A Puck for Another Woman

Chapter 1

EVIE

Are you coming home?

Delivered.

I place the phone facedown beside my velvet work mat and pick up my pliers. The platinum bracelet clasp is being difficult tonight, but that is preferable. Platinum can be stubborn all night long and never tell me I'm imagining things.

The Belleroque commission should be at my studio, locked in the safe. I should be in bed. Instead, I adjust the concealed hinge beneath the task lamp and check the alignment again.

Headlights wash across the kitchen windows, and the ridiculous little lift in my chest comes anyway.

Keegan is home. The front door opens, letting the night cold in with him.

His duffel lands with a heavy thud in the hall, followed by the familiar jingle of his keys hitting somewhere near the bowl on the entry table.

“Hey,” he calls. Easy. Happy. I sit back on the stool and wait.

Keegan appears in his game-day suit with his tie stuffed into one pocket. Victory puts color high in his cheeks and a charge under his skin that fills the room before the rest of him clears the doorway. His mouth curves when he sees me.

God, that smile. I married the man attached to it, but there were years when Keegan looked at me like seeing me was the best part of wherever he happened to be. Tonight, he looks pleased I'm still awake. That isn't the same thing.

“You waited up.” He shrugs out of his coat.

“You said you were coming home.”

“I did come home.” His smile stays in place. I keep looking at him.

“Were you expecting a parade?” He tosses the coat over a chair.

“I was expecting you earlier.”

Barely anything changes, but I know his face too well. He came through the door in a good mood, and I have failed to preserve it.

“The guys wanted to go out after the game,” Keegan says.

“You could've told me.”

“I thought I did.” He looks down, giving the floor more attention than me.

“You told me you'd be home after.”

“I am home after.” He lifts his chin.

Silence stretches until he sighs. A small sound. He may not know he makes it, but I do.

He crosses to the refrigerator. “We won, Ev.”

“I saw it.”

“Then you saw what kind of game it was,” he says.

“I also saw the game end.”

He pulls open the refrigerator and studies shelves stocked with leftover chicken, takeout containers, yogurt, cut fruit, and three kinds of mustard he keeps buying because he never remembers what we have.

He bypasses the food and chooses water. “I had a beer.”

“Who was there?”

The refrigerator door clicks shut. Annoyance tightens his shoulders before he turns around.

“The guys. Half the roster.”

“Did you leave with them?”

His eyes snap to mine. “What does that mean?” The bottle cap stops turning in his hand.

“It means what time did they leave?”

“I don't know. Some were still there.” He twists the cap off the bottle while I set my pliers down.

He lifts the water an inch, showing me. “Better?”

Not particularly.

For six months, every conversation about Chloe has slid into the same assigned grooves.

I mention a text that has nothing to do with press.

Keegan explains why, technically, it does.

I hear myself presenting exhibits in the case of My Husband Likes The Team PR Assistant Too Much.

Then he kisses my forehead. Or pulls me against him.

Or tells me he loves me in the automatic way people say drive safe. Nothing changes.

“I texted you,” I say.

“I was at the bar.”

“You have a phone at the bar.” The hard rectangle in his pocket seems to pulse between us.

“I wasn't checking it,” he says without hesitation.

My gaze drops to the pocket. Keegan follows my eyes, his jaw flexing.

“That isn't a crime, Evie.”

“I didn't call the police.”

“Can we not do this?” He angles toward the stairs as if the conversation has already released him.

“I don't want to do this.”

“Great.” Relief sharpens the word too quickly.

“I want you to understand why we're doing it.”

His mouth pulls tight. The conversation is already an inconvenience he wants removed.

Keegan steps farther into the kitchen and finally notices the tools and metal spread across the island. “You brought work home?”

“Yes.”

“You hate working here. The light is wrong. Why didn't you just go to bed?” He looks genuinely confused.

“You said you were coming home.”

The refrigerator hums into the quiet. Keegan rubs the back of his neck.

“Okay. I'm sorry I didn't text.” The apology lands neatly and changes nothing.

“Was Chloe there?”

His hand drops. “Evie.”

“Was she?” I ask, keeping both hands flat beside the bracelet.

“Yeah. She was there. She works for the team.”

“She works in communications.”

“You know what I mean.” His grip tightens until the plastic bottle creaks.

“I know she isn't one of the guys.”

“This again,” he says flatly.

“You left her out of your answer.” The omission sits between us with her name on it.

“Because I knew you'd do this.”

“Ask where my husband has been?” I ask quietly.

“Turn a team drink into something filthy.”

Before I can answer, his phone lights inside his pocket. He pulls it out. Too quickly to be casual, not quickly enough to prove anything.

CHLOE

The preview sits beneath her name: You were ridiculous tonight. In the best way. Still buzzing?

Keegan clicks the screen dark. "It's nothing."

"Clearly something." I almost laugh.

"It's work."

“No, you're right. Very standard public relations emergency.” I tap one fingernail against the dark screen.

“It's a text.”

“I can see that.” The clasp presses into my thumb.

“She congratulated me.” He says it like the message contains nothing I haven't already read.

“She was with you.”

“So?” he asks.

“So she apparently didn't get enough opportunities to congratulate you in person.”

His jaw tightens. “She sends stupid shit like this to everyone.”

“Does she?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says immediately and sets the phone on the island.

“Okay.” I reach for the bracelet because metal is easier than his face.

“Don't do that,” he says.

“Do what?”

“That okay thing. Like I'm lying.” He follows the movement of my hands.

I meet his eyes. “Are you?”

“No.”

“Then we're fine.” I pick the bracelet up and make him hear what fine sounds like now.

“We are obviously not fine.”

“I'm aware.” I go back to work.

He pushes a hand through his damp hair. “What exactly do you think is happening?”

“I think she has access to you that makes me uncomfortable.”

“Access.” He tests the word.

“She knows when we fight. She knows when your shoulder is bothering you. She knows when you're pissed at your coach. She knew you slept in the guest room.” I count against the bracelet with my thumb. He goes still at the last one.

“I saw the article she sent the next morning,” I add.

“You went through my phone?” He straightens.

“It lit up beside me.”

“And you read it.”

“The preview said enough.” My hands stay beside my tools, nowhere near the phone he thinks I invaded.

“That isn't going through my phone?” he demands.

“No, Keegan. Picking it up, unlocking it, and reading your conversations would be going through your phone. Existing beside a screen that lights up every few minutes is apparently just being married to you.”

“Jesus Christ.” He turns his head toward the dark windows.

“How did she know?” He doesn't answer. His thumb finds the edge of the bottle label.

“How did Chloe know you slept in the guest room?” I give him the question again without raising my voice.

“I don't remember.” He looks away.

“You told her.” Certainty flattens my voice.

“I might've mentioned we had a fight.” He shrugs, reducing our marriage to a passing comment.

“To the woman I've told you makes me uncomfortable.”

“She asked why I was in a shitty mood.”

“And you told her.” I set down the pliers before anger turns precision into force.

“I didn't give her minutes from the meeting.”

“She knows something about my marriage that I didn't choose to tell her,” I say quietly.

“Our marriage,” he corrects.

“Exactly. Maybe I should get some say in which pieces of it you hand to somebody else.”

Keegan plants both hands on the quartz and leans in. “She is not somebody else.”

A hollow laugh slips out of me. “What is she?”

“She's Chloe.” His hands stay planted.

“That clears it up.”

“She's been around forever. She handles my media. She travels with us. She knows everybody.” Each fact is supposed to make her harmless.

“And apparently everything.”

His grip tightens on the counter. “Why are you determined to turn her into this?”

“I didn't.” I straighten the bracelet.

“You've decided she wants me, so every damn thing she says becomes evidence.”

“You're right.” Suspicion pulls his brows together. I wait. “I don't care what Chloe wants.”

“Could've fooled me.” He folds his arms, building another wall where an answer should be.

“I care what you give her.” His answer dies.

He straightens. I keep going before he can turn this into another defense of where he hasn't put his hands.

“She gets you after games. She gets you on road trips. She gets the stupid jokes from practice and the bad moods you won't talk about when you come home because you're tired of hockey.”

“I talk to you.”

“About what?” I ask. His face hardens.

“Tell me one thing that happened at practice this week.”

“I'm not taking a quiz about my own life.” He goes rigid, insulted by the evidence of my absence.

“I don't know enough to give you one.”

“That is such bullshit.”

“Then tell me.” I wait.

“I come home exhausted, Evie. I'm sorry I don't give you a play-by-play of every drill.”

“I don't want a play-by-play.”

“What do you want?” he asks, voice rough.

“You.” The word stops him.

I hate how much it costs to say one stupid syllable, but I hold his gaze. “I want my husband to come through the door and still want to talk to me.”

“I do,” he says too quickly.

“You don't.”

“I am standing here talking to you.” He gestures between us.

“Because I'm upset.”

“Because you're interrogating me.”

The defense returns, and with it the old pressure to make myself easier so the argument will end. I reach for my pliers.

“Don't,” he says.

“I'm working.” I align the pliers.

“Evie.” Impatience hardens my name.