Hat Trick (Blades Hockey Book 3)

by Maria Luis

  No, I’m desperate to say, I’m breaking up with you because I’m broken.

  Dramatic, maybe. Coming from anyone else, I’d readily call bullshit. But standing in my shoes as I am? I hear nothing but my mother talking about her shitty husbands, see nothing but the string of men who left me with a damn gift card and a pat on the shoulder.

  “You asked me to trust you,” I say, my voice raspy from spilled tears and the sobs threatening to burst out into the open, “and I did. You’ve pushed me to open up, to prove to you that I’m willing to give you my heart. When you asked me to dance at Zoe’s engagement party, I said no because I’ve spent the last year working on myself. Trying to be a better me, a version of myself who trusts easily and lets down emotional walls.”

  My hand curls against my heart, as though I can possibly stop it from breaking. “I trusted you today when it would have been all too easy to believe what the tabloids reported. I came here for you, to show you how much I love you.” Voice cracking with emotion, I add, “But when push comes to shove, I can’t take the final step.” I’m too much of my mother. “Somehow, I’ll hurt you or you’ll hurt me, and I can’t do it.”

  I can’t be my mother in her bed for days on end, crying after another husband files for a divorce.

  I can’t be the girl who sought affection from anyone and everyone, begging for scraps of love, and who didn’t even know how to love herself.

  I can’t be the woman I am today, staring at a man like Marshall Hunt and breaking his heart because I’m terrified to let my icy armor melt for good.

  “So you’re going to run,” Marshall says without heat. He doesn’t shift closer, and his expression is blank and unreadable.

  A tear slips over the crest of my cheek. I want to say no, to leap into his arms and snuggle in close, but if I can’t trust him—if I can’t trust anyone—then what good does that do, for either of us? And if a mention of a bet from six years ago sends my progress rewinding faster than I can blink, then I can’t imagine I’m in a place to date anyone . . . not even Marshall.

  “You aren’t your mother”—my gaze flicks to Marshall’s face as he speaks—“and you aren’t your father. You know how to love, Gwen, and you know how to love hard. So I’m going to assume that if you walk out that door, then it’s simply a case that you don’t love me enough to stay.”

  His words burrow like a knife in my side, crippling in their sharpness.

  And then I speak my utter truth, carving open my fears and letting them spill out: “I don’t know if I love myself enough.”

  I don’t think I’m good enough for you.

  I don’t think I’m worthy of your love or your trust.

  Like mother, like daughter.

  I brush past him, head down because I don’t think I can bring myself to make eye contact.

  His footsteps echo on the stone floor behind me. “Gwen—”

  I don’t turn around at the risk of crumpling in a heap.

  “Love is fucking messy, Gwen,” Marshall calls out to me as I step onto his front stoop. “It’s messy and it’s hard and there is no one else in this world that I would rather be in that mess with than you.”

  My chest heaves with a silent cry and I cup my hand over my mouth to reel it in and keep it on lockdown. I fumble for my key fob in my purse, yanking it out and blindly unlocking my car.

  Marshall standing tall and proud in his driveway is the last thing I see before I peel away. I drive until I hit the nearest convenience store, and then I’m in the parking lot. My hands on the steering wheel, my heart warring with my head.

  I’ve done this to myself, and there is no one else I can blame for my heartbreak but me.

  For my entire life, I have done everything in my power to be the opposite of Adaline.

  But blond hair or red, divorced or never-been-wed, I am my mother’s daughter. The mistrust she instilled in me from birth can’t be beaten into submission—and I’ve lost the only man I’ve ever loved because of it.

  I’ve never hated myself more.

  32

  Gwen

  I don’t know what I expect when I go to my mother’s house on Christmas night.

  An elf running around the mansion, at least.

  A hug, at most.

  What I get is an empty house and a note on the front door that reads: Have gone out with Steven. Help yourself to leftovers.

  No signature, no flourish or a heart or even a smiley face.

  “Why are you even surprised?” I mutter to myself as I stare at the note. The longer I stand there, the angrier I become. Ripping the damn thing off the door, I crumple the pink Post-It note into a ball and hurl it into my mother’s dead Chrysanthemum bushes.

  All around me, the houses along my mother’s street are lit with Christmas lights and blow-up lawn decorations and so much holiday cheer that I feel like the Grinch in a pair of knee-high boots.

  You miss Marshall.

  I push away the thought, the self-pity and, more importantly, the self-disgust. With quick steps back to my car, I slide into the driver’s seat and bring up my contact list on my phone. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a bad idea, but I do it anyway.

  Clearly, I’m on a roll with bad decisions lately so I might as well keep them going.

  Pressing CALL, I lean back and stare at my childhood home. And then I wait and I wait and I—

  “I’m with my friends, Gwen,” my mother says in greeting. “Did you need something?”

  No Merry Christmas from Adaline, of course. No I’m sorry I ditched you for dinner or Oops, I’m so sorry I fucked up your head so you can’t even function like a normal adult in love.

  When my silence stretches too long, Adaline presses, “Gwen, I don’t have all day. What do you need?”

  “A mother.”

  I can almost picture her gripping the pearls around her neck. “Excuse me?”

  “I’d rather not. I’ve let you get away with enough excuses over the years.”

  “Gwen Adaline James, if you have nothing nice to say to me then I will hang up this phone right now.”

  I haven’t bothered to turn the car on, and the icy temperature permeates the car so that I see little puffs of air when I exhale. My body, on the other hand, is so heated with anger that I could light up this half of Weston and the other side of town would only see gulfs of flames reaching up above the treetops.

  “I need a mother,” I finally say after I’ve worked up the patience to not immediately spit fire into the phone. “I’ve always needed a mother and instead I had you.”

  “Well, I—”

  I cut Adaline off without a second thought. “You who taught me at a young age that women were spiteful and untrustworthy, that men would only ever want me for what’s between my legs—and that I should give it to them. Whoever wanted it, whenever they wanted it.”

  “It’s called marrying up,” she says stiffly, her nose no doubt brushing the ceiling it’s tipped so far back with indignity.

  “No, it’s called not having any self-worth.”

  “Watch your tone, Gwen.”

  “I will not watch my tone.” The silence in the car thunders in my ears like the greatest deafening stampede there ever was. I have waited years for this moment, for the chance to speak my mind and, Christmas Day or not, I refuse to squander it. “You made sure that I didn’t have a relationship with my dad,” I add, thinking of the forty-two letters I opened this morning and read three times through. “You sent back his letters and let me believe he wanted nothing to do with me. How could you do that? How could you do that to your own daughter?”

  If she’s wondering how I discovered my dad’s letters, she doesn’t say so. Instead, with a decided chill in her voice, she murmurs, “Is that all?”

  My ears pop, I’m grinding my teeth so furiously. “What do you mean, is that all?”

  There’s the sound of fingers tapping on something hard, and then: “It’s a special night for me, Gwen, and I won’t let you ruin it
with your negativity. Now, as I said, is that all?”

  I’d like to pretend that I answer with some modicum of civility. But Civilized Gwen took a hike around the time I broke both my heart and Marshall’s, and all I say is, “Screw you, Adaline.”

  And then I hang up on her spluttering voice.

  Dignified? Not one bit, but it sure does feel good.

  For a moment, I hold onto the hope that she’ll give me a call back and apologize for everything she’s done and hasn’t done for me. I hold onto that hope for about the length of time that it takes for my car’s lights to shut off from disuse until I’m left in the darkness.

  Alone.

  Always, always alone.

  You could have been with Marshall tonight.

  If I hadn’t been an idiot. If I hadn’t carried a lifetime of trust issues and hightailed it the moment the road grew bumpy.

  Before we’d even discussed what truly mattered—Dave and the accusations he’d leveled against Marshall.

  For what feels like the fiftieth time, I scroll through my past texts with Marshall and stare at the one that I’ve left half-written: You frighten me, you know. You frighten me to take a leap of faith into the unknown, where my only safety net is your arms. You frighten me with the realization that I have never trusted another human in my life not to hurt me. I strike out first—

  I stopped writing after that. It all felt like an excuse and I’m done with excuses.

  The truth of the matter is, I panicked. I panicked and I ran, and the blame for our broken relationship can rest on my shoulders exclusively.

  Movement in my rearview mirror catches my attention, and I squint at the mirror. Behind me, at the house across the street, the front door cracks open and light spills out onto the snow. Kids pile out of the house, one after another, as they dart into the front yard and start tossing snowballs at their siblings.

  A couple stands in the doorway, arms wrapped around each other’s waists. No coats from what I can tell, just their combined body heat.

  Without realizing quite what I’m about, I turn on my car and roll down my window so that I can listen even as I keep watching in the rearview mirror.

  “I’ve got you!” one kid squeals. “Bam! Bam! Bam! Triple throw!”

  “Not at the face, Toby,” the mom warns loudly enough that I can hear both the censure and the humor in her voice. “Below the shoulders, remember?”

  “Bam-bam!” Toby shouts, hurling more snowballs like he’s on the pitcher’s mound at Fenway Park. “I’m going to win!”

  I watch as the couple twist their bodies so that their chests touch as their lips brush together in a kiss.

  And I yearn. I yearn with everything that I am to know what that’s like—to have a partner by your side and kids to laugh with, and someone to love unconditionally.

  Loneliness seeps into my bones, whispering hello to the regret already residing there like they’re old friends.

  Take the leap of faith.

  With cold, numb fingers, and my rapidly beating heart, I pull up his phone number and make my second call in the last hour. I wait and I wait and I wait, and then my pulse leaps when the phone clicks on and—

  “Hello, this is Marcus.”

  Marcus? I pull the phone back to stare at the number, just to make sure I called the right one. “Hello?” I say. “I’m sorry, I think maybe I’ve got the wrong phone number? I’m looking for a Marshall?”

  I hear molars grinding like the guy is chewing gum. “No Marshall here, lady. Listen, I got to go, okay? It’s Christmas and I’ve got people over. Have a good one, yada yada yada.”

  There’s an audible click as the call ends.

  My gaze shoots back up to the rearview mirror only to find that the family has moved back into the warmth of the house and the door is shut.

  Locking their love inside where it belongs.

  Meanwhile, I’m sitting in my car on Christmas night with absolutely nowhere to go and no one to see. I don’t want to bring down either Zoe or Charlie’s holiday, and it’s incredibly obvious that Marshall has moved his queen into place on the chessboard.

  Actually, he’s swiped all his chess pieces off the board and removed himself from the game.

  The knowledge burns like hot coals under my feet.

  My phone comes to life on my thigh. Marshall. I swipe it open without glancing at the Caller ID, giddy butterflies coming to life in my belly as I answer. “Marshall.”

  “Not Marshall,” comes a female voice with a laugh.

  Crap. Rolling up the window, I tuck my phone against my shoulder and then rub some warmth back into my fingers. “Holly. I’m so sorry. I thought . . . Well, it doesn’t really matter what I thought. What can I do for you?”

  There’s a small pause before she replies. “Does the offer still stand to hang out today? I’m drinking alone at a bar and I’m not going to lie, it’s mighty damn pathetic.”

  Part of me wants to ask where Jackson is if he’s not with her, but it’s none of my business. “Which bar?” I ask, already backing my car up out of my mother’s driveway. “Any chance you could have a shot waiting for me?”

  “How about a flight of shots?” She laughs into the phone, but the sound is tired and more than a little sad. “It sounds like you might need them just as much as I do.”

  I think of calling Marshall and some random guy named Marcus picking up. If that’s not a sign then I don’t know what it is. “You think one of those will cure a broken heart?”

  “Not sure. But I’m down to give it a go if you are.”

  “Done.”

  Then I think of the couple standing over their suburban kingdom, watching their children play in the snow and the almost reverent way they held each other.

  Marshall is the only man I’ve ever wanted—loved—with all of my being. I want it all with him: kids, the white picket fence, marriage. Not necessarily in that order.

  Don’t ever bail.

  I bailed and I bailed hard, but that doesn’t mean the game is over, right? Sometimes there’s overtime. Sometimes there’s a shoot-out. And sometimes I need to stop thinking about hockey references, even in my own head.

  Foot to the brake, I slow the car as I pull up to a red stoplight. Feeling bolstered by my mental pep talk, I say, “I need a plan.”

  Holly’s momentary silence is interspersed with her asking for another round of drinks. “Good thing you’re a publicist. Planning is pretty much your job description, isn’t it?”

  For the first time since I walked away from Marshall, I grin. It’s small and pathetic but it’s mine and it’s full of hope. “It’s actually my middle name. But I’m bringing it up because I need your help.”

  “Of the cocktail variety?” she asks with just-there trepidation.

  “Of the photography variety, which is your middle name.”

  “I’m drunk.”

  “Even better,” I tell her. “Drunk planning gets way more creative, and if I want to show Marshall that he should trust me again, I’m going to need something elaborate.”

  “Like John Cusack in Pretty in Pink?”

  Something tells me Marshall wouldn’t be impressed with me holding a boom box over my head while playing “In Your Eyes” loud enough to wake his neighbors. Unless I was naked. Maybe.

  “No,” I say finally, “but I have an idea.”

  33

  Hunt

  “If you keep drinking hot chocolate at the rate you are, it’s scientifically proven that you’ll turn into an asshole who breaks his girl’s heart,” Beaumont tells me from across the plane aisle.

  I’m pretty sure there’s no evidence to back up that particular theory, and I don’t bother to correct Andre on the fact that Gwen was the heartbreaker in this situation. Her pain is hers, however, and I’m not the sort of guy who goes running at the mouth and tells the entire world someone else’s personal baggage. It’s easier to let my best friend and the rest of my teammates believe that I’m Douchebag Numero Uno.

&
nbsp; I haven’t seen or spoken to Gwen in two weeks. Christmas and New Year’s Eve went by without a word. I’d promised myself that I would give her the space she clearly needed—nothing good ever comes from pushing a person toward something they aren’t ready for yet. But, damn, it’s been hard to keep my distance. Even harder not to show up at her apartment and demand she see me. If I manage another twenty-four hours without reaching out to her, I’ll consider it a win.

  You could use the excuse that your phone was stolen.

  Yeah, I could totally do that. Just a little text to let her know that if she needs me, she’ll need my new number since my last phone was swiped from the locker-room after a game last week. A reporter, maybe, or someone from the cleaning crew. For what it’s worth, it seems I have shit luck with phones lately, considering my first is still with the police department.

  The only good news to happen since Gwen walked out of my life is that Dave and his crew were caught, thrown in jail, and my career is still rolling onward like nothing ever happened.

  There’s a reason I pay big bucks to my lawyer and publicist. Within a week of the tabloids circulating that I was one foot out of TD Garden, they changed their tune. Now, the magazines are discussing my childhood since it’s all been aired to the public. According to my publicist, it was the best way to go about it. Since his plan worked, I gave him a massive Christmas bonus and told him that he’s stuck with me for life.

  But even knowing that my professional life is better than ever, it’s been at the expense of my love life.

  I drain the rest of my Starbucks hot chocolate, just to shut Beaumont up.

  And yes, I’m aware that drinking hot chocolate from Starbucks makes me out to look like a lovesick idiot. Everyone knows I’m a diehard Dunkin Donuts fanatic.

  “Hey guys,” my best friend announces, “anyone wondering where America’s most charming hockey player disappeared to? Pretty sure he died the night of my engagement party.”

  “Fuck you,” I growl, dropping my hand to our makeshift table on our flight from Los Angeles back to Boston. We wrapped up our road games on a high note against the Kings, and overall kicked ass for three out of our four games. “Deal the cards already.”