Chapter 2
2
Drunken bacchanalia or publicity stunt?
You decide, Reader. Either way, Miss Sydney has some ‘splaining to do.
-Celebrity Truth
Wyatt
I was married.
I was married to Sydney Fucking Malloy. Pop Goddess. Internet breaker. One of People’s Sexiest People Alive. My brother’s all-time favorite celebrity crush.
I mean… this was surreal.
I wasn’t the kind of guy who thought about what the day after my wedding would look like. But if pressed, I’d probably say I imagined filling my brand-new wife’s belly with some babies. Maybe drinking a pina colada on a beach. Getting one of them couple massages and then making some babies.
I did not imagine a stern talking to by a woman who dressed and sounded like the fucking Queen of England.
However, having been yelled at by coaches my whole life, it was easy to tune her out.
What was bothering me was the way Sydney, sitting beside me all showered and smelling like flowers and toothpaste, kept shrinking into herself with each clipped word. Smaller and smaller until she practically disappeared inside that robe she was wearing. She tucked her hands in the sleeves. Her knees to her chest.
All I could see was her sexy short black hair, her pink toes and her bloodshot green eyes.
Apparently one of the best nights of my life was a catastrophe and this lady with the Gatorade needed to tell us all about it.
She’d also managed to get me a new set of clothes that somehow – miraculously – fit me perfectly. Jeans, a black polo. Even underwear.
She really was a witch.
“This is just one of the videos that went viral.” Beatrice placed her phone on the glass table between Sydney and me and pressed play.
It was like any other scene from a bad Vegas movie, only I was starring in it. We were coming out of the Chapel of Love and surrounded by people with their phones out, filming us.
Beside me, Sydney groaned like she was in pain watching it.
I had Sydney hauled over my shoulder in a fireman lift. She was wearing the short sexy dress she’d worn clubbing. I had my hand over her ass, so she wasn’t flashing the universe. She had on one shoe, a veil and a bouquet of white roses I remembered buying as part of the Chapel’s Deluxe Package.
In the video I was singing Going to The Chapel at the top of my lungs.
“You sound great, baby!” Video Sydney had cried.
I didn’t.
Beside me, Sydney’s tense face broke into a fleeting smile.
At the end of the video I poured Sydney into the back seat of an Uber and crawled in after her. The door shut. The car pulled away.
Show over.
“What happens now?” Sydney asked, her voice shaky.
“What do you mean?” I said. “This must happen all the time in Vegas. It probably wasn’t even legal?”
“Oh, it was very legal,” Beatrice said. “The paperwork from the chapel has already been filed with the county. So the marriage is official. The only thing to do now is to get an annulment or file for a divorce.”
Sydney buried her face in her knees “No!”
“Sadly, yes,” Beatrice told her.
I still didn’t get it. “We file for divorce. You put out a statement. I’ll put out a statement. It’s a little embarrassing, but it’s not the end of the world?”
She was still shaking her head, her hands covering her face.
If I wasn’t a gentleman, I might have told her all that shaking was creating a gap in her robe so that I could see the swell of her right breast.
Only I was a gentleman, so I averted my eyes instead.
Which wasn’t easy. Honest-to-god, Sydney Malloy was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen in my whole life. She had been the first time I saw her perform at the Grammys. The first time I’d gotten tickets to see her in concert. Every time she broke the internet with her love life.
In person – she took my breath away. She was strong and fragile. Sweet and sexy.
When I spotted her at the golf outing pulling up in the cart behind us, I’d literally gotten star struck. Something as a professional athlete, who had been around famous people for years, I didn’t get.
My brother, Liam, made it a point to know everyone. In music, acting, across all sports. There wasn’t a significant pop culture person whose number he didn’t have in his contact list. Since he would occasionally drag me to some of these events, I had met plenty of stars.
None of them left me feeling the way Sydney did. It was something about her green eyes that just leveled me. Like she was this elfin princess who’d been trapped in human form and needed someone to help her return to fairyland. Or something.
Whatever.
“Why are your cheeks red?” Sydney asked, her hand touching mine.
“It’s hot in here,” I said.
It wasn’t. She just had me turned inside out.
When I saw Baker Gafford come up behind her and grab her ass, I’d nearly lost my mind. Protecting her had been a no brainer and I’d thought, if nothing else, I could rub it in my brother’s face that I’d spent some time on the golf course with Sydney Malloy.
What I didn’t expect was for her to be so funny. And real. And exciting. Like a bolt of lightning in the middle of my life. Like anyone, when he realizes he’s had a brush with something rare, I tried to bottle that lightning.
Marriage had seemed like a logical conclusion to the night, given the amount of tequila involved.
However, I stood by the fact that this girl was special and I hated seeing her stressed out by what we’d done.
“We need to return Tyler’s calls. He’s been ringing you every five minutes,” Beatrice said quietly.
“Who’s Tyler?” I asked.
“No, Bea,” Sydney begged. “Please. You know what he’ll say.”
“Sadly, I do, but this is his job.”
“Who’s Tyler?” I asked again.
“Tyler is my publicist. He controls my image, and he’s going to tell me this, a quickie Vegas wedding and a divorce, isn’t good for my brand.”
“Okay. Why do you sound like that’s the end of the world?”
“Because right now…well, after my last album and that whole fiasco in Paris-”
“All charges were dropped,” Beatrice said, as if making a point. “That boy started the brouhaha and you got caught up in the middle.”
I didn’t know the details of what happened to her in Paris, and this did not seem like the time to ask. “Anyway, my label isn’t exactly head over heels about me. Getting drunk and marrying some rando athlete is not going to help that.”
I bristled at being some rando athlete to her.
“Sorry,” she said with a wince.
“I’ll take the blame,” I said. “I talked you into it. I bought you too many drinks. Make me the villain.”
A soft knock interrupted me.
Beatrice got up and opened the door to a hotel staff member, who brought in a covered tray of what I hoped to God was greasy hash browns.
The aspirin and second bottle of Gatorade helped, but I wouldn’t be cured until grease hit my bloodstream.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten that drunk. I was older now. Partying and hangovers had less appeal for me than ever.
However, I felt as if I could be forgiven this one time. After all, the Peaks lost the Stanley Cup to the Bruisers. I loved my brother and was real proud of him, but losing sucked. Especially when I didn’t play my best that last game.
Yes, I was older. Maybe too old. There were plenty of people out there saying that. Some of them were even saying the R word. Maybe, sometimes, I said it to myself.
On top of that was this situation with my brother. My other brother.
Nick Renard.
Plus, my mom died and Liam and I just shoved all our grief aside because the post season had been starting. Maybe that wasn’t the best way to grieve.
All that to say, when Sydney Malloy fell into my life, she tasted like something sweet after all the shit I’d been eating.
“You are so far from the villain in this story. We’re not doing that to you.” Sydney said, and put a hand on my shoulder.
I liked it when she touched me. I’d like her to do more of it.
Maybe, if the Queen of England hadn’t barged in on us, we might have gotten to some morning-after action. Had ourselves a proper wedding night/morning.
Her hand, as it left my shoulder and trailed down my arm, made me remember that kiss in the club. Talk about lightening in a bottle. I could have fucked her right there. Pulled the tiny scrap of underwear she wore under that dress out of my way and buried myself so deep inside of her that marriage would have been irrelevant. I would have made her mine so hard we’d never be the same.
Beneath my new jeans I could feel my dick twitch. Like it had suddenly realized it had been a very good boy all night lying next to the woman of my dreams and it would like a treat.
Down boy. That is not happening.
“Let’s eat,” I said, getting up to take a look at what Beatrice had ordered. “We can’t figure out anything on an empty stomach.”
I lifted the lid off each dish. Scrambled eggs. Bacon. Yes, please. I grabbed two slices and popped them in my mouth while I kept looking. Toast, well-buttered, and score …hash browns. There was also fruit, granola and plain yogurt.
There was a carafe of orange juice and another one filled with steaming black coffee.
I might live.
I put together my plate filled with eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast and sat down next to Sydney.
She was eye-balling my plate like a starving animal too scared to take, but not disciplined enough to be cool about how badly she wanted it.
“You want me to make you a plate?” I hadn’t thought to ask. Shit. I was her husband, if only for a few hours. If Dad taught me anything, it was take care of your wife. “Take this, I’ll make another one.”
She shook her head. “I’ll just have some fruit and yogurt.”
“Babe,” I chuckled. “That ain’t gonna cure a hangover.”
That was just sound medical advice. She smiled and snatched a piece of bacon off my plate. She ate it in one bite and then totally blissed out on pig and grease, she closed her eyes, tilted her head back.
“So good!”
My dick twitched again.
I pushed the plate into her hands and got up to make another one.
We sat on the couch filling our faces like two savages who hadn’t eaten in months. It was satisfying watching her eat with gusto from the plate I made for her.
Beatrice’s phone, still on the glass table, buzzed. The name Tyler lit up the screen.
Bea looked at us with a perfectly arched silver eyebrow.
“Fine,” Sydney said. “Let’s get it over with.”
Beatrice accepted the call. “Tyler, I’m with Sydney. We have you on speaker.”
“Sydney! What the fucking hell were you thinking? No, wait. I know you weren’t thinking because you were drunk off your ass, not to mention showing it around town like some Vegas stripper. Are you dumb? Are you thickheaded? Did someone drop you on your head at birth?”
I reached over the table and ended the call.
Sydney gasped, but Beatrice’s expression remained neutral.
“You hung up on Tyler!” Sydney said, like I’d hung up on God.
“Dude’s got to check his tone.”
“It’s not personal. He talks to everyone that way.”
The phone buzzed again. Like it was angry.
Beatrice accepted the call and put it on speaker.
“Did you just Hang. Up. On. Me?”
“Yeah, that was me,” I said. “We can have a conversation without the name calling.”
“Oh. My. God. Is that the husband? Sydney, he’s not even the good hockey brother. Liam Locke I could have made work. This guy is a brooding neanderthal.”
“Brooding?” I asked Sydney. Neanderthal I’d heard a time or two. “Do you think I’m brooding?”
Her eyes sparkled and I swear she was hiding a smile under her fingers.
There she is, I thought. The girl from yesterday. Carefree and happy.
“Listen to me, Hockey Player…”
“That’s Mr. Hockey Player to you,” I said and winked at Sydney, whose eyes went wide.
“ Jokes? This guy’s got jokes now? We don’t have time for jokes. We need to get this fixed. This is already viral and they’re creating a narrative.”
“Creating a narrative?” I looked between Sydney and Beatrice.
“Telling a story,” Sydney shrugged. “A made up one. Something salacious. I’ve got a drinking problem and daddy issues. I’m flaky. I go through guys like tissues. I’m a…”
“Slut! They’re slut shaming you,” Tyler shouted . “Which we all know is not cool, but they’re doing it anyway. You have one more album to give the label and after the sales of the last one, we don’t need to give them more reasons to drop you because you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
“Keep talking to her like that and I’m hanging up again,” I said into the speaker.
“Mr. Hockey Player! Hellooooo…Mr. Hockey Player! I need you to just go ahead and be a jock and not think.”
I hit the end call button again.
“Wyatt, you can’t keep hanging up on him,” Sydney groaned.
“He’s mean and he just implied I was stupid.”
“But he’s the only way I have out of this,” she said.
“How does the mean dude get you out of this?” I asked her.
“He creates a better fake story,” Beatrice explained.
I lifted an eyebrow and ate the bite of hash browns I’d been saving until last. “We were two single people who happened to hit it off, got a little crazy and ended up at a chapel in Vegas. We quickly realized our mistake and got a divorce. That doesn’t sound like a complicated narrative to me.”
“Please stop saying divorce,” Sydney groaned. “Tyler’s right. My sales for the last album were so bad the label is looking for a reason to dump me.”
“And a quickie wedding is that reason?”
“No, it’s the narrative that I’m a drama queen at best or unstable at worst. And of course the killer…that I’m problematic. You don’t understand this because it doesn’t happen to men. This shit only happens to women. And it really happens to me.”
I knew it wasn’t fair. I’d been fifty percent of the problem last night by going to that chapel with her, but she was right, I would suffer none of the consequences. A drunken marriage and quicky divorce wouldn’t hurt my image or my career. In fact, given that it was Sydney Malloy, it would probably only elevate my status.
If I gave a fuck about my status.
I tucked away the last slice of bacon and leaned back on the couch. My head still hurt, but the fog from the hangover was lifting.
Last night had been awesome. She was awesome. But now it was back to real life. I had this shit with my new brother. I had to figure out what I was going to do next year. And she had her pop star life and narrative to get back to. Clearly, me being in the picture only made things more complicated for her.
That was the last thing I wanted.
I cupped her knee with my hand. Even through the robe I could feel how warm she was. Strong. If I spread my hand out I could reach all the way around her knee. I had this urge to pull her up in my lap and explore the gap in that robe.
“I think we need to get out of Vegas, and head to our respective homes. Let’s allow the story to calm down, and then we can quietly apply for an annulment or whatever,” I said.
Beatrice coughed. Delicately. She obviously disagreed with me.
“There is no easy way to get out of Vegas,” she said. “The media are already camped outside this hotel.”
“A back entrance,” I suggested.
“Also covered,” she said. “Your only way out is through the gauntlet. The question is, do you take it on separately or together?”
“Together,” I said.
“Separately,” Sydney said.
“No way am I letting you do that alone,” I said.
She was shaking her head. “No. You go first. Get out of the hotel quickly. Make sure you have a car lined up and running. I’ll wait long enough after you leave to hold the crowd, so no one will follow you. A clean getaway.”
“She’s right,” Beatrice sighed. “It will be easier this way.”
“Easier for who?” I wanted to know.
“You,” Beatrice said, looking at me. “Of course.”
I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that one little bit. “I got drunk too. I got married too. I was stupid and reckless too.”
Beatrice pursed her lips. “Yes, but it won’t matter as much for you. Will it?”
She’d come to the same conclusion I had. There would be no consequences for my actions.
“But how does it look for Sydney if I don’t leave with her?”
“Like it has every other time the press thinks I’ve done something interesting.”
Sydney stood up and poured herself another cup of coffee, black. Then she curled up on the stiff formal sofa, her knees touching her chin as she tipped the cup to her lips.
Damn she was pretty. She’d washed off her makeup and had let her short dark pixie haircut dry naturally, which formed soft curls around her face. Her green eyes - made famous by music videos and red-carpet appearances - were so much greener in real life.
“It’s okay, Wyatt. Sad to say, but this is not my first rodeo with the press. You should go sooner rather than later. The mob will only get bigger.”
Beatrice nodded in agreement and it felt like I was running up against the Bruisers’ goalie again in game seven of the finals – a brick wall.
“This doesn’t feel right,” I said.
“I know,” Sydney said, like she was resigned to her fate.
I stood and walked back to the bedroom, shutting the doors behind me.
My phone sat on the table next to the bed. It had been dead this morning, but like everything else, Beatrice had taken care of that too by finding a charger. I hit the screen and waited for it to recognize my face. I had over two hundred texts waiting for me, and I groaned.
I did not like my phone. I was not addicted to my phone. My phone was a tool. I used it to communicate with my father, my brother, my teammates, my coach and a few close friends. It got me to places. It was a convenient flashlight when I needed it.
But I could feel the weight of all those messages.
Dad and Liam right at the top. Several of my teammates. A lot of emojis. Richie chimed in too.
Richie: I fucking knew it. You were a goner for her the second she got on our cart. I’m just mad I wasn’t invited to the wedding.
I opened Liam’s text thread.
Liam: Is this a joke?
Liam: This is real?
Liam: You’re married?
Liam: To SYDNEY MALLOY?
Liam: Swear to god Wyatt, you better not be fucking married to the only woman I’ve ever loved.
Liam: What about my best man speech?
Liam: WHAT ABOUT THE BACHELOR PARTY!!!!!!!!!
Liam: What. The. Fuck? Call me!
I was not calling him. Not until I had some perspective on the matter. No doubt, he would find the whole thing hilarious. That was one thing Tyler got right. If Liam were here, he’d be making the most of the situation.
The good brother. Mean Tyler wasn’t wrong.
I grabbed my wallet and shoved the fully charged phone in the back pocket of my brand new jeans and returned to the living room.
Beatrice was on her phone, if I had to guess, planning an escape route for Sydney that involved a helicopter and the roof. Syd was still sipping on her coffee. She looked over at me and offered a faint smile. A small lift of her shoulder.
As if to say, Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.
This was the person I was going to leave to the media hounds? This was the person I was just going to walk away from and hang out to dry?
She looked like a strong wind could blow her over.
There was no way I was going to let her push her way through a crowd of people asking insulting questions.
I was a defenseman. It was in my nature to defend.
“Yeah, me leaving separately isn’t going to work,” I said. “We’re going to do this together. Syd, you should get dressed.”
“No one calls her Syd,” Beatrice pointed out to me. As if to reinforce how little my opinion mattered because I barely knew her.
Which was true. I didn’t know her. Not really.
Or maybe I did.
Maybe I knew her better than anyone.
After all, she was my wife.