Chapter 20
A LITTLE STRESS RELIEF
CORBIN
I remember it with stark clarity.
The way the puck slipped by me when Riggs passed it to me last year in our final playoff game.
It was one of countless mistakes we made in the first round of the playoffs—the round we never left.
From missed shots to slow skating, we were never in sync.
But we also didn’t do enough. As a team or as individuals.
It haunts me, but it also fuels me.
A few nights later in Vancouver, it mostly fuels the fuck out of me. Don’t want a game like that again. Don’t want a season like that again. Don’t want a chance like that slipping past me one more time.
Especially since my mind is never far away from Mabel. I have to work even harder than usual to make sure my focus stays squarely on the ice when I’m on it.
I’m fast and aggressive in the first period and the second, nabbing an assist to Riggs, collecting rebounds in the slot, and blocking shots.
See? I can do both.
And I have to.
I know what the pundits are saying. That I’m heading into the sunset of my career or that I’m already there.
But they don’t know that I can handle a lot.
When I started playing, I managed having an infant and a key role on the ice.
Then, I handled raising a kid while helping to take care of my mom when she needed it most alongside my job.
Now, I manage a middle-schooler, a demanding career, a new business, and an intense fucking obsession with my best friend’s sister.
As I’m skating toward the Vancouver net, their defenders swarm me. I catch sight of Riggs, several feet away. He’s not quite open, but he might be any second. But any second will be too late.
I drop my shoulder like I’m about to pass to him.
But instead, I flick the blade of my stick around and I shoot the puck right back through my own legs and in front of me again, where none of their defenders are looking, where the goalie isn’t looking, where not even the refs are.
One wrist shot later, and it flies past the goalie.
Yes!
Riggs skates over to me, jaw agape. “Did you just shoot between your fucking legs?”
“I fucking did.”
Lake smiles as he joins in. “What the fuck was that?”
It was me controlling my career. Setting the pace. Defining my legacy.
Because that’s what I need to do—play well—and sometimes that means surpassing expectations, showing everyone who I am. And that’s a guy who’s driven to win even when he’s thinking of a woman all the time, even though he can’t have her.
He really, really can’t.
Later on the plane, Riggs drops down into the seat next to me, unknotting his tie. “Hello, highlights reel,” he says.
I give a not-at-all humble shrug. “It’s good to be me tonight.”
“Sure is. But it’s good to be me too.” He waggles his phone. “Second date coming right up this weekend.”
I arch a brow. “And she knows it’s you she’s dating? The crass, cocky, trivia-obsessed, hockey player who has fewer goals than me? Or do you wear a mask to your dates?”
He rubs his middle finger against his cheek.
“So, a mask then. Makes sense.”
With an eye roll, he answers, “You only have more goals since you’re older. I’ll pass you soon, Dad.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, maybe stand down.”
I smile, letting go of the ribbing. “Glad the first date worked out,” I say, shedding my suit jacket and my envy too. He has no roadblocks to dating Sapphire. Must be nice.
“Yeah, me too,” Riggs says. “I kinda crushed on her for a while.”
“Kind of? You called her your future girlfriend before you met her.”
He claps me on the shoulder. “Guess you’ll have to add prescient to your list.”
I’ll give him that. “True,” I say, then mutter, “Fanboy. That’s your new nickname.”
He shrugs happily. “Works for me.”
He fiddles with his phone for a few minutes, texting Sapphire, judging by his dopey smile, while I answer a couple of emails from Charlotte’s school about an upcoming science fair.
When Riggs is done, he blows out a breath, then furrows his brow, his thoughts clearly shifting to something else as he turns to me again. “Do you ever, I don’t know, feel the pressure?”
“From the game?” I ask, wanting to make sure I’m understanding his question. Now and then, we’re thoughtful with each other, rather than dickheads.
“Yeah, but also just from having had such a good career,” he says earnestly.
Ah. The pressure of time. He’s a little younger than I am, so it’s understandable he’d ask me that. “I do,” I admit.
“How do you handle it?”
I’m not sure my answer will help him. “I bake.”
He laughs, then drags a hand through his hair. “I should have known better.”
I sigh, giving his question more thought. “But I also use positive self-talk, you know?”
He nods, clearly listening, since we’ve all been to the group meetings with team psychologists where they talk about this topic. “I tell myself I’m an excellent hockey player. And then I act like it. I tell myself I can handle the game, the promotion, my family, and then I fucking do it.”
He leans back against the cushy, vegan leather seat like he’s absorbing that. “Makes sense.”
He’s quiet for a beat, blowing out a heavy breath.
“Are you stressed?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nah, I’m like a Dane.”
I furrow my brow. “What?”
“The Danish people. They’re one of the least stressed people in the world. After Monaco, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, and a few other countries.”
“Okay, but you’re not like a Dane, you are a Dane. Isn’t your family from Denmark?”
“My mom is. But I guess that explains my chill,” he says with a grin, then grabs his headphones.
He shoves them on, then toggles through playlists on his phone till his screen shows an image of rain gently falling on a glass pane.
Huh, maybe that’s his stress relief. I suppose we all have to have something.
Me?
I look up recipes on my tablet. I plan out new things I want to bake. I make a schedule to buy ingredients.
And I imagine Mabel biting into a pretty pink cupcake, frosting catching on the corner of her lips.
I picture her taking a bite of a lemon shortcake and making a sinful sound.
I see her dipping her finger into cake batter and sucking it off.
And I have to smother a groan.
I do not need to get turned on while we’re flying home.
I close my eyes and try not to think of her, but she’s there, in the bakery, wearing only an apron. She’s in my kitchen, sitting on the counter, asking me what my favorite thing to bake is.
She’s letting her hair down at the end of a long day, shaking it out, then asking me to rub her neck. And I do, while I kiss the back of it, then down her body till she’s—
Stop.
Just stop.
But when I open my eyes, Theo’s standing by our row. “Nice game tonight.”
I blink off the filthy thoughts.
“Thanks, man,” I say, then shift gears, stat. “How’s it going with the GM job?”
He raps on the back of the seat in front of Riggs even though it’s made of plastic. “Good. Knock on wood.”
“Glad to hear,” I say as the plane hums quietly while hurtling through the night sky.
“What about you and Afternoon Delight? It’s clearly not distracting you from the game,” he says.
“It’s not,” I say, but then I drop the subject because I don’t want to let on that the bakery’s not the distraction.
His sister is, and she plays on a loop in my mind—a loop that is driving me mad since I don’t do loops.
I don’t have obsessions. I don’t lose my head over a woman.
I never thought this much about Sarah, not about the women I dated after her, and not even about Eliza.
Everything with Eliza was comfortable, compartmentalized, easy.
This? There’s nothing easy about the way I can’t stop thinking about Mabel.
But I made a promise not to go there again, and I’m going to keep that promise the second time around.
Not for Theo. Not because he’s her brother. But for me, and for her, and the dream we’re both chasing together.
I invite her brother to grab the empty seat next to me, and we shoot the breeze the rest of the flight, playing cards, talking shit, and having a good time. That helps, too, with my promise.
The next day, I pick up Charlotte from school, and my mind is fixed firmly on being a dad.
When she slides into the car, she says, “I just got an email that our volunteer application for the animal shelter was accepted. The one Mabel told us about. We could do that together soon. Isn’t it going to be great? ”
“It sure is,” I say, half wishing she hadn’t brought up Mabel, but half grateful, too, that it’s not my fault this time when my mind wanders to the woman I work with.
Besides, I’m good at what I do. I can handle it all. I can definitely handle it.