Chapter 17
Sven
seventeen
. . .
Brad calls me at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock in the morning. Normally, that wouldn’t be a big deal, except I got home shortly after one o’clock, and then laid in bed until close to four unable to sleep.
Did I fuck everything up?
“You’re headline fucking news, bud,” Brad says when the line clicks open.
“Okay.” What else is there to say? I scrub a hand over my face and sit up.
“Really? You kiss some staffer in front of?—”
“She’s not some staffer,” I interject. “She’s my girlfriend.”
At least, she was at the time. Now… I’m not so sure.
“You need to be getting along with the team, not causing more drama,” he barks.
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
“I fucking can’t with you, bud,” he says. “Don’t you want this?”
“I do.”
I wince at those two little words… fuck.
I scared her. I want her, I’m committed to this, and she’s nowhere near ready. Dropping that conversational bomb—on the freaking plane, where others could hear it—really was not my smartest move.
“Fucking act like it,” Brad says. “Stop messing around with some puck bunny and?—”
“She’s not a puck bunny.”
“They all are.” He scoffs. “Just be glad the last one walked away before you signed over half your assets.”
“This conversation has ceased to be productive,” I announce. “I’m hanging up now.”
He starts to speak.
I stab at my phone until it hangs up the call.
Shit. I haven’t thought about Marika in years. Not since I ended things. Last I heard, she was married to another player and living back home in Sweden.
Brad wasn’t wrong; it was a good thing Marika and I ended things before the wedding. She didn’t put up a fight. She just… left.
Not for the first time, I catalog all the similarities between her and Vanessa. They’re both blonde and blue-eyed, and Marika was tall and willowy, but she didn’t have Vanessa’s spark. She was… flat. She was a perfectly fine person and would have made an excellent hockey wife. I was content to settle with her—until Vanessa walked back into my life.
And the girlfriend before her?
Anja was—well, she was blonde when I met her, and she had light eyes. She pursued me. It didn’t last long, maybe a few months at most. Once she dyed her hair to her natural auburn color, I realized I’d been comparing her to Vanessa the whole time. It was hard to stay interested after that.
With Janie, it was all hormones. We only spoke in bed—and we didn’t say much. It took six weeks to figure out that physical chemistry aside, I didn’t actually like her, and she didn’t particularly care for me. She kept calling me Steven, like that would erase my Swedish heritage.
Hookups and casual sex don’t do it for me. The lack of emotional intimacy makes the physical intimacy unfulfilling. I’ve tried a few times to make it work and I always walk away feeling worse for it. Most of the time, I’d rather take care of my own needs by myself than pretend to be interested in anyone else. Then I’d just be lying and manipulating them into sex, and I don’t think I could live with myself if that were the case.
I don’t like liars.
I didn’t lie to Vanessa. I just… didn’t tell her the whole truth. Honestly, if she knew I broke off my engagement because I wanted to be with her, she’d probably run away screaming about stalkers.
Until she came back into my life, I was perfectly content to marry Marika. Maybe not enthusiastic, but it was expected. We were… fine.
And then Vanessa started at the training facility. I made it three days before I told Marika it was over.
It was better to be alone than with the wrong person. I just couldn’t see that Marika was the wrong person until the right person showed up right in front of me.
And now I might lose her forever.
Since I have to be at the training facility soon, I might as well get up. After checking on Rupert and my sourdough starter, I pour two travel mugs of coffee, using the last of Brigitte’s Oreo creamer in the second cup.
I don’t have enough time to bake, so I hit up the cafe on the corner and pick up an assortment of pastries. We’ve only had two breakfasts together. There aren’t enough data points to know what she likes yet. I get two of everything.
She’s not at her desk when I get to the back office. Depositing the coffee and the box of pastries on her desk, I head to the locker room, change, and then hit the weights.
The day passes by achingly slow. I can’t have my phone on me when I’m on the ice—that’s just a recipe for disaster. After my session with the massage therapist, I’m feeling achy and ready to crash. So of course it’s when I’m about to head out that Coach calls me into his office.
“You made a spectacle out of that girl,” he says when I shut the door.
With a sigh, I scrub my face with my hand. “It won’t happen again.”
“It won’t. The focus should be on the team, not any one individual,” he snaps.
“I understand.”
“I don’t want any funny business,” Coach says with a frown. “When we’re on the road, you’ll each have your own rooms.”
“Understood.” It’s easier than explaining that we aren’t sleeping together.
“I expect you to stay in your separate rooms,” he continues, as if I haven’t spoken. “Nothing happens on the road.”
I nod.
“The second she becomes a distraction…”
“I’m on a points streak since we started seeing each other,” I tell him honestly. “She gives me something to play for.”
He glares at me. “That logo on your chest gives you something to play for.”
“It’s renewed focus. I’m putting in more effort, paying attention to the small details.”
“I thought that was because it’s a contract year.” He smirks at me.
“She makes me want to stay.”
Coach raises his eyebrows.
“Her life is here. I think she wants to stay here.” I shrug. “So I’m here as long as she wants to be.”
“And if you get traded or sign somewhere else? What, she’ll go with you?”
“That’s up to her.” The thought of leaving while she stays doesn’t make me feel good, though.
“So I’ll lose a Logistics coordinator, too.” He scratches at his beard. “Are you trying to blackmail me? Keep you so we can keep her?”
I shake my head. “Our jobs are irrespective of each other.”
“Larsson, you can have your pick of the bunnies. Why her? Why this one?”
“Because she’s it for me.”
Coach shakes his head. “Better lock it down, then, and get your ring on that girl’s finger.”
“Trust me, sir,” I say with a small smile. “I’m trying.”
Vanessa is at her desk, her boss standing at the entrance to her cubicle with her arm over the wall. Scott, the third Logistics coordinator, is sitting on his desk so he can be at eye-level with them.
“It was nice of management to bring us pastries,” Scott says.
“Yeah. It was,” Vanessa says. Her eyes narrow on me.
“Funny how they showed up at your desk,” Jacky says casually. She looks in my direction and winks. “Isn’t it crazy that there was also a cup of coffee made just the way you like it?”
“Yeah,” she says, her voice hollow. “It is crazy.”
“Hey, look,” Scott says loudly. “Your boyfriend is here.”
“Gee, thanks,” Vanessa snaps. “I hadn’t noticed.”
He laughs. “Trouble in paradise already, Van?”
She stands and glares at him. “Shut up.” She turns back to me and glares some more. “We need to talk.”
Mute, I nod, and she brushes past me, down the hall.
“No hanky-panky in the storage closet,” Scott calls after her.
She flips him off.
Pulling me into the copy room, she shuts the door behind her and crosses her arms over her chest.
“You can’t do this.”
“Do what?” I’m honestly confused by the hostility. “I wanted to check in on you.”
“You can’t just buy me things and expect—” She lets out a grunt of frustration. “You brought the pastries?”
Nodding, I step toward her, and she flinches back. “I wanted to apologize.”
Her eyebrows go up. “For?”
“I threw too much at you,” I say simply. “A lot has happened in the last twenty-four hours, and I understand that you need time to process. So—apology pastries.”
“You probably bought out the bakery.”
Shrugging, I admit, “I wanted to make sure you got your favorites.”
Vanessa bites her thumb. “I liked the chocolate croissant.”
“I’ll bring you one tomorrow.”
“No.” She sighs. “You shouldn’t.”
“Why not?” I cock my head.
“You can’t love-bomb me and magically I’ll?—”
“Hold on.” I lift my hand. “What is love-bomb?”
I’m pretty fluent in English, they teach us in school from such a young age, but I haven’t heard that phrase before.
Her eyebrows knit together. “It’s when you go overboard with attention and affection, to the point where you’re trying to influence how someone else feels. Usually not for good reasons.”
“That’s not my intent.” I wait until she meets my gaze. “That was not my intent at all. I wanted to do something nice for you.”
Vanessa pauses. “I just… it’s a lot.”
“I know. And that’s why I wanted to apologize,” I repeat. “It was unfair of me to drop all of that on you, especially in a place where you couldn’t get away.”
Cornering her in my car… not my brightest move.
“I just… we kissed for the first time yesterday,” she says weakly.
Nodding, I agree. “And that was too much? With everyone knowing?”
She shrugs. “It feels like I’m watching someone else live my life instead of me actually getting to experience it. I’m not used to being the center of attention. I don’t think I particularly like it.”
“Where does that leave us?”
She bites her lip.
“I play hockey. There’s a certain level of attention that gets focused on me, whether I like it or not.” And ninety-nine percent of the time, I’m firmly in the “not” category.
“I know.” Her voice is strained.
Swallowing my fears, I ask, “Do you not date hockey players because of the notoriety?”
“That’s part of it.” She looks down at her feet. “Robby—he broke my heart. It took me a long time to separate what happened with him and me from everything to do with hockey. It helped to work here, but then I had to keep boundaries because of work. I don’t want anyone to think I’m sleeping my way to a promotion.”
“He cares about you.”
She looks up at me, her eyes wide. “I don’t?—”
“He told me yesterday, he supports us,” I continue. “He cares about you.”
Her face twists in an angry scowl. “He can go fuck himself.”
Is it normal to have such bitterness over an ex after so many years? I honestly don’t know. All of my previous relationships ended amicably. Almost unemotionally.
“Regardless.” I clear my throat. “I want you to understand that I’m in this, I’m committed to this. To you.”
“We just started… I mean, yesterday was a lot,” she says helplessly. “What are we doing?”
“Well, we’re dating,” I tell her. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
She nods slowly. “Yeah, but you said?—”
“I’m ready for something long-term. I’m ready for… everything.”
Marriage, kids, forever… I want all of that with her, and more.
Vanessa looks away. “Look, it’s…”
“I’m sure about what I want,” I tell her. “That’s not going to change.”
She raises an eyebrow. “It might.”
“It won’t,” I promise.
Vanessa shifts her weight. “Sven…”
“I can wait for you to catch up to me. Just because I’m already there doesn’t mean you have to be, too.”
After all, I’ve had the last three and a half years to prepare.
She swallows. “I need some space.”