Chapter 5
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
ELI
We’re running two-on-ones in practice. It’s an odd-man rush, where I strip the puck from an attacker and head to the net.
A basic drill I’ve done so often with my teammates it’s impaled into my muscle memory.
But today, even that doesn’t save me from mistakes when my mind is somewhere else—like in Boulder, wherever Stella is.
And Aiden, too, because we’re adults now, and chasing Stella means she comes with baggage.
Not that I’m comparing Aiden to some piece of luggage too heavy to drag around.
No, her son is great. When he put on that Aspens jersey the other day, swimming in it, he wore a goofy grin the entire time we were on the ice—so proud to have my team’s colors on his back.
I’ve never dated a single mom before, but it’s not scaring me away from the idea that Stella could be mine again, and having Aiden with us—giving me only a slight instant dad panic and all—feels like a bonus.
That is, if I can convince Stella to meet me halfway. And we sure as shit need to talk about the past. I need clarity around our breakup, but I have no plan beyond keeping myself in her orbit. I’ll offer her free hockey lessons for Aiden, maybe game tickets, and anything to keep seeing them.
“Go!” the coach yells, spurring me into action. I strip the puck from the rookie easily, experience guiding my hands, but my timing is off. I’m a beat late reading the goalie, because my brain isn’t in this rink.
“Lewis!” Sean shouts.
Stewart—the biggest asshole on our team—barrels into me along the boards before I can react. Pain explodes through my shoulder, and I hit the ice hard, cursing as the coach’s whistle shrieks.
“Where the fuck are you at, Lewis?” Coach bellows. “Because you’re not here with us.”
“Dude, what the hell?” Mason hauls me upright like I’m some rookie who got his bell rung.
“I’m fine,” I grind out, rolling my shoulder. It’s not dislocated, but it’ll bruise black and blue by morning.
His eyes narrow. “You’re not fine. You’ve been off all week.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
Coach blows the whistle again. “Are you two going to gossip like teenage girls or run the drill? Because we have a lot of work to do to be ready for the game against Portland.”
Mason backs off and drops it—for now.
I push harder for the rest of practice, almost redeeming myself by the end. But leave it to the guys in the locker room to chirp immediately because hockey players are basically overgrown boys with muscles and underdeveloped brains.
“Must be all that charity work. Captain’s going soft.”
“Or maybe,” Sean adds loudly, “there’s a woman involved.”
The room erupts.
“Lewis has a girlfriend?”
“Since when?”
“Is she another hot actress? Does she have a sister?”
“There’s nobody,” I bark, yanking my jersey off over my head as if it offended me.
Mason grins, sitting on the bench across from me. “Then why are you playing like this?”
We all know each other too damn well from season to season, getting into each other’s business under the guise of caring. We agitate each other, push buttons, cross lines—but it’s all rooted in brotherhood, forged over years of sweat, sacrifice, and chasing the same goal.
I ignore them all easily enough—until my phone buzzes with a group text from my old college teammates. We’re still close, even if we’re opponents on the ice now, playing for different teams. Giving each other crap is practically a tradition.
Cam: The odds aren’t looking good for the Aspens to beat Portland.
Eli: Why not? They’ve had a shitty start so far. Should be easy for us.
Kris: Fuck you. We’ve had a lot of injuries.
Eli: Sounds like a barn burner. Sorry. Not sorry.
Cam: We play Seattle tonight. Heard they brought up a hotshot rookie center just in time for our game.
Eli: I hadn’t heard.
Kris: It’s been all over ESPN this morning.
Eli: I’ve been a little busy starting up the foundation to pay attention to sports news.
Cam: Oh right. Going well?
Eli: You won’t believe this—Stella and her son showed up.
Kris: Stella? As in that college girl who broke up with you and ghosted you?
Eli: Yep.
Cam: No shit? She still a sexy redhead?
Why does every guy I know describe her like that? Even though she is in fact a very sexy redhead, all curves and womanly now. In our brief encounter, she was every bit pleasing to my eyes.
Kris: You going for it again?
Eli: I’ll keep you posted.
Cam: Yeah, he is. Go get her, man.
Kris: Hold up. She broke your heart once. You sure about this?
Am I? Doubt creeps in for all of half a second—then disappears just as fast. If there’s a chance to get it right this time, I’ll take it.
Eli: Wish me luck.
Cam: Done. Becca wishes you luck too. She’s giving me a proper pre-game warmup.
Kris: Just be careful, E.
I tuck my phone away, unlace my skates, shower, and change, ready to get the hell out of there—until the coach pulls me into his office for a pep talk and strategy session for Friday’s game. By the time I drive home in my black Ferrari, the city’s gone dark.
Three other cars collect dust in my garage—the white Lamborghini, a vintage red Porsche, the black Ram truck.
There’s a sensible Audi SUV I actually use more often, like an adult.
I try to take each one out for a drive one day a week simply to keep them running.
Most were bought during my post-lottery, post-divorce spiral.
The era I dubbed ‘Shiny new toys will fix me.’
News flash: they don’t.
I speed through Cherry Hills, Denver’s premier suburb boasting private roads, iron gates, twenty-four-hour security. My place sits at the end of a cul-de-sac like a modern mini-castle. Impressive as hell until you walk inside and realize it’s mostly empty.
I never hired a decorator. What’s the point? The only room we use is the basement gaming room, fully tricked out.
Sean, Mason, and Tyler beat me home. My teammates pay me token rent—or what I consider my beer fund—and help keep the silence in this big house from swallowing me whole.
They’re waiting in the gaming room when I arrive, serious enough that it feels like an intervention.
“Come on, guys. Do we really need to do this today?” I sigh and grab a beer and a plate of pretzels from the snack bar my chef keeps stocked.
“Hell yeah, we do, considering we play Portland tomorrow night. We don’t need a captain who is a liability out there on the ice with us,” Tyler starts in.
I let them each gripe and vent their concerns while I get comfortable in my La-Z-Boy chair. When they’re done, I take over.
“Relax. I got the full treatment from the coach before I left today. And… yes, there’s a woman. One of the kids who skated with me at the gear giveaway last weekend—I knew his mom in college, way before everything.”
That shuts them up for half a second. Because “everything” is the part I don’t talk about unless I’m too drunk: the lottery, the marriage, the divorce, the headlines, the women after the divorce who wanted a piece of me like I was a lucky scratch-off ticket with legs holding a stick and chasing a rubber disk around the ice.
“The sexy redhead,” Sean mutters and snaps his fingers. The other guys nod with the full picture now.
“Let me guess. You have history with this redhead, and now you want to repeat history,” Tyler wiggles his brows.
“Maybe. But she has a son. All I know is that I need to see them again.”
Sean’s grin fades. “Are you going to tell her about the money?”
I cast a sharp glance his way and scoff. “No. Every single time I’ve told a woman about it, it ends badly for me. This much money is a curse.”
“Dibs on taking your money over when you’re done with it,” Tyler quips, holding up his hand high in the air.
“Shut it. You already get cheap rent,” I remind him.
“So, what are you going to do?” Mason side-eyes me.
“I have ideas.” But I won’t share them yet. An email from Renae pings on my phone. I head straight to my office and call her on video.
One ring and her face fills the screen, glasses low on her nose. “Hello, sir. I was about to ring you up to go over things. And I have news,” she starts.
“Good. I could use it.”
“Don’t get your hopes up yet.” She holds up a finger. The camera wobbles, and I hear the hiss of a can opening offscreen. She returns to the frame with a Mountain Dew in hand, sipping like it’s a medical device keeping her alive. “Okay. Now I’m ready.”
“You put me on hold for that?”
“Sir, Mountain Dew is my lifeline. I have yet to hit my limit today.” She takes another sip. “Open your email.”
I open my laptop and click on the attachment. It’s like a scrapbook of Stella’s life appears before me. “Renae, this is more than I expected.”
“You asked for information about Stella. So I dug,” she cuts in and shrugs. “Some old friends of mine at the Pentagon owed me a favor.”
“Jesus.” When I hired her with her Army background, I wondered if it might come in handy one day.
“Well, if you’re going to obsess about your first love, then at least you do it with facts, not fantasies, sir.”
“I never said Stella was my first love.”
She peers at me sternly over the rim of her glasses, eyebrows raised above intense brown eyes.
“Fine. She was my first,” I admit, but I don’t tell Renae that Stella was my only love. I hardly count my ex-wife in the love category at all because I think with Bunny it was only lust, and she had me fooled from day one.
I open Renae’s summary titled brANCH, STELLA — Background.
Basic info: she lives above her mom’s Cozy Corner Craft Shop in Boulder, working part-time there while completing an education degree at the University of Colorado, Boulder campus.
I relive our breakup in my mind. The Tigers had just won the hockey cup, and agents were calling me nonstop since my draft prospects were promising. Then came the last night we were together, when Stella said we were headed in two different directions.