Next Door to the Hockey Player

The house next door had sat empty for months, so I treated the hot tub like a private escape I had no right to use.

I was supposed to be in Europe, not hiding from my own life with wine and borrowed bubbles.

Then Dane O'Shea came home, a pro hockey player in his off-season who wanted his privacy back as badly as I needed my silence kept.

We make a deal: I cook for him, he guards my secret, and I stop sneaking into his hot tub.

I am already failing that last promise, and the longer I stay in his kitchen and his water, the more I want him to learn why I am really hiding.