Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
LAUREN
Park City, Utah
Petra scoots past Aleksandr, where he stands blocking me from the crowd of people milling around the restaurant, to hand me a glass of water.
“Here you go, sweetie,” she says, taking up residence on my other side. Together, they’ve made it their mission to shield me from everyone as much as possible.
The last two weeks since I got the news about Josh have been a hellish blur of phone calls and funeral plans and paperwork, and at this point I am too mentally and emotionally exhausted to talk to people any more than I already have today.
I’m barely holding on. I’d prefer to have some time alone with just my closest friends and family, but I need to get through this next hour, because I know it makes people feel better to be here supporting each other and giving me their condolences, no matter how heartbreaking they are for me to hear.
Such a tragedy. Such a beautiful young family. So many more memories for you two to make. A true loss. You deserved a lifetime together.
All of those are true, and none of them are helping reconstruct my shattered heart.
Today I also heard the incredibly unhelpful At least he died doing what he loved.
I’m still trying to let that one go, because what he should have been doing was loving his family from the comfort of the beautiful home we built together in Park City.
Instead, he was chasing the high of skiing out of bounds after a massive early-season snowstorm, and it killed him.
He was too smart for that. He was a ski racer, not a backcountry skier, and I will never know or understand why he took that risk when he had to have known the avalanche threat.
I may never even know why he was in Sun Valley, Idaho instead of in eastern Washington, and all this not knowing is its own special kind of hell.
My eyes burn from crying so much, but I scan the room, checking on everything. There is still an enormous amount of food along the bar where the buffet was set up. However, people have mostly finished eating and are chatting in small groups.
Josh’s parents are holding court at a large table at the front of the restaurant, surrounded by family and friends. I cannot imagine their pain, losing their only child.
They were parents, and now they’re not.
I was a wife, and now I’m not.
And still, we can’t connect, even over this tremendous loss.
Josh was always the only link between us. In the four years we were married, they never made the slightest effort to get to know me, to make me feel welcome, to treat me like a daughter. Instead, I was more like an accessory he brought along to family functions.
“You’re staring at them,” Petra says, her throaty voice so low she’s barely audible.
I glance over at her and sigh. “Do you know they haven’t said a single word to me today?
” Not an ounce of compassion, even in our moment of shared suffering.
They sat next to me in church and never even spoke to me.
Four years married to their son, the mother of their only grandchildren, and all I got was a nod of recognition.
Petra readjusts the long, black cardigan that’s slipped off her bare shoulder to reveal the thin strap of the black, knee-length bustier dress she’s wearing.
Even at my husband’s funeral she’s her natural sex goddess self, which at least tugs a small smile from my lips.
God, I love her and all her unshakable confidence.
“You know,” she says, “it’s possible that they’re so wrapped up in their own grief that they can’t acknowledge your suffering.”
“Probably true,” I say, my voice low so no one can hear me. “Except they’re always like this.”
The pain of losing Josh is magnified by how totally alone I feel now.
All my family is in New England, and now that Jackson and Sierra both live in Blackstone, NH, and with Petra now in New York City, my friend group in Park City has shrunk to the small moms’ group I joined when the twins were babies.
Those women have been wonderfully supportive about parenting and over the past twenty months we’ve grown together as new moms, but our kids are really the only thing I have in common with them.
We’re friends by circumstance more than choice.
It’s just not the same as having my best friends and family surrounding me, and right now I need their love and support more than ever.
In this moment, it becomes crystal clear to me that with Josh gone, there’s nothing left for me in Park City.
Petra squeezes my hand in a silent show of friendship, and my eyes drift over to the table where my moms’ group sits.
They’ve all got their phones out and seem to be showing each other photos and videos, which is par for the course when we’re together.
Look at my kid going down the slide for the first time.
Look at this DIY project I completed entirely during my kid’s naps.
Look at this sweet thing my husband did for me.
Watching them, I feel lost—does any of that even matter anymore?
As Aleksandr tells Petra about a text they just got from their nanny, I let my gaze continue to slide across the room until I find Jackson and Sierra.
They’re standing at the bar with their husbands, talking to a man I don’t recognize from behind.
He’s as tall as Jackson’s husband, Nate, with dark hair that’s closely cropped along the back and sides, and slightly longer and wavy on top.
His black suit jacket shows his very broad shoulders tapering to a thin waist.
“Hey,” Petra says as Aleksandr walks away from us, toward the bar. “What’s wrong?”
I haven’t got a poker face—something that Josh always teased me about—so I’m sure my confusion is written plainly across my features. This man is at my husband’s funeral, and talking to my friends, so why can’t I place who he is?
And then he turns toward Sierra’s husband, Beau, and I suck in a sharp breath as that perfect smile spreads across his face and recognition dawns. I gasp, and as Petra turns toward me, I mutter, “What is he doing here?”
“Who?”
“Josh’s agent.”
“Why wouldn’t Josh’s agent be here?” Petra is right to be confused. She doesn’t know him, or know that we go way back—back to before I knew Josh.
Aleksandr approaches the group at the bar, walking right up to Jameson and they shake hands. No, no, no. Of all the people in this restaurant, how has Jameson found my closest friends to talk to?
“I . . .” I stutter, not knowing how to answer her question. “It never occurred to me that he’d come all the way from Boston.”
“Of course he’d come if he’s Josh’s agent. Which one is he?” she asks, her eyes roaming the room.
I note the way Jameson and Aleksandr have their heads tucked into conversation, almost like the larger group isn’t there. “The one talking to your husband.”
She sucks in a breath. “Jameson Flynn was Josh’s agent?” she asks.
“Wait, how do you know him?”
“He’s Aleksandr’s agent,” she says, and now that she mentions it, it rings a bell.
I think Jameson was already his agent when we both worked together at Kaplan Sports Management years ago.
Back then, Alex Ivanov was still relatively new to the NHL, having played in the Kontinental Hockey League before that.
“In fact,” she continues, “he’s responsible for getting me into the Honda Center for that playoff game last year.
He kind of saved our relationship and my husband’s career. ”
“You saved your relationship and his career,” I remind her. And apparently Jameson helped.
I turn toward Petra, making sure to keep my back to him. The fact that he’s here has knocked me off-kilter, and I will avoid looking at or talking to him as long as I can.
“You don’t seem too fond of him.”
“Because I’m not. He’s arrogant, competitive, and self-absorbed.” I only mention the qualities I observed at work and keep everything else out of the story.
“You know him that well?”
“We worked together at Kaplan. I was in sports marketing and he was an agent, obviously. All we did was fight.” The statement is mostly true.
For years, he was my work nemesis, and then one night that all changed.
And the next night he introduced me to my future husband.
“He’s the one who introduced me and Josh, actually. ”
Petra takes a sip of her drink and eyes me skeptically. “Why would he do that if you two disliked each other so much?”
I shrug. “It wasn’t like he set us up or anything. We were just at a work function together, and he was Josh’s agent, so he introduced us.”
The idea of Jameson being just “Josh’s agent” is almost amusing.
He was a big deal even then—not yet as powerful in his career as he is now, but he’d only been out of the NHL for about five years at that point, so there was still a lot of star power behind his name.
Everyone in the hockey world knew who Jameson Flynn was.
And for reasons I still don’t understand, Josh was the only athlete he represented who wasn’t a hockey player.
Petra glances over to where Jameson stands next to Aleksandr, and when I turn my head in their direction, I see that her husband is motioning us over. “We have to go over there,” she insists. “You can just say hello, thank him for coming, and never see or talk to him again.”
It’s not like there’s much choice in the matter at this point.
But as we walk over, the last words he said to me—almost five years ago, on my last day at Kaplan—are running through my head and turning my blood to fire.
I don’t anger easily, but when I do—watch out.
I have that temper redheads are known for, and unfortunately, Jameson Flynn has always known how to rile me up.
As Petra steps up next to her husband, I’m left between her and my former nemesis. I nod toward him. “Thanks for coming.”
“I’m so sorry this happened, Lauren,” he says. His face is somber and his voice matches, and the way he says my name lacks any of the vitriol it once had. He sounds . . . truly sorry.
I press my lips between my teeth, willing myself to not start crying again, especially not in front of this man. I take a deep breath through my nose before I speak. “Thank you. I see you’ve already met my friends, so I won’t bother introducing you.”
I look away right as Petra elbows me in the side.
He’s here, but I don’t have to be nice to him. He certainly doesn’t deserve that from me.