by Elle Kennedy
I can’t help but snort out a laugh. “How I feel about anything is irrelevant, as far as he’s concerned. It’s all about appearances.”
“You could try. If you don’t put down some boundaries for yourself—”
“Let it go.” It comes out more forceful than I intend, and I feel Hannah recoil. I draw her closer, quickly brushing my lips over her soft hair. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to snap. Trust me when I say if I thought talking to him would help, I would’ve done it a long time ago.”
“No, I get it.”
“He doesn’t care what I have to say. That’s why he traps me like that, corners me at parties with plenty of witnesses. He knows if I snub him, it becomes a story. A story that embarrasses me as much as him when it shows up in the press the next morning.”
Hannah grumbles with indignation. “I just hate seeing how much he gets to you. He shouldn’t get to have that power.”
“I know, babe.” I cling to her, because having her warm body curled against mine does a lot to chase the uglier thoughts out of my head. “And I really do appreciate you being there for me tonight. I couldn’t have gotten through it without you.”
“I’ve always got your back.” She kisses my jaw then settles back into my arms.
Minutes later, an hour, I don’t know, I’m still awake. Still staring at the dark ceiling and grinding my teeth as it all plays back in my mind. How smug he is, parading me around for his friends. Not an ounce of shame for what he did to me. To my mom. Not the smallest drop of remorse. What kind of man can be such a shameless bastard?
“Can’t sleep?” Hannah whispers. I don’t know what wakes her up, or if she ever fell asleep.
“I’m fine,” I lie, because there’s no sense keeping us both up all night.
She doesn’t listen, though. Never does, this stubborn, beautiful woman of mine.
Instead, her fingers trace the lines of my chest and down my abdomen. My muscles clench at the teasing sensation. I grip her tighter around the waist when her hand pushes my plaid pajama pants down to stroke me.
I’m hard the second she touches me.
“You don’t have to,” I whisper.
“That’s cute.”
“Not like I’m saying not to.” I smirk in the dark. It’s like when a friend offers to pick up the tab at dinner. It’s polite to refuse the first time.
Hannah pushes the covers back and drags her tongue up my shaft. I grip the sheets, biting my lip at the feel of her mouth on me. No sense arguing with her once she’s got her mind made up, after all.
When she reaches the tip, she presses an open-mouthed kiss on it and I nearly explode right then. I breathe in through my nose and silently order my dick to cooperate.
“Go slow,” I tell her. “I won’t last otherwise.”
“Figured.” And then her tongue comes out to gently circle the head of my cock. Slow and deliberate. A lazy, torturous exploration. I feel the tension ease from my shoulders. All other thoughts evaporate while I watch the outline of her going down on me.
With her ass in the air beside me, I squeeze a handful, which makes her work me a little quicker. Her delicate fingers glide up my shaft with each upstroke, then her warm, wet mouth slides down hungrily. Oh fuck. She knows I can’t last long this way. Hannah’s too damn good at this.
“Gonna come,” I choke out.
I feel her smiling around my dick, and that’s the trigger. I go off like a rocket, groaning from the rush of pleasure. She releases me from her mouth and strokes me through the release, as every muscle contracts and the knot in my gut unravels.
I’m out of breath and wiped out when she cleans me off and comes back to bed.
She cuddles up beside me and presses a kiss to my lips. “Better?”
I’m not sure I manage a response before I fall asleep.
I’ve still got a headache from last night and my phone’s blowing up when I throw myself on the couch with a bowl of cereal in the morning. Hannah was gone by the time I woke up. Lately she’s been pulling ten- to twelve-hour shifts at the studio producing an album with some new rapper.
TUCKER: Had a virtual watch party for your big night. We drank every time the camera cut to you picking your nose.
DEAN: Those were some tight pants you were sporting last night. Do they come in men’s sizes?
I roll my eyes at the messages popping up in the group chat. My friends are dicks. In response, I send them a photo Logan took last night, the one of me flipping him off while holding my award in one hand and a fifth of some expensive bourbon he stole from the bar in the other.
DEAN: Seriously, tho. Congrats.
TUCKER: Proud of you.
ME: Thanks, assholes. Really appreciate it.
LOGAN: How come nobody’s congratulating me?
DEAN: Did you win an award?
DEAN: Yeah, didn’t think so.
TUCKER: Better luck next year.
LOGAN: Speaking of my marriage—
DEAN: Not a single person was speaking about that!
TUCKER: Nobody.
LOGAN: Don’t lie. You were all thinking about it.
ME: We were not.
TUCKER: At all.
LOGAN: We’re debating whether this Paris trip is considered a honeymoon. I say yes, because, um, Europe. That’s honeymoon central. But Grace says it’s not because she was already planning on going to see her mom before we impulsively decided to tie the knot. But it’s a honeymoon, right?
DEAN: I’ll defer to Tuck on this one.
TUCKER: Not a honeymoon. Plan something else, you unoriginal bastard.
LOGAN: Uh-huh because a beach vacay is so original.
TUCKER: We almost died in a plane crash and then had a burial at sea for a haunted doll. Try and beat that.
DEAN: You asshole. I thought Sabrina was joking. Did you really throw Alexander in the ocean??
TUCKER: Sure did.
He punctuates that with a smiley face and the preaching hands emoji.
Wow. I wholly approve of someone finally taking the initiative to do what we’ve all wanted to do. Just didn’t expect it to be Tucker. I thought Logan would snap first. Or maybe Allie. But Tuck for the win.
LOGAN: Nice. GRTHR
DEAN: Wtf man. Why you always gotta do that?
ME: Wait, I think I got this.
I stare at the screen, my brain working to decode Logan’s acronym. He and I have a cosmic mental connection. Finally, I hazard a guess.
ME: Good riddance to horrible rubbish?
LOGAN: Close!!! Haunted rubbish.
TUCKER: Gotta go. It’s Daddy & Me day at the indoor playground.
DEAN: Lame.
I drop my phone next to my empty cereal bowl and collapse on the couch. With the post-season over, I’ve got nothing better to do than lie in front of the TV. I’m halfway through the original Jurassic Park trilogy when my agent calls.
“Hey, man. What’s up?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Landon starts, his normally brash tone replaced by a timid one.
“What happened?” A dozen scenarios flash through my head. I’ve been traded. The team is moving. We’ve been sold. Coach was fired.
“I need you to remember I’m obliged to bring you these offers.”
“Just spit it out.”
“I got a call from a producer at ESPN for that show The Legacy,” he says.
“That the one where they’re in somebody’s living room and the guy’s always crying?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s the one.”
“All right. So they want to have me on? I’m not about to bare my soul in front of a fireplace, but—”
“Here’s the thing,” Landon cuts me off. Then he doesn’t keep going.
I sit up and run a hand through my messy hair. This is the sort of opportunity that could raise the profile of my brand as an athlete, as Landon always put it. It’s the kind of thing we hoped would come along after the NHL Honors. Yet something’s off.
“Dude, what?” I d
emand. “You’re worrying me.”
“They want you and your dad.”
“Fuck off.” I bark out a humorless laugh.
“Hang on. Hear me out.”
Landon starts talking fast, explaining how they want some sort of then-and-now, father-son story comparing our careers. Which even if I didn’t hate the man sounds like a stupid idea. It’s hard enough growing up in a parent’s shadow. Getting compared to them our entire career isn’t a trope a son wants to play into.
“The angle they’re going for is a ‘where you came from and where you’re headed’ story. Throw some old family photos up there. You as a kid. On the pond where your dad taught you to skate. Then breaking records as a pro. That type of thing. It’s a two-hour segment.”
“Yeah, hell no.”
“Look, I get it,” he says with some sympathy. “You know I get it, G.”
Landon knows all about my history with Phil Graham, although I didn’t disclose it right out of the gate. It got complicated dodging these sorts of requests after I signed my rookie contract, and eventually I had to let him in on the sordid family secrets. Needless to say, the conversation was riddled with awkwardness. It was so damn embarrassing, confessing to my agent that my dad used to beat me. Fucking brutal.
Hannah always says I shouldn’t be ashamed of it, that it wasn’t my fault, I couldn’t have stopped it, blah fucking blah. I love that woman to death, but chicks have a bad habit of turning everything into therapy speak. I know it wasn’t my fault, and I know I couldn’t have stopped it—at least not until I hit puberty and grew bigger than him. Make no mistake, I stopped the hell out of it after that. But it took years to work through all those feelings of shame, all of which come spiraling to the surface each time I have to tell a new person about my history.
I’m tired of reliving it.
My refusal to do this show shouldn’t come as a surprise to Landon, so I wish he’d just take it upon himself to keep this stuff off my plate.
“With that said,” he continues, “I do think you need to consider how it’s going to look if you say no.”
“I don’t care how it looks. That’s your job.” I clench my jaw. “Smiling for a few pictures is one thing. I’ll behave myself and play nice. But I’m not getting in front of some reporter and a TV camera and sitting next to that man for hours, pretending he isn’t a monster.”
“I hear you—”
“Swear to God, Landon. The first time he brings up my mother in the interview, I’d end up slugging him. And then you’d have that to deal with. So why don’t you do one of your little risk assessments and decide which fallout will be worse. Saying no, or beating the shit out of him on TV. Take your pick.”
“Okay. All right. I’ll let them know we have to pass. Tell them you’re not doing press right now. I’ll think of something.”
After I hang up, my temples are throbbing even harder. I reach up to rub them and utter a string of silent expletives. Somehow, I know this is all my dad’s doing. I bet he pitched this idea to the network himself. Or if he didn’t, then he fucking willed the offer into existence. He does it on purpose. To mess with me. To remind me he’s always there, lurking, and always will be.
And it’s working.
35
Hannah
I’ve got about a dozen people in my control room bickering about lyrics while a six-foot-seven dude named Gumby stands over my shoulder.
“You know what all those buttons do?” he asks, watching me do a rough mix of the verse Yves St. Germain just laid down.
“Nope,” I tell him as I punch up the sample track of the violins Nice really liked. “Not a clue.”
“Man, stop pestering the lady,” Patch tells him. He leans back in the rolling chair beside me, teetering on the edge of falling over. “She don’t be trying to tell you how to dress like your mama put your school clothes on layaway in the nineties.”
“Yo, for real, though,” Gumby says. He reaches for one of the faders, and I smack his hand away from my board. “That’s a lot of buttons. How you even learn to do all this?”
Narrowing my eyes, I whisper, “Don’t tell anybody, but I don’t even work here.”
He snorts at me, shaking his head with a smile.
“Y’all get away from her and let the woman do her thing.” Nice, as Yves insists I call him, comes back into the control room from a short break. His rapper name is YSG, but his nickname growing up was “Nice.” Because he was a nice kid. It’s disgustingly wholesome and I love it.
“All good,” I say. “Come give this a listen.”
We’ve been at it since about seven this morning. The kid’s only nineteen, but he’s got a serious work ethic. It’s a big part of the reason we get along so well. Both of us would rather be in the studio, tinkering and experimenting, than just about anywhere else.
I play back what we’ve put down so far on this latest track. His entourage goes silent while they listen, bobbing their heads to the beat. Then those violins come in and Nice whistles, a huge grin spreading across his face.
“Yeah, Hannah. That’s sick right there.”
“What if you lay down some ad libs under it?” I suggest. “Thicken it up a little.”
“I like that. Let’s try it.” Then he pulls out a box from the pocket of his bright yellow jacket. “Got you a little something, by the way. For all your hard work.”
I can’t help but laugh. “I told you to stop giving me gifts!”
This kid gets me “a little something” just about every time I see him. Nice signed a massive recording contract after his single went viral last year. Now he throws money around exactly the way a teenager does when he’s got more than he knows what to do with.
“But I gotta let you know I appreciate you.” His smile is so earnest, I melt in the face of it.
“Dude, you need to get yourself a financial advisor,” I advise. “Put some of that money away for when you’re older.”
“I keep telling my man to get some of that cryptocurrency,” Gumby says.
“Nah, bruh. You know that shit uses as much electricity as it takes to power a whole country for a year?” Nice says gravely. “Screw that.”
Inside my box is a beautiful watch. “This is gorgeous,” I tell him. “But it’s way too expensive. I really shouldn’t.”
“But you don’t want to insult me, so you will,” he says, beaming. “It’s made from recycled ocean plastic. They only produced twenty of these. Elon Musk has three.” Then he pushes up the sleeve of his jacket to show he’s wearing four of them. Two on each wrist. Take that, Musk. “They’re funding the boat that’s pulling the floating garbage island out of the Pacific.”
I shake my head in astonishment. “It’s amazing. Thank you.”
As far as rappers go, Nice is unique. A lot of his lyrics talk about climate change and conservation. Different causes he’s passionate about. He’s legitimately one of the cleverest teenagers I’ve ever met, which comes through in his music and the way he puts rhymes together.
“Hey, y’all know Hannah’s boyfriend won a hockey award last night?” he says to his friends, who are all crammed on the leather couch with their phones out. The kid travels with an entourage.
“Hockey?” Gumby says, glancing up. “Dump him. I can set ya up with my boy on the Celtics.”
“Thank you, but I’m good.”
“How’d it go?” Nice asks.
“It was great. I’m pretty proud of him.” I grin. “Even if his ego is about to become unbearable.”
“You tell him I said congrats. And not to get feeling himself too much.”
Which is a trip coming from Nice. Not that he’s full of himself, but he’s got a lot of diva in him. Some people were just born to be superstars.
We get back to recording, but it isn’t long before I’m not feeling quite right. I shift in my chair. It’s getting hot in here, and there’s a sour taste in my mouth. Oh no. No, no, no. Not here, damn it. But there’s no stopping it. In the middle of N
ice’s chorus, I blurt out, “Gotta pee!” and then dive off my chair. I sprint out of the room, leaving an embarrassing wave of laughter in my wake and Patch remarking, “Lord, these itty-bitty lady bladders, bruh.”
Luckily there’s a restroom less than five yards away. I stand over the toilet for a few minutes, breathing hard, gulping through the waves of nausea. But nothing comes up. It’s been this way for days, and I’ve had about all the fun I can stand.
After I’ve washed my hands and dabbed some cold water on my face, I check my phone to see I have a bunch of missed texts.
ALLIE: Don’t leave me hanging. Did you do it??
I sigh. Allie is my best friend and I love her to death, but she’s starting to drive me nuts. Ever since I told her I was pregnant, she’s been on me to talk to Garrett. Not that it’s a ludicrous course of action or anything. I mean, of course I need to tell the father of this baby that he’s, well, the father of this baby. But I’m starting to feel the pressure and that just makes me queasier.
ME: No. We ran into his dad at the awards ceremony. Wasn’t a good time.
Instead of texting back, she immediately calls me.
I answer with, “Hey. I’m still at the studio so I can’t talk for long.”
“Oh, don’t worry, this won’t take long.” Her tone becomes part scolding, part pity. “Han-Han. When you start eating pickles and a whole red velvet cake on the couch at two in the morning, he’s going to figure it out. You have to tell him.”
“Ugh, don’t mention food.” The thought gets my stomach churning again. “I’m currently in the bathroom trying not to puke.”
“Uh-huh. See? Not drinking and going to the bathroom every ten minutes to pee or vomit is something else he’s going to notice eventually.”
“I know I need to tell him. But it seems like every time I try, there’s some reason not to.”
“And there always will be if you want there to be.”
“Allie.”
“I’m just saying. Maybe you need to ask yourself if you’re stalling for some reason.”
