Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Summer
There, I’d said it. Hatch Kershaw had never liked me, so his assistance today was incredibly confusing. I needed to know what was happening inside that broody head of his.
“Now wherever did you get that idea?”
Not denying it, then. “Oh, every single time we meet. If you’re not glaring me into the ground, looking down your nose at me, or sneering in my general direction, you’re usually ignoring me even when I speak to you. It’s incredibly rude.”
“Believe me, I have never ignored you.”
“Yes, you have. Back in February, you came in for a meeting with Ryder and while you were waiting, you put in your earbuds. After I spoke to you directly.”
He shrugged. “So I didn’t hear you.”
“Anytime we’re in the Empty Net, you look at some point over my shoulder.”
“There’s always a prettier girl.”
“And if I ask you a question, you act like I smell bad.”
“I’m allergic to your perfume.”
This. Liar. I had experienced enough gaslighting from my fiancé, I wasn’t going to put up with it here.
“I might be a lot of things, Hatch, but I’m not stupid. Evidently, I offended you at some point in the past.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, displaying rolled up sleeves and incredible forearms. All the players had amazing physiques, big shoulders and thick thighs. Hatch had always struck me as so imposing, even more so than Dash.
“You’re mistaken, Summer. I really don’t have any opinion of you.”
I pointed. “Impossible. At this point in our relationship—”
“We don’t have a relationship.”
“Everyone who spends time in the same circles has a relationship. Hell, I have one with your dad and I barely know him. But he’s a player on my fiancé’s team”—still my fiancé, I reasoned, if only for the purposes of this example—“and on the team I help support”—still my job, though I was no longer employed by the Rebels.
“We have a professional relationship. You and I don’t even have that because you decided at some point that you would prefer to be rude or to ignore me.
I’m even friends with your sister, but for some reason I really piss you off.
I’d like to apologize for whatever it is I did. ”
“You didn’t do anything. Some people just don’t …
gel. That’s all there is to it. No need to read anything else into it.
” Apparently, he wasn’t falling for my strategy to induce him to come clean.
He pushed off from the counter, with all that easy grace that made him a star athlete.
“I’m going to take a shower in the pool house. ”
“You guys have a pool?”
He smirked. “Yeah, we have a pool. Good night.”
He walked out to the patio while I did my best to ignore how good he looked leaving. Better to assure myself that his leaving was good for me.
Maybe he was telling the truth. I’d met people and quickly deduced they weren’t on my wavelength or that they rubbed me the wrong way, but I liked to make an effort with all the players on the team.
These were the assets for the organization where I worked—past tense—and my job ran more smoothly if everyone got along.
But Hatch had obviously decided I wasn’t worth his time.
I initially put it down to the fact I worked in administration, was merely one of the little people even though I was engaged to a fellow player.
Likely he thought I was a social climber, shooting way above my station.
Hatch Kershaw was hockey royalty, the son of a legend, part of a family that ate, slept, and breathed hockey 24-7.
I was clearly below his interest, so he was doing me a great kindness in coming to my rescue.
I would do him a similar one by leaving him the hell alone.
I took a nap.
Well, I dried my hair first with a hairdryer I found in Hatch’s great-grandmother’s bathroom, then I slipped under the covers.
It was too hot, so I removed the sweatpants, kept the University of Michigan T-shirt on—Hatch’s alma mater, if I recalled correctly—and closed my eyes.
I hadn’t slept well over the last week, the last month, to be honest, and I expected it would be tough to fall now given the chatty hamsters riding wheels in my head.
But I soon slipped away. When I awoke, the darkened room told me considerable time had passed.
The sun set around 9 p.m. this time of year in the Midwest, so I reckoned I’d slept for at least five hours.
After switching on a nightstand light, I looked around.
I hadn’t paid too much attention before and now I expected an old lady room, but this wasn’t frilly or filled with weird figurines or whatever women of a certain age liked.
The walls had interesting art—prints of Rothko, Lichtenstein, and Basquiat—ones I recognized from the online lectures I’d taken during my “Crash Course in Culture,” one of the early lessons for Project Summer.
The room also had a dressmaker’s mannequin in the corner, draped in flowing scarves and a Grease Pink Ladies-style jacket, worn by members of Aurora’s fan group for her grandson, Theo’s Tarts.
(They used to dance in the seats at the home games, before she retired after a hip replacement.) Two dressers were covered with framed photos of her family and its multiple generations.
What must it be like to be so proud of your family you wanted to record it over and over like that? I couldn’t imagine it.
I’d spent the last ten years unable to imagine it.
My stomach rumbled. I’d already eaten today but I was hungry again.
If the wedding had gone ahead, we would have been long past the dinner by now.
Most likely, this would have been the time to do the rounds and visit with the guests, most of whom I didn’t know.
Mrs. Carter had taken care of the guest list—it was the one area I’d been happy to let her control, not realizing that giving her that inch would result in her taking a mile.
“What about your family, Summer? Surely there are some long-lost relatives in the woodwork who would like to join a beautiful society wedding?”
Even Dash, for whom his mother was usually beyond reproach, had frowned at that dig. “She already told you they died when she was little.”
Mrs. Carter shrugged. “I just thought there might be a responsible uncle or cousin at the ready. Who’s going to give you away?”
“I’ll give myself away.”
She hadn’t liked that, but I did. I’d been alone since the age of sixteen. I was completely responsible for making it this far, so why shouldn’t I walk myself down that aisle?
I could finally say goodbye to Shelby Mae.
I would know so few people at the wedding except for the friends I’d made since I started working at the Rebels.
First, Rosie, then Adeline, Hatch’s sister.
Both were daughters of Rebels players and a few years younger than me.
I knew Rosie better but had gotten better acquainted with Adeline over the last few months.
Yet they didn’t know me at all. Because I was a liar.
Or more accurately, an expert in omission.
Every now and then, my accent would slip, and one of them—usually Adeline—would give me a look.
But I would recover quickly, utter something cheerful or inane, and get us back on track.
No one would, or could, know I was Shelby Mae Landry, backwoods Mississippi girl, made over to Summer from the Bay Area, the girl most likely to succeed at anything she chose.
I pulled on the sweats, visited the bathroom, and ran a brush through my hair. The dark circles under my eyes were less bruised. New color pinked my cheeks.
Back in the bedroom, I picked up my phone and switched it on.
I had multiple messages. Dash. Mrs. Carter. Rosie. Adeline. Even one from Ryder Calloway, the Rebels GM and my former boss. I listened to that one first.
“Hi, Summer, I’m probably the last person you need to hear from today, but I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing. No need to call back. Just know that we’re all thinking of you.”
I swiped at a tear, marveling at how he could be so kind. I’d jilted one of his players, yet here he was reaching out when he could have just ignored me.
Anyone might wonder why I’d decided to hear Ryder out before tackling Dash. Well, I was starting to realize that I had a major problem, beyond the immediate one of Dash and everyone he knew hating my guts.
I needed money. A job. My job. So I had given notice a month ago and had even helped train my replacement, but perhaps there was a chance the Rebels would employ me again?
Sure, Summer, you sweet dummy. They’ll be just dyin’ to get you back on the payroll after you made one of their players look like a loser.
Shelby Mae, you are supposed to be dead to me!
Cue backwoods cackle.
That ornery bitch was right, though. Ryder might call me out of a fatherly concern for my well-being, but he sure as hell would not be offering me a job now.
One other person might be in my corner, though.
Scott Kincaid, the assistant head of scouting, had been mentoring me over the last year.
One evening in the owners’ box, I’d made a comment about the NCAA Frozen Four to Scott, and we’d had a great chat about hockey prospects.
When I told him I made slide decks for Ryder and even sometimes added my own commentary, he asked if I was willing to do some research for him.
So began my first meaningful professional relationship.
I didn’t have the cajónes to ask Ryder for true mentorship—and what would I say?
Oh, Mr. Calloway, any pointers for the woman who makes your coffee and picks up your dry cleaning?
(Dash’s digs had taken residence in my head.) But Scott was willing to sit with me at lunchtime in the staff break room and answer my questions about the hockey business and scouting.
And when Dash was on the road, I spent my evenings trawling college websites and creating reports, desperate to prove there was more to me than a powerful man’s personal assistant.
Then Dash found out. One night, I’d fallen asleep on the sofa with my laptop open, only waking when Dash shook my shoulder at five in the morning.
“Waiting up for me, honey?”
We didn’t live together then. We’d dated for close to four years, had even broken up several times, when I suspected Dash had not been faithful to me on away trips.
He never admitted anything but inevitably he would draw me back in.
It was hard to work for an organization and ignore one of the assets.
So, we would start dating again because I was lonely and thought he was charming, if a little immature.
Definitely not husband material. But he had a key to my apartment and usually slipped into my bed after an away trip, freshly showered with no trace of another woman.
That morning, he had sat beside me on the sofa as I shook myself awake.
“What’s this about?” He pointed at the laptop screen with its rows of data in spreadsheets. “You ranking other guys?”
“Just a little work for Ryder,” I fudged. “Scouting prospects.”
“Babe, you shouldn’t be doing this off the clock. He’s taking advantage.”
“I don’t mind. I like learning about how the business works. I don’t want to be his assistant forever.”
“No one says you have to do that. You’ve got so much more going for you, Summer.”
At the time, I’d interpreted it as encouragement, the water my arid heart needed.
I floated on a cloud of happiness, confident I could do anything.
That I was more. Six weeks later, Dash proposed in the Empty Net in front of the entire team and its fans, and against my better judgment, I accepted, mostly so as not to embarrass him.
Later, he put any doubts I raised at ease, and I let myself be persuaded that we would be a super couple of hockey.
The star on the ice, the brains behind the scenes.
Our story was still taking shape, the outlines fuzzy.
But if I continued to work with Scott, learned the ins and outs of the franchise business, I would get what I wanted.
All the way from Thunder Creek, Shelby Mae Landry would have completely reinvented herself.
Instead I had let Dash steal my shine. Turned out that when he said I had much more going for me, he meant my ascension to the role of Mrs. Dash Carter.
Now, I looked at the message thread from him. I went back to the beginning, or rather the beginning of the end, starting with my text to him.
Please forgive me. I can’t do this.
Then the texts started flowing.
Summer, where are you?
We can talk about this. Just come back.
Why aren’t you answering?
Did my mother say something?
Summer, this is childish.
Fine, be like that.
Texts seemed inadequate at this point, yet I wasn’t ready to talk to him.
Summer, you sure are a coward. So much for reinventin’ yourself.
I had no response for that one. As usual, Shelby Mae was right.