Chapter 17 #3
“Let me finish,” she says tersely. She obviously waits for me to interrupt again, but continues when I don’t.
“You have a lot to lose if this gets out, yeah. But so does Tucker. You think that little shit is stupid enough to tell anyone? I doubt there’s a single man in the Demons’ building he trusts enough to tell that he knew about this.
We also have no fucking idea how he made all this happen, so we can’t be sure he succeeded.
Who the fuck knows? Maybe New York really did get lucky. ”
I snort while shaking my head, but I do smile.
“It’s a nice thought, but we both know it’s not true. I don’t think Patrick’s gotten any answers as to who called who, but he was notified only a couple of hours after I was carted off the ice.”
“Sure, but who knows what happened behind closed doors,” she counters. “And you seem to be forgetting that the league reviews all trades.”
That . . . is a good fucking point.
“Uh-huh,” she says, interpreting my silence correctly. “So Tucker’s sure as shit not going to tell anyone, though I do recommend you have a conversation with him to make sure absolutely no one else knows. Eli, of course, wouldn’t tell on himself, and who would he tell anyway?”
“Yeah, well, I might’ve shouted at him . . . a lot.”
“Shit, yeah,” she whispers and I hear her suck in a deep breath. “The emotional side. Tell me what happened,” she says gently.
It’s like the floodgates bursting open.
I talk for what feels like five straight minutes until I run out of words, until all I can remember is Eli’s tear-streaked face looking helplessly up at me.
It drives a knife into my heart that I wasn’t able to feel or fully process last night.
“I don’t think you’re wrong for being angry,” Lottie says, speaking slowly.
“You don’t think I crossed the line?”
That’s what’s worrying me the most after recounting it all to her.
“I think the only person whose answer to that matters is Eli, but Lex . . .” The way she trails off, like she’s hesitant to say what she means, has alarm bells going off inside me.
Lottie always says what she means. “I think this is a good thing,” she eventually blurts out, the words almost coming out as one.
“What? How the fuck can this be a good thing?” I demand.
“Don’t snap at me,” she says, and I tighten my jaw and wait for her to explain herself.
“Look. The fact is, Eli is perfect for you, and you’re perfect for him.
Anyone who’s ever seen you two together can tell you this, but you’ve always worshipped the ground he walks on.
I’m not saying the man doesn’t deserve at least a little worship, he’s amazing, has been doing impossible things even before he was an adult, and yeah, maybe he’s a bit na?ve, but he gets things done and he worships you right back.
You calling him ‘angel’ isn’t a bad thing, but I think you’ve believed for a long time that he has no flaws.
You’ve always thought he’s too good for you.
And he’s not,” she adds at the end as if she’s already anticipating my next words.
I don’t—fuck, I can’t exactly refute that.
“He’s a human being just like the rest of us, and yeah, he fucked up.
You two have a chance to learn from this, to focus on how you communicate.
I’ve been with Colin for close to four years now, and let me tell you we always have to have a lot of patience with how we each choose to communicate.
You might both speak English, but that doesn’t always mean you’re speaking the same language, okay?
He chose to do this for both of you. Do I think he was being a little bit selfish?
Yes, but not in a bad way. I truly believe he thought you’d be happier in New York, and by the way, I agree.
“If you’d come here . . .” She pauses to sigh heavily.
“As much as I would’ve loved to have you, we wouldn’t have been able to beat off the so-called journalists with a stick.
You and I working for the same team would have meant that the second we lost a game, it was officially the end of the world, and that’s no way to live. ”
I soak in her words, and wonder briefly if she knows something about the Demons that I don’t.
“I was already feeling very overwhelmed by the idea of being in the spotlight permanently. Even more than in LA, but when he just casually told me about Tucker, like it wasn’t even something big or something he hadn’t told me .
. . That probably made it worse,” I concede, because yeah, the way I went off on him might’ve been out of line.
“You should be saying this to Eli and then letting him grovel. You two will be fine,” she says, her voice full of a breeziness I wish I felt. “Just talk it through when he gets back.”
I grumble nonsense and she chuckles.
“You left him in the middle of an argument, didn’t give him a chance to say anything in his defense, Lex. You can’t be mad at him for doing the same. Besides, knowing him, he probably spent the whole night researching the NHL so hard that he probably already knows more than you and me combined.”
“Sure,” I start out, my voice already full of dark sarcasm. “Why couldn’t he have done that before talking to fucking Tucker?”
“Because he’s not perfect, and finding that out at the start of your relationship isn’t a bad thing, Lex.”
I resist the urge to hang up on her—barely.