CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #2
Tanner looked up to see Tom standing there.
“Sorry, I got held up,” he said. He looked kinda weird. Freaked out or something.
“Hey. What is it?” Jesse asked with a frown, leaning forward. “What happened? Are you okay?”
Tom sat, then reached out, playing with someone’s discarded straw wrapper. “Uhh, you know why Krista and I left California, right?”
“Yeah. A weird stalker fan, right?” Tanner asked, cramming another chip in his mouth. He was too full for this, but they were. So. Damn. Good.
He couldn’t stop.
Tom nodded. “Sort of. It’s more complicated than that. Krista and I, we’re, uh, poly. Um, polyamorous.” He glanced at the guys at the table. “You all know what that means, yeah?”
Kady looked up from the small container of churros he’d been eating. Tanner was thinking about going back for some of those because they looked really good. “Yes. Is like Mandy and me.”
“Uhh,” Anker said. “Kady, I think you might not quite have that—”
“No,” Kady said, jutting out his jaw. “I love Mandy. Mandy loves me and Lauren. Lauren loves Mandy and husband Jake. Poly. Many loves, yes?”
Tanner squinted at him, trying to work out what he meant. “Mandy is bi and dating a woman who is married to a man?”
“Yes. All very happy. 10/10, no notes.” Kady folded his arms across his chest and glared around the table like he was daring them to argue with him about it.
Jesse frowned and spoke to him in Belarusian before he nodded, looking surprised. “Yep. Checks out in both languages. Kady and Mandy are poly. Jake and Kady aren’t romantically involved but they do hang out and play video games together, I guess? Everyone’s happy with this arrangement.”
“Huh,” Connor said.
Tanner smiled at Kady. Very cool. He’d had no idea Kady and Mandy had a poly relationship.
A bunch of the guys were still sitting trying to work out what it all meant.
Tanner reached over and stole a churro from Kady, who smiled at him, his shoulders not up around his ears anymore. Perfect. He just needed to see that everyone was going to treat him like normal.
Connor shook his head like he was trying to wake up, then turned to Tom and said, “Uh, anyway. You and Krista are poly, like, uh, Kady and Mandy, apparently?”
“Yeah. It’s … we’re happy, you know? It’s always gone well in the past but last season things got …
complicated. We got involved with this woman and she turned …
uh, I don’t like to use the word crazy. But, uh, it was bad.
There were threats and we had to move houses and then the head office had to be told because it was escalating and …
yeah. That’s why I requested a trade and we moved across the country.
Krista took her kids to her parents’ place in Massachusetts, and I followed as soon as the trade went through. ”
“And do the Harriers know about all this?” Connor asked with a frown. “Like, security, head office, all that?”
“Yeah. Gavin’s known since the beginning. I don’t think everyone knows about the poly stuff but all the important people do, including security.”
“You didn’t tell us,” Tanner pointed out. Rude! They were teammates! They were supposed to know stuff like this about each other.
“Dude, let people have some fuckin’ privacy, assbag,” Crawford said, slugging him in the upper arm.
“You’re an assbag,” Tanner shot back, punching Crawford in the thigh.
“Look, I don’t mind telling you guys,” Tom said. “You’re cool. I just didn’t know how it would go over at first. And then it felt weird to just drop into conversation, you know?”
“So what the fuck happened today?” Anker asked, frowning. “You looked spooked, man.”
“I stopped back at the hotel after meeting up with some guys from L.A. but when I left to come here, I would fucking swear Darla—our ex—was following me.”
Tanner looked around but he didn’t see anyone acting weird. Of course, he had no idea what Darla looked like.
“What are you going to do?” Crawford asked.
Tom ran a hand over his hair and sighed. “I don’t fuckin’ know. Tell security and Gavin, I guess?”
“Yeah,” Connor said, frowning. “That’s good. But we’re not letting you go off on your own while we’re here, okay?”
“Hey,” Tanner said to Tom after Crawford disappeared and a couple of guys got up to wander around. “I’m sorry you didn’t feel like you could tell us you were poly.”
Tom shrugged. “Don’t take it personally. It’s … complicated. It’s just not something we want getting out to fans, you know? People get weird about it and the fact that Krista and I are both Black …”
Tanner winced. “People are dicks,” he agreed. “I hope your family is cool with it. If they know. Do they know?”
He shouldn’t assume. Lots of people weren’t out about a lot of things.
Tom chuckled. “It took a while but yeah, they came around to the idea. We were just talking about introducing Darla to the family when everything went sideways, actually.”
“Man, that sucks,” Tanner said.
“It’s hard when you love someone and they turn out to be someone other than who you thought they were,” Tom said softly.
“I bet,” Tanner said with a frown.
Well, at least he didn’t have to worry about that with Leif … Tanner groaned. Damn it, why did his brain keep going back to Leif. It happened every time. Why was he thinking about him nonstop?
And, sure, he knew that he kinda threw himself into whatever he did. He got excited about new things and then moved on to the next shiny bit.
But there were things that stuck around in his life, hockey being the biggest one, of course.
And it was starting to feel like Leif could be one of those really big ones.
“Are you okay?” Tom asked.
Tanner focused on him again and shrugged. “I will be.”
“Well, I’m here if you ever need someone to talk to,” Tom said.
“Thanks, man,” Tanner said, grateful. “And that goes both ways, you know? If you ever need to vent about stuff, I’m here.”
Tom smiled and clapped him on the shoulder.
Tanner hoped that meant that maybe Tom was starting to trust Tanner. He knew he and Rafe both kinda had a reputation for being guys who shared a little too much information. Who weren’t always trusted with secrets.
But he was trying, damn it. He didn’t mind playing the part of the team’s annoying younger brother, even if he wasn’t even close to being a rookie anymore.
It would be nice if they respected him for more than his ability to score sometimes and keep the puck out of their opponents’ net though.