks, I wouldn’t be here in Sydney Malloy’s Malibu beach house. Sleeping in her guest room. Belly full of the pasta she made me. Her lips imprinted on my cheek.
Maybe things work out the way they do for a reason.