Puck Love

by Carmen Jenner

  “Sure, let me just phone the front desk for that.” She turns and picks up the phone, speaking into the mouthpiece. I stand and stare out the doors at the snow and the mountain range beyond. It’s hard to believe that just an hour ago, I was curled up with Van, and now I’m here, as alone as I was on the day I met him. Only now, there’s no more running. It’s time for me to face the music. As soon as my manager tracks me down, that is.

  The next morning, I wake late. My head hurts like a bitch, and after inspecting my face in the mirror, I’m glad I decided to press charges. By the time the police had arrived last night, I was a mess. The adrenalin had worn off and I was exhausted. I’d been taken down to the station to file my report and they’d been kind enough to drop me back here at three a.m. I’d showered, put Van’s hoodie back on, and crashed hard. I’d wanted the officers to drop me back on his doorstep, but what could I say to make it better? I’d lied to him, not outright, not to his face, but I’d omitted my messy, fake two-year relationship with Logan, and it had been wrong.

  After a soak in the tub, I throw on Van’s hoodie and order room service, having the concierge bring up the paper and a few items of clothing from the hotel gift shop, too. I have no intention of returning Van’s sweater, but I can’t be seen in it outside of this room after the incident with the paparazzi yesterday. While I push the eggs around my plate, I stare at the headlines on the papers brought up to my room. The tagline on The Canadian Star reads: Nashville sweetheart to puck bunny? How one NHL player brought the Queen of Country to her knees. Another deals a low blow, enjoying a little word play on my number-one Billboard hit: Was she worth it? Luke Bryant broken-hearted over StellVan sleepover.

  “StellVan? Seriously?” I shake my head at the offending paper. “They couldn’t come up with a better name than that?”

  Another shows Van on his front stoop, buck naked, tattooed, and crazy-eyed as he attacks a paparazzo. There are shots of his glorious face and body in action, and once again I’m reminded how formidable a presence he is. I stroke my fingertips over the muscles of his well-defined backside and strong thighs. God, who knew it was possible to miss a man you just met this much?

  The phone rings, and I shove the papers away from me and answer it. The concierge tells me she has a Lana Lambert downstairs demanding to see me. I tell her to let her up, and I sigh as I stare at Van’s picture one last time before throwing the papers in the trash.

  Minutes later, my manager pounds on my door. When I open it, I expect her to start ranting the second she sees my face, but she doesn’t. She frowns, swallows hard, and says, “Oh honey, are you alright?”

  “No, I don’t think I am,” I whisper. Lana engulfs me in a huge hug, and for a beat, I don’t really know what to do other than stand there pondering this embrace. Lana is not a hugger. Not by any means. In fact, in the five years she’s worked for me, I think she’s touched me exactly once, when she shook my hand at our first meeting. She’s something of a germaphobe. That isn’t the only reason the gesture is odd, though. It’s the fact that she isn’t yelling at me. Why isn’t she yelling at me? It’s her job to make sure I adhere to my strict schedule, and she must have been going out of her mind with all the drama my absence created.

  With a sigh, I finally hug her back and then step away from the door. “Please tell me you have my purse, or I may need to use your Amex.”

  “I have it.” She fishes into her enormous handbag and pulls out my purse, passport, and my phone. I stare at that last one as if it might bite me, but I take it from her and set it on the bed. Lana looks around the room, pausing when she sees my room service. She arches her brow, and I can tell it’s because she’s thinking that the Stella Hart she knows doesn’t eat white bread and eggs. She doesn’t drink coffee or juice, and she doesn’t lie around in oversized hoodies belonging to athletes.

  Lana glances at the papers in the trash and pulls the top one out. It’s the one with a naked Van, and to be honest, it’s looking a little worn around the edges for a paper that was only delivered to my room an hour ago.

  Lana gives the picture a onceover and whistles low. “He’s um . . .”

  “Built like a Greek god?”

  “I was going to say an interesting choice. But an athlete, Stella? You know how I feel about dating athletes. They’re a no-go zone for someone like you. Especially man whores like Van Ross.”

  I exhale loudly, blowing a wayward strand of hair out of my eyes. “I know.”

  “Oh, Stella.” She shakes her head. “If I didn’t love you so much, I might have considered dropping you. This has been one hell of a PR nightmare to clean up.”

  “I really made a mess of things, huh?”

  Her expression is mocking. “You think?”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “About the hot hockey player or your career?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, you’re not going to like it, but you schedule a press release, and you grovel.”

  “Right.”

  “There’s no other way around it, babe. Your fans need to know why you ran out on them, and you’ve got to come clean about what happened with the hockey player and Logan. The police report has already been leaked this morning, so at least you have that in your favor. Instead of looking like a cheater, you’re now a battered wife seeking protection in the arms of a fearsome hockey god.”

  “That’s not exactly how it went down.”

  “That’s the story as far as the public sees it. I know it sounds brutal, but honestly, Logan hitting you last night and making such a scene really played the public in your favor. Your Twitter is filled with survivors who support you.”

  “But I’m not a survivor. I’m a fraud.”

  “Honey, everyone in show business is a fraud. Where the hell have you been the last ten years?”

  “I can’t pretend to be something I’m not,” I say. She raises an eyebrow at me, because Lana always did wonder about my virgin status. She’d told me as much. “Not anymore.”

  She folds her arms over her chest. “He wasn’t your first, was he?”

  “No.”

  Her shoulders sag at that news. “Oh boy. How long?”

  “I was seventeen years old.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Nope. Think his name was Brent.”

  Lana pauses a beat, and I can tell she’s already doing damage control in her head. “Who else knows?”

  “Just Van.”

  “Look at you, on first-name basis with the NHL’s biggest playboy,” she says, and the smile she gives me doesn’t look all that different from a shark’s grin. “Our little girl’s all grown up.”

  “He’s not like that.”

  “Oh, honey, do me a favor and steer clear of Googling that boy, will you? The results would give you song-writing fodder for years to come.”

  I frown, because that’s exactly what Van accused me of searching for—“fodder for my songs.”

  I flop down on the bed and hug the pillow to my chest. “Should we organize a conference downstairs? They’ve been really nice to me.”

  “Hell no. We have a two-thirty flight for Nashville out of here. We’ll do this on home turf. That way, we can invite the reporters we call friends.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “Now, go put on some lipstick and clean up, cinder soot. You look like shit.” Lana pulls a Louis Vuitton makeup bag from her purse and holds it out to me.

  “Thanks.” I take the proffered case, fighting back the sting of tears as I make my way the bathroom and quietly shut the door. It doesn’t work. I lean against the wood and cover my mouth as a sob tears free and wracks my body. I desperately want to run again, but all that brought me the first time around was heartache. From now on, I need to be smart and avoid hockey heroes like the plague.

  Something tells me that’s easier said than done.

  I stand before a crowd or reporters. Lana has already schooled me on what topics I can safely discuss. My exhaustion is one, my need
to escape another, and she’s more than happy for me to state that Logan is responsible for the bruises on my face. I’m also allowed to admit that I’ve pressed charges and filed a restraining order against him, but she forewarned me on the dangers of saying too much. She needn’t worry. I won’t give that jackass anymore air time than he deserves. I’m done letting him ride my coattails, and it’s enough knowing that the whole world now understands what kind of asshole he is.

  I step up to the microphone and thank the press for coming, and then I launch into the scripted, public apology that Lana had drummed into me from the time we left the hotel in Banff. A hundred flashes go off, and I try my best to compartmentalize. I attempt to smother the anxiety building within my chest by taking several measured breaths as Lana opens the conference up to questions.

  “Stella, how long have you known Calgary Crushers center Van Ross?”

  “Will you and Van continue a relationship given that you live in different countries?”

  “Is Van as physical in the bedroom as he is on the ice?”

  “What do you think of the moniker is StellVan?”

  “Do you actually enjoy hockey?” On and on their questions go, and I answer them as best I can with reasonably standard responses: not long, no comment, definitely no comment, that name is ridiculous, and yes, I do like hockey—now that I’ve had the chance to watch it while wrapped around my own hockey hero. I leave out that last part.

  One particularly enthusiastic reporter pushes closer to the stage. “Stella, Ryan Gorman for the Nashville Sun. Can you tell me what you and Van Ross were doing before his run-in with the paparazzi on his Alberta property, and why was he naked?”

  I freeze. I completely choke, but Lana steps up beside me turning her megawatt smile on the crowd. “He’s a hockey player. Aren’t they always naked?”

  Ryan continues. “Stella, what do you have to say to your younger fans, the girls who look up to you as a role model for no sex before marriage?”

  “No further questions. Thank you,” Lana says. She takes my arm, attempting to lead me away from the microphone and the crowd of reporters, but I pull away.

  “I made a mistake, and it cost me everything,” I say, desperate to be heard over the commotion of shuttering lenses and reporters shouting my name. “I hurt someone I cared about deeply, and I’m not sure if he’ll ever forgive me, but Van, for what it’s worth. I’m sorry.”

  “Enough,” Lana hisses, and security crowd around and usher me into the waiting SUV as a barrage of reporters shout my name.

  Lana and I are in my living room. I bite my nails as we watch the Stella of a few hours ago answer the inane questions of the reporters on the TV. I look sallow, and despite the heavy makeup on my face, the bruise is only just covered. I don’t want to believe that was intentional, but at the moment, I wouldn’t put it past Lana to request this of my makeup artist.

  “Stella, what do you have to say to your younger fans, the girls who look up to you as a role model for no sex before marriage?” The reporter with the beady eyes and the smarmy grin asks, and his attempt to rattle me hasn’t gone to waste. I look like a deer in headlights as Lana states with her no-nonsense tone of voice that there will be no more questions.

  “I made a mistake, and it cost me everything,” TV Stella says. My heart hammers against my ribcage. Van, please be watching. Please.

  I wait for TV Stella to deliver the next line, but she’s replaced by a chipper reporter. “And there you have it. The reigning queen of country putting the hockey wife-life behind her.”

  Her male counterpart chuckles, and they trade newsreader jokes back and forth on my romance with Van. I get to my feet, flick off the TV and glare at Lana. My chest aches, and dread twists my belly. “They left out the most important part. They cut it, and now he won’t see. You have to ring the station and get me an interview. He needs to know he wasn’t a mistake. I was the one who messed up.”

  Lana pours herself another glass of wine. She’s been pacing my living room this whole time. “Stella . . .”

  “I have to fix this. I have to go back and tell him that it wasn’t true. That they took it out of context.”

  “Stella.”

  “What?” I snap.

  “You can’t go back to Canada. You have a meeting first thing with the label. They want to discuss your future.”

  “My future? What does that mean?”

  “It means that this little stunt with Van could have cost you your career.”

  “Lana, I—”

  “Look, I know this is new for you, and you’re swept up in the excitement of it all, but have you given serious thought to a relationship with this man? He lives in a different country, not to mention how much time NHL players spend at away games and training.”

  “I know.”

  She sighs and rubs her temple as if I’m a petulant child giving her a migraine with my temper tantrum. “He’s not the one for you, honey. He’s just not.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know he’s going to break your heart. Just this morning, three girls talked to the press about Van Ross, and his team mates.”

  “What?”

  “Stella, I don’t know what kind of lines he’s been feeding you, but he’s tarred with the same brush as all pro-athletes, and he’s suicide for your career.”

  “Why? Because a handful of hockey hookers talked to the press? What did they say?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “What did they say?”

  “That Van’s type is sweet and innocent, until it’s not.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning he eats little girls like you for breakfast, chews them up, and spits them out before moving onto the next body who’ll warm his bed.” I reel back as if I’ve just been slapped. Lana sets her wine down with a sigh. “The point is, you’re only going to get hurt in the long run. It’s better that you let the world think that Van Ross was a mistake, one you have no intention of repeating. You have much bigger things to focus on. Throw yourself into gaining back the trust of every fan you let down when you walked away from that arena. Focus on the people who love you.”

  Ouch. That stings like a bitch. Is Lana right? Was I just another conquest to Van? I don’t want to believe that, but maybe I don’t really know him at all. Either way, he made it clear he doesn’t want to see me by forcing me to leave with Logan. Player or not, Lana is right. I need to forget I ever met Van Ross.

  Eager to work out some of my frustrations, I hit the rink early, but when I arrive the coach and the head trainer, Paul, are adamant that I don’t get ice time until I’ve seen a doctor. I wanna hit something, feel the flex of my stick in my hand, and hear the ringing clap of a hard slapshot across the ice in a quiet rink, but instead of joining my team they have me peddling miles on the fucking bike. When the rest of my team heads out onto the ice to practice, I hit the hot tub and sauna, as per Paul’s request.

  I’m in the locker room, fresh from the sauna and pouting, when the team finishes the morning skate.

  Eli sits on the bench beside mine. “Rough break about Stella, eh? You wanna talk about it?”

  I glare at him. “Jesus, does it look like I want to talk about it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then why the fuck are you asking?”

  Eli smiles. “Because she got under your skin.”

  “Yeah, well, now she’s not anywhere, is she?”

  “And you’re going to take that lying down?” He gives me a quizzical look.

  “I don’t see what other choice I have.”

  “Well, you could always go to Nashville. Get traded.”

  “Location isn’t really the problem. She lied to me, man. Besides, my home is here. This is my team.”

  “So, what? Women lie all the time, and you’ll make Nashville your team.”

  I stand up, tired of his bullshit riddles already. I’m not leaving my goddamn team, not for a woman who spent the last three weeks lying to my fa
ce as I shoved my dick inside her. “What the fuck are you doing, man? Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “I’m trying to get you to pull your head outta your ass. Girls like Stella don’t come along every day.”

  “Nope, but puck bunnies do.” I waggle my eyebrows suggestively, but the idea of fucking a bunny leaves a sour taste in my mouth. You could fill a whole rink with bunnies and not one of those girls would measure up to Stella Hart.

  He gets up and shakes his head. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

  I’m done talking, so I pull on my clothes. I’m not sure I want to stay around any longer to suffer through another of Eli’s attempts at sage advice. I’d much rather just get out of here before it can start again, but once my shoes and jacket are on, I don’t make it far before Coach is pulling me into his office.

  I sink down in the chair opposite his desk. The small TV mounted to the wall is on, but the sound is muted. Coach holds a newspaper in his hands and slaps it down on his tabletop. My pixelated bare ass greets me from the front page. I look savage as I hold the piece-of-shit pap by the collar, my fist raised in the air and my face screwed up in anger. I smile, but it quickly disappears when Coach’s face turns puce.

  “What the fuck is this shit? I let you off for a week and you bring me a whole fucking media shitstorm involving you and some country music singer.”

  “Sorry, Coach,” I say, but it’s about as genuine as my ball sack is fresh right now.

  “Sorry? You broke that paparazzo’s nose. I got the league calling for a four-game suspension.”

  “That’s bullshit. I wasn’t even on the goddamn ice.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You know the rules. You break ’em, you fucking do the time, kid.”

  “They were at my house. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Suck it up, princess. That’s your fucking job—you show up, you play the game, and you give me your best. You don’t go beat on a bunch of paparazzo for taking pictures of your pretty little girlfriend while you’re supposed to be resting and recuper-fuckin’-rating.”