15. Ryan #3
"She went home," I repeated.
"She did."
"Because of what she saw."
"Because of what she thought she saw." Paige set her glass down.
"She knows you didn't invite it. She's not irrational.
She also sat there watching a woman put her hands all over you and had to smile and make jokes and pretend she didn't have any feelings about it.
That's awful on its own, even when you know it isn't your fault. "
At the bar, Dee was wiping down the counter in long, even strokes. The music had dropped to a lower register.
"It is my fault," I said. "Not Tiffany. The situation."
Paige looked at me clearly waiting for elaboration.
"The risk will always be there that she’ll keep seeing things like that. Because of what I do, where I go, what comes with it." I turned my glass on the table. "She needs to know that's not—that I'm not that person."
Paige was quiet for a moment.
“Okay,” she said. Not dismissively. She held my eyes a beat and nodded once, slowly.
"I tried to end it fast," I said. "I moved her hands. I told her I wasn't interested—"
"I watched you." Paige nodded. "She knows that too. Up here." She tapped her temple. "The knowing part and the feeling part don't always run at the same speed." She pushed the empty glass aside. "Text her. Don't wait until you're home."
I pulled out my phone immediately.
Ryan: I'm sorry about tonight. There was nothing to see—I need you to know that.
I sent it. Paige watched me do it, nodded once, and stood up to find her jacket.
Paige got up to leave and gave me a pat on the shoulder. “She’ll be okay.” Then she headed out, leaving me there alone at the table.
Griffin nudged my shoulder. "You good? You've been quiet."
"Long week," I said.
"You should've let Tiffany fix that." Griffin grinned at his own beer. "Blow off some steam. She was into you."
I shook my head. "Go for it if you want. She's all yours."
"She wanted you."
"She wanted a hockey player with a nice apartment." I turned my glass. "Didn’t matter who it was. I've been there. It gets old." I nodded in the direction of Tiffany who was now talking to Kasperi.
Griffin looked at me sidelong, somewhere between amused and caught off guard. "Since when?"
I shrugged. "Go have fun, Griff."
Griffin studied me for another second, then laughed and shook his head and pushed back from the table before making his way toward the dart board. I watched him go.
I'd meant it. I had been there. The early years, the road trips, the women who wanted a hockey player and didn't particularly care which one.
It had been fine. Easy. Uncomplicated the way empty things always were.
I'd grown out of it and I hadn't missed it.
Especially not since Maren came back into my life.
The problem was Tiffany had appeared anyway.
Because I was the captain of a professional hockey team and that was always going to be true, and there would always be another Tiffany in another bar on another random day, and Maren had sat six feet away through all of it with a smile on her face and no way to say a single word, and I hadn't been able to do a thing about it from across a table.
That was my fault. The situation. The secrecy that made the situation impossible to navigate.
I needed her to know that. Not by text. In person, tonight, looking her in the face. Panic was setting in and my need to fix the situation was taking over.
Cole dropped into the chair Paige had vacated. The bar had thinned out. Eli was already gone. Theo was putting on his jacket.
Cole sat with his forearms on the table and said nothing for a moment, which made me glance over.
"She sat through that whole thing," Cole said.
"I know."
He tilted his head slightly. "You really like her."
I gave him the smallest possible nod.
"Saw where she sat at the game," he said. "Four rows off the glass. That's the player’s seats."
I didn't answer.
"I only looked up there because you did." Cole turned his glass a quarter turn on the table. "Twice."
Cole let out a breath. "Okay, I know it’s not my business.
" He held a hand up to stop me from interrupting.
"You want to know what's wild? I genuinely cannot figure out how Griffin hasn't clocked this.
You two are not subtle. Every time she says something you do this…
this thing. Where you catch a glance or something with her.
" He made a barely perceptible gesture with his eyes.
"And she does it back. It's been happening since September.
The man reads everything on the ice. Off it, apparently, not so much. "
"Cole." It was a warning.
"I'm not asking for details." He looked across the bar to where Griffin was collecting darts, laughing with Theo, completely unguarded. "There are two ways he finds out, Lindy. One of them he can work through. The other one—" He shook his head. "Don't let it be the other one. That's all I've got."
He stood, clapped me once on the shoulder, and went to say goodnight to Griffin.
I checked my phone. Nothing. Time to go.
Phoenix at night in November, that strange warm dark, the absence of cold I kept waiting for and that kept not coming.
Text her, Paige had said. I had.
I checked my phone one more time. Still nothing. Screen dark, the message sitting there unanswered.
I put the car in reverse and turned toward Scottsdale anyway.