Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
Whitney pulls the sheet up around her as she leans over to the nightstand and smells the vase of flowers—sunflowers to be precise.
“I thought they’d be bigger,” she muses.
“Apparently, florists prefer the smaller varieties for arrangements.” Lucky for me, because if they’d had the bigger ones, I’d have checked into this hotel with a bouquet as tall as I am.
“What was your plan if I couldn’t get away from my family?” she asks, glancing at me as I pull on my boxers and then pick up the rest of our clothes from the floor where we discarded them as quickly as possible the second we got to my room.
“Room service and TV.” I set the clothes on the armchair and rejoin her in bed.
“You really were bored,” she says with a giggle as she sits up and wraps an arm around my neck, letting the sheet fall around her waist in the process.
Bored. Missing her so much, I couldn’t stand it. Same thing, right?
I slant my mouth over hers, and we fall back onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and hungry kisses. I know she has to leave soon, but I don’t want to waste a second of the time we have.
“Oh. Ouch. Ouch.” She yelps. I roll off her as she rubs the back of her head.
“What’s wrong?”
She pulls a diamond earring out from behind her. It’s then that I realize she’s currently only wearing one.
“I have no idea where the back went.” She scoots over, and we search for it under the pile of pillows and blankets, then on the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” I say when we haven’t found it ten minutes later.
“It’s fine. I can get another. I’m impressed though. I’ve never lost one before. You fucked me right out of my screw-back earrings. That’s some A-plus sex.” She sets the earring on the nightstand.
I hum my agreement and brush my lips against hers again. When we pull apart, neither of us looks away. Slowly, her lips pull into a smile. It’s broken only when she yawns.
“Long day?” I ask, grinning wider.
She covers her mouth as her eyes water. “No, not really. It’s been pretty uneventful until tonight.”
Her expression shifts into something I can’t quite pinpoint.
“How was dinner?” I ask, trying my best to keep my disdain for her brother hidden. I can’t imagine anything worse than sitting across from him for a meal.
Whitney sighs and leans back against the headboard. “Awful.”
“Wanna talk about it?” I grab water from the mini fridge and hold it out to her before taking a seat on the end of the bed facing her.
“Thanks.” She takes a drink before she replies again. “My dad is not an easy man.”
I could have guessed that based on her brother. If he’s anything like him, then I get the picture.
I lean on one elbow and let my fingers drape along her ankle, silently encouraging her to continue.
“My parents divorced when I was a year old and my mom left shortly after. My dad had full custody, and we lived with him. I only heard from my mom once or twice a year—a quick phone call on birthdays and Christmas. According to my dad, she didn’t have any interest in being a mother or taking care of me and Victor but—” Whitney stops talking, and she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth.
I squeeze her ankle for comfort.
“I can’t help but think it had less to do with not wanting me or Victor and more her trying to get away from my dad. Nothing is ever good enough for him. I’ve watched Victor struggle to live up to his expectations his whole career. I can’t imagine it was any better for my mom.”
“And for you?” I noticed she didn’t mention how it was for her, but I’ll bet she wasn’t immune to it either.
“I had it easy.” She looks down at her lap. “Since he realized I wasn’t meant for great things like my brother, he’s had very few expectations of me.”
“Because you’re not a professional hockey player?” I ask, wondering if her dad is really that shallow.
“Because I’m average, which goes against all the Aven family mottos. My dad was a great hockey player, then built a multi-million-dollar real estate company from scratch. Victor followed in his footsteps with hockey and I’m . . .”
My movements are so fast, her eyes flash with surprise when I go to her, lifting her chin with a finger so she meets my gaze. “You’re not average.”
She tries a small grin, but I can tell she doesn’t let the compliment land.
“Being a great athlete or succeeding at business or even making a lot of money doesn’t make someone a better person, and it certainly doesn’t make them more worthy of love and attention.”
“It does to my father.”
“Then he’s wrong.” I shake my head. “I’m sorry, but he is.”
My thumb glides across her bottom lip until she frees it from her teeth.
“I know you’re right. Deep down, I know, but . . . he’s still my dad.”
The unspoken thing seems to be that she wants his approval, the same way she says her brother does.
“He’s never going to look at what I do and think it’s as important as winning a Stanley Cup. I think he’d prefer I was Victor’s assistant still. At least that was a job he felt was useful.” She lets out a soft, brittle laugh.
I’m not sure if I’m madder that he let her believe that or that no one else in her life has shown her that it’s total bullshit. I run the back of my fingers across her cheek.
“Do you know why I play professional hockey?” I ask her.
She shakes her head, then hugs her knees to her chest as she rests her chin on top of them.
“Because I had a great coach. A couple of them, in fact.”
She gives me a small, patronizing smile.
“It’s true. Without them, I’d never have gotten to where I am today. Great coaches make great players possible.” I lean in. “And you’re a fantastic coach.”
“My team is on a five-game losing streak.”
“It isn’t all about winning. They admire and respect you.
You’re teaching them more than hockey. I don’t know where I’d be today if it weren’t for some of the coaches in my life.
” I think about Coach Carson. He was so good at taking my mind off all the bullshit at school and channeling it into hockey, but not in a dismissive way like he didn’t care it was happening.
On the team there was no room for bullies.
He never would have tolerated it, and everyone knew it.
In turn, it was a safe place. One of the few I had outside of home.
“I told you school was not easy for me. I was awkward and even quieter back then, if you can imagine. I had terrible acne, and I got my growth spurt about three years later than everyone else. I was the one most likely to be shoved in a locker. I had my head put in a locker room toilet.”
She makes a face of disgust.
“Yeah.” I nod. I shudder at the memory. I can’t believe I’m telling her this. It doesn’t exactly make me look great. “I was an easy target and too shy and small to fight back. And girls were brutal. The first and last time I asked one out, she laughed me out of the cafeteria.”
Her smile returns, but this time it’s filled with sympathy and a spark of something else . . . anger. “Jerks. The offer to kick their asses still stands.”
“My point is I never would have gotten through it if it weren’t for hockey and the coaches I had during that time. The only time I felt good about myself was when I was skating.”
“I’m sorry they were awful to you,” she says.
“Yeah, me too.”
“Got a list of names and addresses?”
“Why?”
“Forget beating them up, I’d like to go back in time and shove every one of their heads in the toilet.” She makes that expression filled with revulsion again.
“No, I haven’t kept in contact with anyone, but I may know how you could run into them.”
Her brows pinch together. “How?”
“Eh . . .” I lean back. “My old coach is retiring and they’re having an awards ceremony for him next month. They want me to give the speech for him.”
“Are you going?”
“Nah,” I say quickly. “I don’t think so.”
“Because you don’t want to run into the jerks from high school?” The way she asks it doesn’t suggest that she thinks less of me for avoiding them, but I can’t help but feel a little bit like I’m that kid hiding from the bullies again.
“That and the whole giving a speech in front of a bunch of people thing.”
“I’ve seen you in interviews. You’re great.”
“I’m talking to one person, usually, and they’re all people I’m familiar with after a few years playing.” And great is a wild exaggeration. I manage not to stutter or freeze up as long as the conversation stays on hockey.
“Well, for the record, I think you’d be great, but I get it. If they couldn’t see your hot awesomeness then, they don’t deserve you now.”
I bark out a laugh. “Trust me. I was not hot or awesome.”
“Nope. I refuse to believe it. This is not an ugly duckling situation.” She waves a hand in front of my face. “Impossible.”
“What were you like in school?” I ask.
“Pretty average. I wasn’t popular or anything, but people didn’t mess with me because of Victor.”
“He looked out for you?” It’s hard to imagine him caring about anyone, but it makes me hate the guy a little less knowing he’s been good to Whitney.
“In his way.” She laughs. “He could torment me but no one else could. And vice versa. Dad worked a lot, so we relied on each other.”
“I’m sorry about your mom and that it isn’t easy with your family.” I faced my fair share of bullies, but I always had family that supported me.
“Sorry to be a Debbie Downer on your one night in Houston.”
“I don’t mind. I like hearing you talk.”
“Same.” She gives me a real smile. Small, but genuine.
“Tell me more about what you were like as a kid.”
I move to sit next to her and pull her against my chest as she starts to talk.
“I was pretty quiet when I was little. I followed Victor around and his friends let me hang out as long as I didn’t annoy them too much.” She yawns again, then keeps going.
She tells me about playing every sport imaginable trying to find one she was good at, how she eventually realized she loved hockey even if she wasn’t the best player, how she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do after college so she started working for her brother, how she thought about her mom often but didn’t reach out because she felt like a stranger, and then finally how devastated she was when she found out she had died of cancer.
“I didn’t even know she was sick. I talked to her maybe three months earlier on her birthday and she never said anything.”
“She must not have wanted you to know.”
“I guess not, but I still can’t help but wonder how things might have been different if I’d made more of an effort.
Victor completely shut her out when she left, but I could have called more or visited.
I bet she would have understood how I felt being the average one in a family of high achievers.
Her brother played hockey too. It’s how she met my dad. ”
She turns the questions back on me, but I barely get through my elementary years when her eyes close and her breathing evens out. I reach over and turn off the bedside light and pull the covers over us.
Whitney might believe she’s average, but I’ve never met someone more extraordinary. If her dad and brother can’t see that, well then, they’re worse than I thought.
And if I need to be the one to tell her otherwise, remind her how important she is every single day, I’m happy for the job.