A Lie for a Lie

by Hunting, Helena

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?” I glance over at the information desk, where three girls are huddled together, watching us.

  “I can’t—I’m in the middle of a shift.” She takes another step toward a door that reads STAFF ONLY.

  “What about when you get off? We could meet for coffee somewhere close by?” I realize how inappropriate the first part sounds after it’s out of my mouth.

  Either she doesn’t notice, or she pretends not to. “I can’t. I’m busy.”

  “It’s been a year, Lainey. I tried to call when I got to LA, but you never picked up. All I want is the chance to talk—at least give me that.”

  “There was a storm. A tree took out the phone lines and all the power. Even the generator didn’t work.” Her rigid stance wavers, and her bottom lip trembles.

  That explains why the phone just kept ringing and ringing and eventually all I’d get was a click and a dial tone, but she could’ve left me with a way to get in touch with her. “I didn’t know about the phones. Why didn’t you leave me a way to contact you?” I take a step forward for every step she takes back.

  She blinks, confused. “I did. I left a note with my phone number and email.”

  My stomach twists with this news. I’d considered going back to Alaska after LA, but things had been so difficult with Max’s birth, there hadn’t been time. “I didn’t find one when I went back this summer.”

  “I left it in your bedroom. And maybe it was a good thing you didn’t find it, considering you’re a liar.” Her chin trembles, and her hands flutter in the air before she clasps them together in front of her.

  I was in such a rush that morning, worried about my brother and Joy and the baby, wishing I’d done things differently with Lainey. I didn’t even think to leave her my cell. “I made a mistake—granted, it was a big one. I just . . . you didn’t recognize me. I didn’t think . . . can I give you my number now? I get that this is a lot to take in, and maybe you need time to think? I can give you that, but please, at least give me a chance to explain.”

  She shakes her head, but she pulls her phone out of her pocket, keys in the pass code, and hands it over to me. I quickly add myself as a contact before she can change her mind. Then I send myself a message to make sure I have her number before I hand it back.

  I don’t know what to do with my hands, so I shove them into my pockets. “Can I call you later so we can set up a coffee date?”

  She holds her phone to her chest, eyes darting to the STAFF ONLY door and then to the group of women gathered by the information desk before coming back to me. There’s no warmth, just wary mistrust. “I don’t even know you. Why would I go on a date with you?”

  “Don’t say that. You know me, Lainey. The only thing you didn’t know about was my job. That’s it.” I take another step toward her, but she shakes her head and backs away.

  “That’s it? It’s not a little lie, RJ. You told me you were an alpaca farmer instead of telling me you were the captain of a professional hockey team. That’s kind of a pretty huge detail to leave out, don’t you think?” Her voice shakes, whether with anger or another emotion I can’t be sure, but she looks as if she’s on the verge of tears, and I hate that I’m the one who did that to her.

  The door behind her opens. “Lainey? Sorry to interrupt, but I need your help with the otters. Ollie keeps trying to make moves on all the female otters, and you’re the only one who seems to be able to control him when he’s like this.”

  “Of course. I’ll be right with you.” I don’t like how relieved she seems by the interruption. She spares me another wary glance. “I have to go. Take care of yourself, RJ, if that’s even your name.” She spins on her sneakered heel and speed walks away from me.

  Even in the awful beige pants her ass looks fantastic, which is a terrible thing for me to notice or focus on.

  I take my hat off and run my hand through my hair, cursing under my breath. What are the chances that I’d run into her here, of all places? That she would end up in my city? At least I know where she works, and I have her number. Now I just have to work on getting her to agree to talk to me.

  I head back to the party, take part in the team photo, and watch fifteen kids from newborn to six years old turn a room upside down faster than a bunch of drunk frat guys on a bender.

  Alex steps up beside me and sips out of a red cup. “You all right?”

  “Yeah.” I nod, even though I’m probably the furthest thing from all right. For a few minutes I was ecstatic. Now I’m confused, disappointed, and freaked out. I just want to sit Lainey down and make her hear me out. And I want to understand what the hell happened to the note she left and why it wasn’t there when I went back this summer.

  I was pretty sure I was falling in love with her, and I figured it was mutual. One minute she was the center of my world, and the next she was just gone.

  “I’m gonna call bullshit, Rook. Wanna tell me what’s going on with the tour guide?”

  “Lainey. Her name is Lainey. And we had a . . . thing a while back.” I’m being vague, mostly because explaining this sucks. I’ve never told anyone the full story about what happened with her.

  “She doesn’t really seem like your usual type, or what used to be your usual type, anyway.”

  I nod in agreement. “You’re right about that.”

  Alex looks around and slips a flask out of his pocket. “You look like you could use a shot.”

  I lift a brow.

  He motions to the screaming gaggle of children, players, and wives. “I know you’re here because you’re the team captain and you want to make a good impression on your teammates, not because you love spending your Saturday afternoon with a bunch of screaming kids. Add in whatever’s going on between you and the tour guide, and you definitely deserve a drink. Besides, I figure this’ll get you to talk. Can’t keep it all bottled up forever, Rook. I know the last couple of years have been intense.”

  He has a point. I hold out my glass of lukewarm soda. I’ll leave my car here and pick it up in the morning if I need to. And based on how things are going, I have a feeling a lot of alcohol will be involved in the rest of my evening.

  “So, tell me what’s going on with the tour guide.”

  I drain half the cup in one gulp. “I met her on Kodiak Island last summer.”

  He’s in the middle of a sip and cough chokes. “That’s the girl from Alaska? I thought you said she was from Washington. What’s she doing here? Don’t tell me you have another stalker.” The year before I took over for Alex as captain of the team, we got pretty close, mostly because he took me under his wing and mentored me. At the time I didn’t realize he was grooming me to take his place. Since then we’ve stayed pretty tight.

  “Yes, she’s the girl from Alaska. Yes, she’s from Washington. She got offered a job here and took it, and I’m pretty sure she’s not stalking me.”

  “How can you be sure? I mean, you’re not that hard to find.”

  “She wasn’t big on technology.” I scrub a hand over my face. “And I never told her I played professional hockey.”

  “Too busy getting busy to be bothered with the chitchat?” Alex asks.

  “No. Well, I mean yeah, there was lots of . . . sex, but that wasn’t what it was all about.”

  “So how is it that you being a professional hockey player never came up?”

  “I might’ve lied about where I lived and what I did for a living.” I mumble it quickly and drain my cup. I could use another drink. Or just downing whatever is left in his flask.

  “Why lie?”

  “She didn’t recognize me, and she wasn’t into hockey. You know how it is with bunnies. They’re just in for the fuck and the ride, right?”

  “But she’s not a bunny, so I’m not getting why it would matter then.” He looks confused more than anything.

  I sigh, aware explaining my rationale isn’t going to be easy. “I wanted to be normal for a few weeks.”

  Violet squeezes her way b
etween us, snatches Alex’s cup, sniffs it, and raises an eyebrow. “Seriously, Alex? You better be careful how sauced you get. Your parents said they’d have a sleepover in the pool house with Robbie, and you know how I get in my second trimester.”

  Alex grins and bends to whisper something in her ear. She hands him back the cup, turning her attention to me. “I assume you’re coming out for drinks after this shitshow.” She motions to the table of children shoveling cake into their mouths.

  I rub the back of my neck. “Uh, we’ll see.”

  “Rook’s trying to hook up with the tour guide,” Alex supplies.

  Violet grins knowingly. “You mean the poor woman who was trying to hide that huge dolphin dick?”

  “That’s the one,” Alex replies.

  She gives me a light punch on the arm. “My respect for you just went up a few notches. I had no idea you were into the nerdy chicks.”

  “She’s not nerdy,” I say defensively.

  Violet gives me a look. “Uh, she knows an insane amount about aquatic animals and can rhyme off statistics like a Beat poet. Also, as a nerd, I can easily identify other nerds—and she is definitely one. It’s too bad they can’t put her in something other than beige, because she’s also super gorgeous. You should invite her along. Introducing her to your friends will go a long way toward getting you into her pants—if that’s your plan, anyway.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not? When was the last time you went out with someone, Rook?” Violet looks like she’s about to start in on me about dating. It wouldn’t be the first time in the past year.

  At one point Violet and the rest of the girls mentioned setting me up with one of Poppy’s massage therapist friends I’d been interested in back when I first came to Chicago. But I wasn’t in the right headspace, and I didn’t want to make things awkward or mess up a friendship if things didn’t work out.

  “Nerdy tour guide is the Alaska girl from last summer.” Alex passes me the flask behind her back.

  “Wait, what? She’s Alaska girl? That’s so awesome!” Violet jumps up and down once with excitement. It quickly turns into a grimace, and she grabs on to her boobs. I look away because Violet, for being as small as she is, has a huge rack, and she’s currently wearing a shirt that shows off a significant amount of cleavage, and all the jumping and self-groping only draws more attention to it. Also, I don’t want Alex to catch me looking.

  “Yeah, I don’t know if awesome is how I would describe this situation.”

  “Why not? It’s like fate.” She grabs Alex by the shirt and tips her head back so she can look up at him. “Just like when you accidentally let your nerd hang out when you mentioned how I was reading Fielding at a hockey game. My beaver took the reins that night.”

  He gazes down at her, wearing a half smile, all the fucking love in the world oozing out of them like freaking rainbows. Actually, I think he might be looking down her top. “Best damn night of my life.”

  I’m about to ask them if they want some privacy, but Violet returns her attention to me. “You have to go talk to her.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Of course it’s that simple. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Apparently he lied about his job,” Alex tells her.

  Violet frowns. “Why would you do that?”

  I shrug. “Because I’m an idiot. She didn’t know who I was, and it was kind of nice being a regular guy for a few weeks, you know what I mean?”

  “So what kind of job did you tell her you have?”

  “I told her I was an alpaca farmer, which would’ve been true if I didn’t play professional hockey.”

  Her frown deepens. “That’s an oddly specific lie.”

  “My parents were alpaca farmers.”

  Her nose wrinkles. “Really. How did I not know that?”

  “It doesn’t come up much in conversation, I guess?”

  “Okay, so you lied about your job—no big deal, right? Unless you lied about something else?”

  I scrub a hand over my mouth and mutter, “My name.”

  “I’m sorry, did you say your name? Why lie about that?”

  “Well, like I said, she didn’t recognize me, and it wasn’t like I made up a fake one. I just gave her my nickname instead.”

  She blinks a few times. “You told her your name was Rookie?”

  “No, I told her it was RJ, which is what my dad always called me and what my brother and sister still call me now. So it wasn’t totally a lie. I mean, my name is pretty uncommon. Shit. I handled this all wrong, and now she’s going to look me up and see all the bunny crap.”

  “So was it just that you didn’t want her to know you used to let the puck bunnies use you like their personal dildo?”

  “No. That wasn’t it. I mean, now it’s obviously going to be an issue, but I just wanted to be normal for a few weeks. And now she knows I lied to her about my job and my name, so I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want anything to do with me. And even if she’s willing to talk to me, once she realizes what else I’ve left out she’ll probably never want to speak to me again.”

  This fuckup is on me. I kept putting off telling her the truth, maybe in part because I hoped that if she fell for me the way I fell for her, by the time I finally told her what I really did for a living, it wouldn’t matter.

  “Well, that’s a complication, since you’re still obviously hung up on her.”

  “Yeah. I have her number, though, so that’s good, right?”

  “If she’ll answer your calls, sure,” Alex says.

  “And what happens when she finds out about my personal relationship history?”

  “You mean that you used to be a manwhore?” Violet asks.

  “Yeah. That.”

  Violet puts a hand on my shoulder, her expression serious. “If it’s meant to be, she’ll get over it—as long as you didn’t give her some kind of lasting STD as a gift.”

  CHAPTER 14

  WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW . . .

  Lainey

  Eden’s disembodied head appears in the doorway of the observation room. She’s the reason I have this job. We grew up homeschooled in the same community, but when she became a teenager she went to a local school and then went on to attend regular college. We still stayed close and even managed to keep in contact when she moved to Chicago a couple of years ago, despite my not being on social media.

  When things got a little crazy with my family after I returned from Alaska, Eden suggested I come out for a visit. Since I’d already braved a plane before, I decided I could do it again. Also, my parents were back to smothering me, especially since I came home brokenhearted. My mother never outright said I told you so, but it was implied. Often.

  I went for a weeklong visit, fell in love with the aquarium, and a couple of months later returned, this time with a job and an apartment.

  “Hey. I figured I’d find you in here.” Eden lets the door close behind her.

  “It’s peaceful.” I turn off the tablet clutched in my hands, almost glad for the break from yet another distressing article I’ve stumbled upon.

  “Researching again?”

  “Something like that. Am I needed up front?” Occasionally I’ll have to work at the information desk. I don’t mind talking to people one-on-one, especially when they’re asking about the animals.

  She leans against the door. “I’d stay put for right now.”

  “He’s back again, isn’t he?” I fold my hands in my lap to keep from wringing them.

  “Yeah. He’s back again.”

  It’s been over a week. Nine days, actually. Nine long days since RJ—otherwise known as Rook Bowman, captain for Chicago’s NHL hockey team and apparently quite the notorious playboy, according to the many, many accounts on the World Wide Web—dropped back into my life.

  Since then he’s stopped by the aquarium every single day. He’s also called and texted daily and has taken to sending me rather extravagant g
ifts. Well, extravagant by my standards, but I’ve also discovered that his salary is a staggering eleven and a half million dollars a year, so the hundreds he’s likely spending on ostentatious flower arrangements and gift baskets is similar to tossing a handful of dollar bills into the air and watching them fall like snow into a pit of lava—or the mouth of a shark.

  “He seems really . . . apologetic,” Eden offers.

  I give her a hard look. “Not you too.”

  She crosses over to sit beside me on the bench. The seals swim by, unaffected by my anxiety or my slightly morose mood. “I understand that this is difficult, especially because he lied to you, but maybe he had a reason?”

  “I can only imagine what that reason is.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to hear it from him instead of going on speculation?”

  “I don’t need to talk to him, because it’s not speculation, it’s sarcasm—which I know is the lowest form of wit, but I looked him up, Eden. The picture the media paints isn’t very pretty.” I open the article again and pass her the tablet.

  Eden points to the date. “This article is old.”

  “There are more recent ones.”

  She arches a brow. “How recent?”

  I focus on the happy seals. “From a couple of years ago. It doesn’t matter. He lied.”

  “Probably because he was worried you’d react like this,” Eden says softly. “I understand you’re upset, but don’t you think he deserves—”

  “Do not say it, Eden.”

  She sighs and puts her arm around my shoulder. “All of these rumors you’re so focused on are old news. I know you’re scared, but you can’t avoid him forever, and you know it. And you’ll never know if he’s really just a lying asshole with a pretty face and rock-star moves in bed if you don’t at least sit down and hear what he has to say.”

  “I never thought I was going to see him again,” I whisper, fighting tears. “And I just started seeing someone.”

  Eden makes a face. “You mean Walter? That guy in your building?”

  “He’s nice.” And he is nice. He works in IT; he’s quiet, likes Italian food, has a cat named Sam—and he’s kind. He also knows about my circumstances and hasn’t bailed, which is saying something, since I’m kind of a huge mess. The last time we went out he kissed me good night. Like him, it was nice. No fireworks or shooting stars, but it wasn’t unpleasant either.