Ass Handed
EASTON
Idrive to the rink on autopilot.
Who is the Sinclair bride?
The exact words from Coach Brennan’s text. They still ring in my head, word for word. I haven’t answered it. Something tells me I don’t need to.
The jury of Coach Brennan and PR director Diane Mercer is probably already assembled, waiting for me to make my appearance.
I tape my wrists, lace up, and take the ice.
The second the puck drops, the part of my head that has been arguing with itself since five this morning goes quiet.
That is the trade. You give the sport everything, the sport gives you eighty minutes of not having a life off the ice. It's the cleanest deal I've ever made.
I play sharp. Coach watches me from the bench with his arms crossed and his face unreadable. Kai pulls me aside during a water break and says, low, “You good?” and I say, “Fine.”
He nods like he believes me, even though he doesn't. Kai doesn’t ask twice. He merely taps my shoulder and returns to the game.
Theo skates past me once and says, “Heard you had company,” and I nearly take his head off with my stick on the next shift, which I think makes him laugh.
If Theo knows about Riley, and the photos, then the entire team knows it too.
We finish two hours later.
I'm sore in all the right places, clean and emptied out the way I always am after a good practice.
For a brief lit-up second on the way to the locker room, I'm almost the Easton Blake from last weekend again. The one before a certain petite green-eyed woman barrelled into his life. But it doesn’t last.
Courtesy of the locker room.
I know the second I walk in, that they’ve all seen it. My instincts are right.
The energy is different. Too many heads turning when I come through the door. Too many watchful eyes. Wyatt is at the far end of the bench with his phone in his hand and a grin he has been working on for the last twenty minutes.
“Boys, you’ve got to see this.” He swivels the phone around. “Our man Easton’s apparently landed himself a new catch. And according to the internet, she’s one of the city’s society brides.”
The room goes off. Whoops, catcalls, a “You finally retiring the playboy thing for a wife, Blake?” from someone I can't see.
“You wanna introduce us, Blake?” Wyatt is on his feet now, grinning from ear to ear.
“The runaway bride. Bring her by. We could give her the tour. Show her what a real welcome looks like in this locker room. And I mean, she might have been someone else’s bride, but hey, whatever rocks your boat huh? ”
That hits me. Not the mockery, but the double meaning behind the words.
My jaw clenches.
I stop unlacing my skate. I stand up.
I'm almost a foot taller than Wyatt and he has had the good sense to fear me for exactly nine months. I watch the moment that good sense returns to him in real time. His grin slips. The phone comes down.
“Wyatt.”
“Easton.”
“Put the damn phone away. And the next time you speak ill of her in this locker room, you and I are going to have a different conversation, and you are not going to enjoy it. Do you understand me?”
“I understand.”
A wolf whistle follows. My gaze travels around the room and the heads turn away.
I sit back down, finish unlacing my skate and I don't look up.
A heavy hand lands on my shoulder.
“Hey.” Theo. “You scared the rookie.”
“Good. Then he got the message loud and clear.”
“He did. He also needed it done by someone he isn't going to spend the next six weeks tiptoeing around.” Theo squeezes my shoulder, once. “You okay?”
“I'm fine.”
“You are not fine, but I’m going to let you lie to me anyway.”
I almost smile.
Theo rises to his feet. He glances around the room at the men who are suddenly very interested in their lockers, phones, and pieces of equipment.
“Just so we’re all clear,” he says conversationally, “if any of you have another joke about that woman rattling around in your head, I’d strongly recommend keeping it there.”
Then he turns around and heads back to his stall as though the matter is settled.
It's.
Kai catches my eye and gives me one nod, which from Kai is the equivalent of a five-minute speech.
I'm not even all the way through changing when Coach’s assistant leans in.
“Easton. Coach wants you. Diane is already up there.”
And here it comes. The moment I’ve been waiting for.
I take the stairs to the office.
Diane Mercer in her early forties, tall, in a charcoal blazer that costs more than my first month of rent in college, catches my eyes the moment I walk in.
She's at the small round table in Coach’s office with two folders in front of her and her phone face down. From the look on her face, I know it’s not going to be pretty.
It’s one thing to be scolded by Coach Brennan and it’s an entirely different ball game to have Diane sitting on the issue. My ass is about to be handed to me, red hot.
Coach is leaning against the front of his desk with his arms crossed. He looks tired.
“Sit, son.”
I sit.
Diane opens the first folder.
“Three photos. All taken yesterday between four-twelve and four-fourteen, outside the back lot of Valentina Vega’s boutique on Robertson.
Two by the same paparazzo, one by a freelancer who appears to have been tipped off.
They are blurry. They are angled. Your face is half-turned and shadowed by a cap.
The woman’s face is slightly visible from the side, a piece of hoodie and her hair. The headlines so far are speculative.
Sinclair’s bride seen with mystery sports figure. Is Riley Brooks hiding out with an athlete? No one has used your name in print yet.”
I exhale slowly, clasping my hands on my thighs.
She closes the folder. “My estimate is that someone confirms your identity in the next thirty-six to forty-eight hours, unless something more interesting happens in this town first.”
I remain quiet, waiting for her to drop it. Her look says it all, but I can tell she’s trying to be cordial.
“So…” She folds her hands, eyes burning into mine. “Here is what I need from you.”
“Diane…” I manage but she cuts me off with a single raised hand.
“Let me finish. No statements. No press contact.
don't answer your phone for any number you don't recognize. don't post anything to any account, public or private, that contains her, any reference to her, or any reference to your home. No public appearances with her. And I’m assuming she’s hiding in your home. We’ve seen the news Easton.
So, If you absolutely have to leave the house with her, you don't leave it together.
I don't want to see one more frame of the two of you in the same shot until we have built a story to put underneath it. Clear?”
“Clear.” My voice is tight.
“Good. Next, no confirmations and no denials, on or off the record, to anyone. The story we want to tell is that there is no story. Every time someone gets a confirmation or a denial, they have a thread. Threads get pulled.”
“Got it.”
“Lastly,” She leans forward. “You don't, under any circumstances, comment on Preston Sinclair. Not on a podcast, not on the bench, not in the parking lot of a Whole Foods. Preston Sinclair has personal relationships with three of the major editorial desks in this city and a financial interest in a fourth. We are not picking that fight. Not for press, not for sport, not for sympathy, not for righteousness. And not even for you, Easton. Are we clear?”
I nod. The tightness spreads, my chest constricts.
She exhales. Some of the steel goes out of her face.
“For what it’s worth,” she says more quietly, “I'm sorry. This is a mess for everyone involved. For you. For the team. Especially for the team.”
Coach uncrosses his arms.
“Son. I'm not going to do the speech. You know what is at stake.
This isn't about you. It's about a roster of careers and an organization that has put a lot of money behind this season.
Whatever you have got going on at the house, you handle it.
I don't want to know the details, I don't want to meet the woman, I don't want her name in this building. You understand me?”
I nod again. His gaze hardens.
“Yes, Coach.”
“Good.”
I'm halfway out of the chair when I sit back down.
“One question. What if she's not safe?”
Diane and Coach look at each other.
Diane’s face changes.
Not soft, exactly, because Diane doesn't do soft, but something less professional moves through it for a second.
“That’s a different conversation, Easton. Do you have reason to believe she's not safe?”
I think about the man on the corner with the long lens. The second one further down. The way Preston Sinclair issued a press statement in forty minutes about a woman he had not seen leave the venue.
“Not yet.”
“Then until you do, she stays invisible.”
“Understood.”
I stand to leave. Coach claps me on the shoulder as I pass.
I get to my car, take the driver seat, but I don’t turn on the ignition.
The reality of the verbal agreement I’ve just had with Diane and Coach Brennan registers.
What I've just agreed to is to make her invisible. To put her back in a house with the curtains drawn. The exact same thing Preston Sinclair has been doing to her for six years, in a different costume.
The difference is supposed to be that I'm doing it to keep her safe.
I'm not sure what it changes or how it even gives her the freedom she wants.
Maybe I’m not the right person to keep her safe. Maybe she needs help somewhere else, from someone else. It’ll be for the best. For her. For the life she wants.
But even as the thoughts hit me, I know it’s not the truth. Now that she’s chosen me to keep her safe, I’d lose a limb before letting her off. Especially not when she’s helpless and her prey is out there, silently and strategically closing all doors on her.
This will have to do for now. Until this mess blows over.
I heave a deep sigh. I turn the ignition and the engine roars to life. My fingers settle on the stirring wheel, and almost immediately, my phone rings.
Fucking Maya. A frown twists my lips. I reach for my phone. But it’s just my mom.
“Hi, mom,”
“Easton, sweetheart. Took you forever to respond. Did I disrupt something?” I hear the smile in her voice, and for a moment, I’m pulled into an alternate universe, into a world with just her warmth and rainbows.
“Not at all, mom. Just finished at the rink.”
“How was practice?”
“Good.”
She stays quiet for a minute and I can almost picture the wheels rotating in her head. My mom is very observant. I can almost hear the question even before she voices it.
“That is your one-word answer voice. What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing serious, mom. Just a tiring day, mixed with an unplanned decision.”
“Hmm… anything I need to be worried about?”
I close my eyes. I put my head back against the headrest.
“It’s just… I made a decision a few days ago, which I thought was a harmless one. Today I'm being asked to handle it in a way I think is the wrong one. And I'm sitting in my car in the lot at the rink trying to figure out which one I'm going to be.”
She's quiet for a beat.
“Is anyone in danger?”
I contemplate telling her the full truth, but knowing how worked up she gets, and considering her current hassle of the divorce proceeding, and having to deal with my asshole of a father, piling up my situation with Riley into that heap isn’t going to help.
“No one is in danger, mom. Just something about work and a friend.”
“If that’s the case, then do the right thing, sweetheart. Not the easy one. You have always known the difference. It's the one thing your father never managed to take from you.”
I smile faintly.
“I love you, mom,”
“Love you. Call me Sunday.”
She hangs up.
I sit there. The engine is still running. The sun has moved across the lot enough that I'm no longer in shade and the bright striking rays slant across my face but it does nothing to pull my thoughts from my distorted headspace.
Somewhere in this city, six months of footage of me is sitting on a hard drive with a woman who is going to look at the news cycle that is brewing right now and see exactly one thing.
Leverage.
Maya is going to see it, and she's going to act on it, because that is who she is.
Which means I have exactly one window of time to figure out what the hell I'm going to do before she does.
I put the key in the ignition for the second time. I start the car and drive home, knowing I have to come up with a plan to protect Riley.