Chapter Nine
WINE AND CONFESSIONS
Tori
“Okay, spill.”
Winnie doesn’t even wait for the wine to arrive. We’re barely settled into our corner booth at Rosario’s—yes, the tourist trap, sue me—and she’s already got her elbows on the table, chin in her hands, staring at me like I’m a puzzle she’s about to crack.
“Spill what?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Victoria. You texted me ‘I need wine and carbs immediately’ at 3 PM. That’s code for something happened.”
“Maybe I was just hungry.”
“At 3 PM. After a road trip with a bunch of hockey players.” She narrows her eyes. “Try again.”
The waiter appears with our wine—a pinot grigio for me, a malbec for Winnie—and I take a very long sip before answering.
“How’s Derek?” I ask, deflecting.
“Derek is Derek.” She waves a hand dismissively. “But we’re not talking about Derek. We’re talking about whatever has you looking like you haven’t slept in three days and maybe got hit by a truck. A hot truck. A truck you want to get hit by again.”
I quirk an eyebrow in her direction. “That metaphor got away from you.”
“I know. I’m workshopping it.” She leans forward. “Seriously, Tor. What happened?”
I open my mouth. Close it. Take another sip of wine.
The thing is, I’ve been holding this in for days.
The whole flight back from Detroit, I sat three rows behind Zayden and pretended to be fascinated by the in-flight magazine while my brain replayed the almost-kiss on a loop.
Then I spent two days at work carefully avoiding being alone with him, which is hard when you’re literally assigned to touch him every morning.
I need to talk about this. I’m going to explode if I don’t.
“I almost kissed Zayden Bishop,” I blurt out.
Winnie’s eyes go wide. “I’m sorry, you what?”
“Or he almost kissed me. I don’t know. We almost kissed each other. On a sidewalk. In Detroit.”
“Oh my God.” She’s grinning now, that delighted grin she gets when gossip exceeds her expectations. “Start from the beginning. Don’t skip anything.”
So I tell her.
I tell her about the plane, how he kicked Logan out of the seat so he could sit by me and said, maybe I like the view.
I tell her about overhearing his FaceTime with Maisie, how cute he is with her.
I tell her about running into him at the hotel bar that first night, the way he said, apparently I have no filter around you, like he couldn’t help but be honest.
“Wait, wait.” Winnie holds up a hand. “And then what?”
“Then I said something stupid about not minding his mess, and he looked at me like...” I trail off, not sure how to describe it. “Like he wanted to believe me but was afraid to.”
“Tori.” She clutches her chest dramatically. “This is the most romantic thing you’ve ever told me, and you once dated a guy who wrote you a poem.”
“That poem was terrible.”
“It really was. Keep going. What happened in Detroit?”
I tell her about the game, watching from the bench, and how I ended up at a bar with the team even though I knew it was a bad idea.
“A bar with hockey players.” Winnie shakes her head. “Living dangerously.”
“It gets worse.”
I tell her about that douchey guy who stopped me in the back hallway of the bar. The way Zayden appeared out of nowhere and said, touch her again and we’re going to have a problem, in a voice that made the guy practically trip over himself backing away.
“I think I’m attracted to your hockey player,” Winnie says. “Is that weird? That’s probably weird.”
“He’s not my hockey player.”
“Sure, Jan. Continue.”
I tell her about the walk back to the hotel. His jacket around my shoulders. The way he stopped under the streetlight and looked at me like I was something he wanted but couldn’t have.
“He touched my face,” I say, and my voice comes out quieter than I intended.
“Brushed my hair back and just... let his fingers linger on my jaw. And I thought he was going to kiss me. I wanted him to kiss me. I tipped my face up toward his, but then he stepped back and said he should get me back to the hotel, and we rode the elevator in total silence. I’ve been losing my mind ever since. ”
Winnie is quiet for a long moment, which is alarming because Winnie is never quiet.
“Okay,” she finally says. “I have questions.”
“Of course you do.”
“Question one: what’s he like?”
I smile, thinking how in the world to explain Zayden. Bish. Daddy Z.
“Well, he’s French-Canadian, which means he swears in two languages and has opinions about hockey that border on religious.”
Winnie’s already got her phone out, thumbs flying. “Zayden Bishop, right? Let me see what we’re working with here.”
“Win, you don’t need to—”
“Oh.” She stops scrolling. Tilts her head. “Oh, Tori.”
“What?”
She turns the screen toward me. It’s a team photo from some charity event—Zayden in a fitted suit, jaw sharp enough to cut glass, dark eyes smoldering.
“This is your patient?” Winnie zooms in. “This man right here? With the whole... brooding lumberjack meets Calvin Klein model thing going on?”
“He doesn’t look like that in real life.”
“Liar.” She swipes to another photo. Him on the ice this time, helmet off, hair damp with sweat, jersey stretched across shoulders that suddenly seem way broader than I remembered. “God, look at his hands. Those are dad hands. I bet he builds furniture on the weekends.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“And that jawline? That’s genetic unfairness, is what that is.” She sighs dramatically. “No wonder you have a crush.”
“I don’t have a crush.”
She gives me a look that says she’s known me too long for this. “Sure you don’t. Question two: on a scale of one to ten, how badly do you want to sleep with this man?”
“Winnie.”
“It’s a valid question! I need to assess the situation.”
I drain the rest of my wine and signal the waiter for another. “Eleven. Maybe twelve.”
“Noted.” She grins like this news delights her. “Question three: is there an actual rule against this? Like, in the employee handbook?”
I’ve thought about this. A lot. “Not... explicitly. There’s stuff about professional conduct and not engaging in relationships that could create conflicts of interest. But it’s vague. It’s not like there’s a line that says ‘no banging the hockey players.’”
“So you wouldn’t get fired.”
“I honestly don’t know. Maybe not fired, but...” I sigh. “It’s complicated. I’ve worked really hard to be taken seriously in this field. If people found out I was sleeping with a player, that’s all anyone would see. I’d be ‘the PT who slept with Zayden Bishop,’ not ‘the PT who’s good at her job.’”
Winnie’s expression softens. “Like what happened to that woman you told me about.”
“Carla Drake.” Even saying her name makes my stomach twist. “She was brilliant, Win. Like, genuinely brilliant. I interned with her my junior year—she was the head PT for the basketball program, and everyone knew she was going places. NBA, Olympics, whatever she wanted.”
“What happened?”
“She fell for one of the players. He was a senior, projected first-round draft pick, charming as hell.” I trace the rim of my wine glass, remembering.
“They thought they were being careful. Secret relationship; no one at work knew. Except someone always knows, right? His ex-girlfriend found out and went all scorched earth on social media. Screenshots of texts, photos, the whole thing.”
Winnie winces. “Oh no.”
“Yeah, it was a nightmare. The university launched an investigation. Carla maintained nothing happened until after she was no longer his PT, which might have even been true—she’d transferred him to another therapist. But it didn’t matter.
The optics were bad, and the athletic department needed someone to blame. ”
“Let me guess. Not the star basketball player.”
“He got a stern talking-to and a reminder to ‘be more discreet.’ That’s it.
He got drafted that spring, signed a multi-million dollar contract, and last I checked, he’s starting for the Celtics.
” I take a long sip of wine. “Carla got fired. Quietly, so they could avoid a lawsuit, but fired. And word travels fast in sports medicine. Every time she applied somewhere, they’d already heard the rumors.
She couldn’t get hired anywhere near a professional team again. ”
“That’s... that’s so unfair.”
“Last I heard, she’s doing physical therapy at a retirement home in Ohio. Which is fine; it’s good work, but—” I shake my head. “She was supposed to be working with Olympians. She was that good. And one relationship ended all of it.”
Winnie is quiet for a moment. “But that was her situation. Different circumstances, different—”
“Different how? She was a woman in sports medicine who got involved with an athlete. I’m a woman in sports medicine who’s...” I trail off.
Winnie reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “Tori.” She sets down her wine glass, her expression softening. “I love you. You know I do. But I’ve heard of Zayden Bishop. Everyone’s heard of Zayden Bishop.”
My stomach tightens. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means he’s got a reputation. The guy used to be tabloid fodder—women, club photos, all of it. Just because he’s got a cute kid doesn’t mean he’s suddenly a saint.”
“That was years ago. Before Maisie was born, mostly.”
“Mostly.” She raises an eyebrow. “And you know this how? Because he told you? Of course he’s going to seem like a good guy when he’s trying to get into your pants.”
“He’s not trying to get into my pants.”
She meets my eyes with a knowing look. “He almost kissed you on a sidewalk in Detroit.”
“And then he walked away.”
“Which could mean he’s a gentleman, or it could mean he’s playing the long game.” She sighs. “Look, I’m not saying he’s definitely a player. I’m saying you don’t actually know him. You know the version of him he shows you during your sessions and team trips. That’s not the same thing.”