by Avery Flynn
“She—uh—took the check when I went up to the restaurant yesterday. My instructions were very clear—”
“I thought my instructions were clear.” Anders crossed his arms over his chest to stop himself from throwing Motz out of the window right now. “You weren’t going to say anything. You were going to pretend that you didn’t see what you saw.”
“But the rest of the team—”
“The rest of the team isn’t going to pay for you to put your fucking face together after I’m done with it.”
“You can’t do that!” Motz looked terrified. Good. He needed to be scared because, unless the next words out of his mouth were “just kidding,” he was going to be carrying the Cup to the next player while wearing a full-body cast.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t rearrange your face, and have my agent call the League with this shit.”
“She took the check.”
All the anger he was ready to pummel into Motz’s now-smug face raced around his body until he was looking around the room for something to throw. His gaze landed on the Cup, and Edwin put his body in front of the trophy. Probably a good fucking idea.
Nothing made sense. Dahlia had told him she didn’t want the money. But she needed it. And sometimes need trumped morals. She was dying on the vine here, tending bar instead of cooking. All he could taste now was bile, but he couldn’t forget the pure joy in the food Dahlia prepared.
After last night, he couldn’t believe she’d slept with him for money. If it was just for the money, she wouldn’t have come to him last night. He shook his head.
“She really took the check, Sorenson.” Motz put his hand on his shoulder, and Anders sneered at him. “I know you’re new at this whole girl thing, but sometimes bitches be triflin’.”
He had to be fucking kidding. He didn’t have anything better to do than probability modelling about the shape of Anders’s dick, and he thought he could give him advice about girls. He might not be the prolific fuckwad that some of his teammates were, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t trust his own gut. His gut had told him to lower his defenses and let Dahlia in, but apparently he was wrong.
He did need to be alone to sort this out without some smug fuck trying to give him advice.
“Get the fuck out.” Edwin dropped his hand and backed up to the door, taking the Cup with him.
When he was alone again, he grabbed his phone. Since Edwin had been there, he’d received multiple notifications about a blog post entitled, Pro Hockey’s Only Virgin Loses It! Now that he knew that his secret was out, he clicked on the link.
Fuuuuuuuucccccckkkk. There were pictures of him and Dahlia at the Temperance. They’d gotten witness accounts of them meeting. One of those assholes from the first night must have agreed to be interviewed because the article speculated that this was a long-term thing, and Dahlia was his “secret mistress.”
Grim certainty settled into his bones. She had set him up from the beginning. Growing up here, she had to at least be aware of hockey. She’d read the original Deadspin article and decided that Anders was the solution to her problems almost as soon as he sat down at her bar.
Along with the resolution that he’d been fooled, embarrassment raced through him. Just because she looked different didn’t mean she was more noble or more interested in him than any of the puck bunnies. They simply had more chemistry.
And, idiot he was, he’d tried to spin chemistry into a future. If his teammates could see him now, they’d face plant on the ice from laughing so hard. Anders Sorenson—no longer a virgin, now a needy chick.
She’d betrayed him, but he wasn’t going to confront her. No, that would only give her the chance to spin some bullshit in hopes of staying on the gravy train. Hell, if she’d come to New Orleans during the season, she’d have gotten on TV. Dating him for a season might have even been good for a hosting gig.
A small part of him thought he should give her a chance to explain. Maybe his gut hadn’t been wrong, and it wasn’t her behind the bounty. The way something had clicked into place in his chest when she was around wasn’t nothing.
Still, he pushed his doubts away. He needed to be with someone he could trust, and too many signs pointed to Dahlia being behind the blog post.
As fast as he could get his rental car packed up, he was gone. Unwilling to face any of her relatives, he didn’t check out at the desk. He needed to put as much distance between him and Dahlia Clarno as possible. He could only hope that she hadn’t taken any nudes while he’d been sacked out last night.
The farther away he got, the more burning raged in his chest. He felt like a piece of him was being ripped out the closer to Minneapolis he got.
Any piece he lost to Dahlia, he would have to sack the fuck up and grow back.
11
The bar was still open that afternoon and Dahlia still had to work even though Anders had left without a word. Dahlia’s uncle was back in the kitchen and she had to deal with people who weren’t kitchen staff, which didn’t bode well for her afternoon.
She’d learned he was gone after her mother called her, bitching about how complicated it was to settle a bill when a guest didn’t check out. It took about five minutes before she realized that her mom was talking about Anders. At first, she’d try to convince herself that he had some hockey-related emergency that required him to leave without checking out. He would have texted her something when he hit a rest stop, or when he got to the airport if he had any intention of keeping in touch. If last night had meant anything, he would have called, wouldn’t he?
But when her notifications were mostly silent all day, she realized that something must have gone wrong. Maybe he had second thoughts? Now that he wasn’t a virgin anymore, perhaps he didn’t want to be tied down to one woman. Especially if that one woman was her. What if he’d woken up that morning and realized he didn’t want her anymore? Maybe puck bunnies, without money or attitude problems, were more attractive now that he didn’t have the stupid bounty to worry about.
Or maybe he’d found out about her taking the check and hadn’t waited around to hear her explanation.
She knew that this was likely to happen sooner or later, but she hadn’t expected it that morning. When she crept out of his room earlier that day, she’d expected them to text back and forth for a few weeks, be unable to figure out a time for her to visit that would work for both of them. And then, the whole thing would taper off until they were each a fond and faded memory.
Now the memory would have to fade a lot faster. And it didn’t help that the dudes at the end of the bar insisted that some hockey show play. The last thing that Dahlia needed to hear was about how Anders would be going back to the game he loved and leaving her behind.
She’d never had this feeling before, like her chest was hollow because she wouldn’t get to see his face again. She already missed how he furrowed his brow, and the way he flattened his lips when something bothered him almost as much as she missed the way his skin felt running along hers.
Why had she taken the check? She should have shoved Motz out of the restaurant that instant, but a part of her had known that Anders was going to leave. And a part of her had known that the money was better than nothing. That’s the only reason why the check was still in her pocket.
Although she’d blocked out whispering about herself shortly after she was assaulted in high school, she couldn’t help but perk up at the talk about Sorenson and Clarno on the television. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that she would ever see her face on SportsCenter. But she looked up, and there was a picture that someone had gotten from a magazine article about her defunct restaurant, posing in her chef’s jacket.
She didn’t get to the remote fast enough to turn off the sound and stop anyone else in the bar from noticing. She felt her entire body go lobster red from the attention on her. The seed of humiliation she always felt in her hometown grew and threatened to consume her. Since she was a teenager, her sexuality had been a problem that
other people thought was their business. Sleeping with Anders Sorenson had made that problem blow up.
And now she had a choice. She could do what she’d always done: put her head down, work hard, and hope that something she made in the world overshadowed who she had sex with. Or, she could hold her head up high and push back.
When she looked around the bar to see what she was up against, she saw her cousin, looking concerned. She also clocked the guys that Anders had beat up that first night in the bar, laughing at her.
That was the last draw. Even if Anders was thoroughly done with her, it was her life, and it wasn’t something that these fuckheads should feel free to laugh at.
Dahlia straightened her spine and felt the steel—the metal she’d been known for running her kitchen with—fortify her muscles and bones as she walked over to the end of the bar. Out of the corner of her eye, she felt Lilly’s readiness to jump in and smooth things over kick in. Dahlia shook her head slightly, and her cousin stayed back.
She didn’t miss the fact that a couple of people had pulled out their phones and were taking pictures or filming her. They could take all the pictures or videos they wanted. Maybe one of them would find its way to Anders and he would know the truth. She didn’t believe for a second that anything she did or said now would change his mind about them together, but she wanted him to know the truth.
“You do get paid for it, then?” Those were brave words for someone with two black eyes from the last time he called her a whore.
“You know, you’ve been making jokes about who I get down with and how for years now. I wonder why that is?” She slapped a towel down on the bar in front of Red Hat so hard he jumped. Coward. “Is it because I would never fuck you?”
He sneered. “I could never afford you.”
“That’s true.” She pulled a glass and poured herself a Surly. If she was going to end up going viral, she might as well have a little buzz on. “But you can’t afford to pay your bar tab, either. And that certainly doesn’t stop you from showing your face here.”
He sputtered as she took a long gulp of her drink. At this point, there were more than a few people watching and filming. She put down her beer and pulled out the check. She opened it up, and made sure Red Hat could see.
His eyes rounded into full-on plates, and he looked like a fucking cartoon character. When she ripped the check down halfway, he reached out like he was going to try to stop her.
As the paper gave way, something inside Dahlia lit up. She might be giving up her ability to leave here immediately, but she was taking her dignity back.
“Anders Sorenson didn’t have to pay me anything to sleep with him. Because you know the difference between him and you?” She didn’t wait for Red Hat to answer, but leaned in close to his face. “He doesn’t need to pay for it.
Then she turned and faced the crowd. “You people are strange and sick that whether or not a guy has had sex before holds this kind of fascination. But, then again, I shouldn’t be surprised. None of you held back when it came to gossiping about an eighteen-year-old girl getting assaulted at prom.”
A few of the crowd had the decency to look shame-faced, but most stared at her slack-jawed.
“Everybody out. Bar’s closed.”
Dahlia wanted to be alone when she started crying about this.
The cold air from the vents in the training room chilled Anders’s skin as he waited for the team doctor and head physical therapist. Since he’d been back in New Orleans for the last week, and thrown himself into training—and resting—his knee felt a thousand times better. Still, waiting for the team doctor to clear him to skate with the rest of the team kicked up the nerves in his system.
His agent seemed nervous, not that him nervous was a huge difference than his agent on a normal day—he paced more while screaming at his assistant over the phone.
When the trainer came back in with one of the team’s doctors, Anders’s stomach turned sour. Doc kept his eyes on the chart, and didn’t meet his gaze. Not a good sign.
He wanted to stand up and walk the fuck out. He didn’t need to hear that his hockey career was over to know what was about to happen. After Dahlia, didn’t he know that he couldn’t trust himself? He might have been feeling better, but that didn’t mean that his knee was healed. It only meant that he was fooling himself again.
“Seems like a distraction was what you needed.” Doc’s words were about the opposite of what he’d expected to hear. “I kept telling you that you needed to rest, and it sounds like laying down and letting that chef have your v-card was the way to do it.”
He didn’t want to burst the doctor’s bubble, but fucking Dahlia hadn’t been restful. He’d gotten rest because he hadn’t been able to do anything but the prescribed PT and training since he’d left her.
“What are you saying?” He thought he’d be elated when he got the all-clear to skate, but he wasn’t sure he was hearing that. Maybe Doc meant that he was “on the road” to recovery, but that he couldn’t get back out on the ice yet.
“I’m saying you’re ready to play again.”
Anders had his career back, but he still didn’t feel the kind of relief he expected. And he knew that part of him still felt empty because Dahlia wasn’t there. Then again, she’d never really been there. She’d all but warned him that she was the kind of girl who looked out for number one. He was the fool who wanted to believe that she cared about him because she didn’t go directly to the press after they slept together.
But she’d taken the check.
“You don’t look happy.” His agent might be a huge dick hole, but he was pretty good at reading people—even Anders.
“I’m happy to be getting back to hockey.”
“Then why do you look like you’ve just seen an animal cruelty video?”
“Are you still having significant pain? The scans are clear, and the swelling is down, but we can take another look,” Doc said.
Anders stood up and turned towards the exit. “The knee feels fine. Finally.”
“Is it about the girl?” Sam wasn’t about to leave him alone. “I always liked working with you because I never had to deal with any paternity disputes or mediate between competing puck bunnies.”
“I’m not asking you to do that now.” He didn’t need his agent’s help dealing with Dahlia. It was all about time and distance. He’d get over her as soon as the fact that she’d slept with him for the bounty didn’t loom larger in his head than the fact that he still wanted her.
“I gotta admit, she’s not who I pictured you with.” Sam should shut up if he didn’t want to get a black eye. Even though he and Dahlia were done, Anders still felt like he needed to protect her. He was more fucked than he thought if he still wanted to break someone’s face for talking smack about her.
“Don’t talk about her.” He stopped and turned to Sam, barely stopping himself from grabbing a fistful of his agent’s ten-thousand-dollar suit and pushing him against the wall.
“You saw the video?”
“What video?”
“The one where she tore up the check.”
“She what?”
Sam pulled out his phone and cued up a video of Dahlia behind the bar, confronting the dumb fuck in the red hat who Anders had put down the night they’d met. The sound was shit, but she got in the guy’s face and tore up the check. Conflicting emotions filled his chest—pride that she stood up for herself, anger that she had to, shame at his own unwillingness to take a minute and listen to her instead of jumping to conclusions.
“She tore it up.”
“Yeah,” Sam said as though Anders had gone daft. “I mean, it could still be a publicity stunt. Maybe the check was fake.”
He watched the video again and again. Every time, he looked for something that indicated that her anger wasn’t genuine, that it was staged. But it wasn’t, and he was in the wrong for not staying until she could explain. And he watched it again because he needed to look at her. The fact that he coul
dn’t touch her right now tore at his gut.
He wanted to celebrate his clean bill of health with her. After that, he wanted to kiss her everywhere, and he wanted to wake up knowing that she’d be there the next morning. He didn’t just want her to visit, he needed her to stay.
But he had no idea how to make that happen.
“You’re really hung up on this one, aren’t you?”
“I’m in love with her.”
“You know that’s crazy, right? You have lost time to make up for, and plenty of hockey-loving, complication-free pussy waiting for you in the parking lot.”
It might make him a weirdo, but he didn’t want to sow wild oats. He didn’t want anyone but Dahlia. She was the only brand of distraction he would ever need.
“You still have a company plane at your disposal?”
12
Dahlia never thought her family would force her into doing a local television segment. First of all, there was the purple hair. Throw in the viral video and her recent infamy on professional hockey blogs, and she expected her mom to encourage her to hide in her childhood bedroom forever.
But her uncle had decided that she would be the best person to represent the resort during their push for reservations during “Fall colors,” which appeared sometime between September 1 and October 1. They were fleeting, but the resort made a ton of money from hikers and couples looking for a romantic place to get married or take engagement pictures. They were fully booked, even midweek, and Dahlia agreed to do a short cooking segment on a local morning show for the Minneapolis network affiliate because she needed to get away.
Every time she came across a couple kissing on the boardwalk or hiking the Temperance during her daily run, she wanted to throw up. Now that she’d stopped tolerating bullshit from the assholes she went to high school with, she wasn’t about to go piling it on herself. She missed Anders, and she was woman enough to admit it.
