by Aven Ellis
“But meeting you and knowing you would be there sealed the deal,” Matt continues. “There was no place I’d rather be than with you on a holiday.”
I lean forward and kiss his lips. “I’m glad you chose us.”
“Me too,” Matt says.
“But why didn’t your mom and dad want to see you?”
His face turns serious. “I’ve never had a normal family. Mom got pregnant. My dad split as soon as he found out she was. Mom didn’t really want me. She wanted to party and have fun, and being only nineteen, I ruined that. She wanted out of that small town, and she could no longer leave. She needed my grandparents to help her. They hated that she was pregnant, and everyone fought all the time. All because of me.”
Pain at hearing Matt’s story overwhelms me. I hate that Matt grew up that way.
“I was the burden everyone was left to deal with. I think that’s how I got signed up for hockey. It kept me out of everyone’s hair. But by the age of three, they were waving around words like ‘prodigy’. And that’s always been the part of my life my mom has been most interested in. My ability to play hockey.”
“Oh, Matt,” I say, my eyes filling with tears. “I’m sorry.”
Matt clears his throat. “She sent me off to play in Canada as soon as she could. I barely saw her. A couple of times a year. And most of our time was spent on FaceTime talking about how my game was coming along.”
An uneasy feeling sweeps over me as Matt speaks. I know this story is not going to end well.
“When I was eighteen, I was drafted third by Minnesota. That’s when Dad showed up. He wanted to be a father to the son who signed a multi-million dollar deal to play hockey.”
“How did you handle that?”
“Not well,” he admits. “I was furious. And it made one of the greatest days of my life an emotional mess.”
“So it’s just you and your mom now?”
Matt is silent for a moment before he continues. “Nobody knows this next part.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“Holly, this past spring I cut my mom out of my life. I found out she was stealing money out of my accounts.”
“What?” I gasp.
He clears his throat, and it’s obvious what he’s about to tell me is hard for him to say.
“When I came into the league, Mom was my business manager. It made sense. I didn’t know jack about handling money, and if you can’t trust your mom, who can you trust, right? I didn’t want to deal with it, and she did. As I got older, she kept asking for more money. Of course I’d give her anything she wanted, she’s my mom. But what I gave her was never enough.
“I gave her a budget for a house she wanted to buy in an upscale Milwaukee suburb last year,” Matt continues. “And then the bank called and said she requested additional money for the loan. She never asked me, and they noticed my signature looked forged. I met with the bank and began going over all the accounts and . . . some of my money was gone. She didn’t clean me out, don’t think that. But a chunk was gone.”
“Oh my God,” I gasp, stunned by this. “Matt, I’m so sorry.”
“I told her she would no longer be my business manager,” he continues. “If she still wanted to be my mom, I would continue that relationship with her, but she hasn’t spoken to me since.”
“Wait, you mean because you cut her off financially she refuses to speak to you?”
Matt is silent for a moment. “Yeah. Well, she did call me once to tell me she was going to shop a reality TV show about hockey superstar moms, but that went nowhere. Thank God.”
I gasp. I can’t imagine discovering your mom was using you for a meal ticket. And then to have her turn her back when the money was cut off? Tears fill my eyes when I think of how badly this must have hurt him.
“Basically I had two very selfish people as parents. A dad who couldn’t be bothered when he found out my mom was pregnant and left. And a mom who saw me as a meal ticket by the age of three when the word ‘prodigy’ was being thrown around.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, choking up. Tears fall from my eyes. “You deserved so much more.”
“Hey, hey, please don’t cry, Holly,” Matt says, gently wiping the tears away. “I’m okay.”
“Do you ever get lonely?” I ask.
Matt is silent for a moment. Then he clears his throat before answering.
“It’s why I go out a lot,” he admits. “It’s hard to come home to an empty house night after night. Harrison has a wife. Nate has Kenley. A lot of guys on the team have girls, too. But I have nobody. It’s me and the walls, and sometimes I think too much when I’m alone.
“After what happened with my parents, I don’t trust easily,” he continues. “I fear people want something from me. Access to a celebrity. Money. It’s easier to go out and have a good time than to let people get too close.”
Suddenly, it all makes sense. The Matt I talked to never matched up with the Matt I saw on social media. This is why. Matt wasn’t driven to party because he liked it.
He was driven by not wanting to face the loneliness of being at home. He was driven to be casual in relationships because he couldn’t let anyone get close to him.
And I realize how much it means that he has let me in.
“You’re not alone anymore,” I say.
“You were worth waiting two years for,” Matt whispers, his eyes growing watery. “I still can’t believe this is real. That you want to be here with me.”
“I do,” I say, caressing his cheek with my hand. “I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
“Holly?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to do casual with you,” Matt says, his voice strong. “I’m all in on this. I only want to see you.”
Joy fills my heart.
“So I can’t see JP on the side?” I tease.
“No,” Matt says, grinning at me. “JP can find his own girl.”
“I’m all in, too,” I say. “This is what I want. This. Right here.”
We kiss again, slowly and sweetly.
Matt breaks the kiss. “What do we do about Nate?”
I sit up. My mind flashes to the meeting earlier today when Nate asked me to keep Matt out of trouble. And while babysitting Matt is one thing, I know Nate would flip out if he knew I was dating him.
“Holly?” Matt asks, sitting up next to me.
“I don’t want to share you with the world yet,” I say truthfully. “We’re just starting down this road. I don’t want anyone to ruin what we have. We’ll know when it’s time to tell Nate.”
I study him to see if he agrees.
Matt exhales loudly. “I agree. No interference from Nate. Besides, you don’t need to be put through the social media wringer with me as we’re starting out.” Then he pauses for a moment. “You’re sure you’re all in?”
The tone of his voice tells me he doesn’t quite believe I am. Or he’s afraid I’m going to somehow take it back. That I’ll abandon him like his parents.
“I’m all in,” I say, drawing his face toward mine. “Let me show you how in I am, Matthew.”
As I passionately kiss him, pushing him backward on the couch and making him laugh, I know I’m going to lose my heart to this man.
And I also know it’s the best choice I’ve ever made.
Chapter 12
The Game Plan for January 3rd
√Look for work in Dallas this morning, make contacts.
√Price apartments in Uptown.
√Cry at price of apartments in Uptown.
√Meet Matt after practice & go to CiCi’s house for lunch.
“How did it go?” I ask as I slip into the passenger seat of Matt’s Lamborghini.
Matt shuts the door,
comes around to the driver’s side, and gets behind the wheel. I met him at his place after he finished practice at the Demons’ facility.
This afternoon he had to face the press about being scratched in tonight’s game.
Matt starts the engine. “Since I couldn’t sleep after you left, I thought about what you said,” he says, giving me a side-eye.
I blush. I stayed over at Matt’s for a long time but knew I had to go home before Nate wondered what the hell I was doing out so late with Matt.
I cringe. Nate would explode if he knew I was falling for Matt.
Thank God I don’t have to deal with that now. Once Matt has been squared away with the Demons and we have fallen in love and I’m sure we have a future, then I’ll tell Nate.
But I don’t want to think about that now. I want to be happy and spend time with Matt, and that’s what I intend to do.
“You mean about being responsible?” I ask, refocusing on Matt.
“Yeah,” Matt says, reaching for my hand and squeezing it. “You were right, Holly. It’s time to grow up. That’s what CiCi said, too.”
I realize he’s ready to talk more about what happened yesterday, which is good since we’re going to have lunch at CiCi’s house right now. Per her request, she wanted both of us to attend.
“I’m still twenty-one,” he says defiantly as he drives. Then he exhales. “But you’re right. I’m not a normal twenty-one-year-old. I have a career in the spotlight. By choice. It’s a gift to play hockey and, as you say, get paid a stupid amount of money to do so. And I need to change if I want to keep it.”
My heart leaps with joy. He gets it. My message sank in.
Matt is finally accepting his responsibility as a player.
“I’m proud of you.”
“For finally growing up?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. And you made me see that.”
“Why do you listen to me?” I ask, curious.
Matt keeps his eyes on the road. “That’s easy. You aren’t full of crap.”
“Well, neither are Harrison and Nate.”
“I know, but I was stubborn with them,” he admits. “And everyone else. I thought they didn’t understand. I hated being told I was an idiot. That I was embarrassing people. That they couldn’t rely on me. It felt like a lecture. And it made me defiant.
“So I was like, screw this, I can party and produce,” he continues. “I would be stubborn and do it my way. But with you—you never talked to me like I was dumb. And when you said those things to me yesterday, I heard you. And it was time to admit I was wrong, so I did.”
“What do you mean?”
Matt enters the expressway, heading north toward CiCi’s home in the Dallas suburb of Frisco.
“I went into Peter’s office first thing this morning, before practice, and apologized. For a second time. I promised I wouldn’t do anything stupid. I agreed to keep a low profile. I said I’d do anything to stay here. And I started by being accountable with the media today. I said I was scratched from tonight’s game because I was late to practice. I told them I made a mistake, but I wouldn’t let my teammates, the organization, or the fans down ever again.”
I gulp. That had to be horrible, having to share his mistakes with cameras shoved in his face.
“What did the reporters say?”
“They asked about the pictures of me partying,” Matt says, his voice tinged with regret. “I said no comment but repeated my promise to do better.”
“That was the right thing to say.”
“I’m not just saying it. I mean it. I’ll do better for everyone. For you.”
Then he brings my hand to his lips and brushes a kiss across it. “I promise I can be the man that only you can see. I want to be that man.”
You already are, I think as I study his gorgeous face.
“What did CiCi say yesterday to save you?”
Matt exhales loudly. “She had plenty to say. But she did save me. I still feel like I’m going to have lunch with Marlon Brando today.”
I smile. CiCi scares him.
“What?” Matt asks, glancing at me. “What’s the smirk for?”
“What, you have the market cornered on smirks?”
“I smirk?”
I laugh. “Um, all the time. You have a sexy smirk that tugs at the corner of your mouth.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you thought it was sexy. I’ll remember that.”
“Ha-ha,” I say, grinning. “I’m smirking because you’re scared of CiCi.”
“Why aren’t you? She’s like a badass operative. She had a file on me!”
“A file?”
“Yes! She whipped out all these things she printed off Tumblr,” Matt says. “Has anyone ever told her it’s not Tumble, by the way?”
I burst out laughing. “Would you want to correct CiCi?”
Matt smiles. “Point taken.”
“Go back to the file.”
“Right. Well, she had all these pictures, some I didn’t know were taken, of me partying,” he says, his lighthearted tone dissipating. “It was humiliating. Peter went ballistic.”
I swallow hard, hurting for him at this point. Yes, he was a fool the other night, but who hasn’t been? Everyone has a right to make mistakes. But not everyone has them recorded.
“So then what happened?”
“CiCi said I was an idiot, but I was their idiot. That this team became my family the day they accepted me in the trade for Nate. And families don’t get rid of problem children. They help them. She said if Peter was true to his word about being a classy organization, he wouldn’t dump me out like trash.” Matt pauses. “She must have seen the trash GIF of me that was going around on Tumblr.”
I bite my lip, hating that he knows this is what is being said about him.
“She told Peter to do more than lecture me but prove to be a guiding hand. Then she told me to wake up, grow up, and be the man that I’m capable of being. She said I was to have a weekly lunch with her whenever I’m in town so she could monitor my progress.”
“What?” I ask, stunned.
“Weekly lunch. I’m to do more community stuff, meet with the Demons’ social media people on cleaning up my online image, and I’m to update her on all of this during our lunches. So yes, I did make a deal with The Godfather, Holly. CiCi owns my ass now. I wouldn’t be surprised if she asks me to mow her lawn when we’re there.”
“Come on. You know she would only let professionals touch her lawn.”
My comment makes him laugh.
“How do you feel about all of this?” I ask seriously.
“Embarrassed more than anything. But I’ll do whatever I have to do to stay in Dallas. Now more than ever.”
He squeezes my hand, and I know that last comment is about me.
Before we know it, we enter CiCi’s gated community. I direct Matt to her house, as I was there on Christmas Eve with Nate and my parents, and I can tell Matt is nervous.
“You’re going to be fine,” I say.
Matt pulls up her driveway and parks the car. “Hopefully she doesn’t have any more files on me.”
“Oh come on. She totally does, but she’s not going to tip all her cards at once.”
“Ha-ha. Sooo funny.”
I laugh, and we get out of the car. Dallas is still gripped in a cold front, one that is threatening to drop ice on the city by tomorrow. Being from Minnesota, I’m not worried about that, but warnings to brace for a storm were all over the news this morning. It’s comical how freaked out Texans get by winter weather.
We head up CiCi’s sidewalk, and I ring the doorbell. A few seconds later, CiCi opens the door, her granddaughter Bella on her hip.
“Hello, so l
ovely to see both of you,” CiCi says, ushering us inside. “I have the girls this morning. Amanda, my daughter, had a last minute doctor’s appointment, so I agreed to keep them. I assured her you all wouldn’t mind the girls here for our lunch.”
“No, of course not,” I say, smiling at Bella, who has to be the world’s cutest baby. “I love kids.”
CiCi smiles approvingly at me. Then she holds Bella out to Matt. “Matthew, would you please hold Bella while I have Holly help me get lunch ready?”
“Um . . . okay.”
I watch as Matt takes Bella in his arms, his face filled with uncertainty. I can tell he hasn’t held a lot of babies.
“Muh,” Bella says, reaching for the zipper on his rich leather jacket.
“Here, let me take your coat,” CiCi says, coming around behind me.
I catch sight of a massive, fully decorated Christmas tree being wheeled into the foyer.
I stare at it like it’s a mirage.
Her Christmas tree is on wheels?
“That’s your tree?” I ask, watching a woman push it down the hallway.
“Yes. The holidays are over. It’s going back in the tree closet,” CiCi says breezily, as if everyone has a closet to keep their trees in year round. “Careful around that corner, Aga, some of those ornaments are retired Christopher Radko, and I’d be devastated if we lost one.”
“Yes, Ms. Hunter,” Aga says, huffing as she pushes the tree past us.
“CiCi, I’m hungry,” a tiny voice wails, interrupting my thoughts. Claire, her four-year-old granddaughter, enters the foyer with a My Little Pony doll in her hand.
“Yes, princess, we’re all going to have lunch. I have macaroni and cheese for you. I’d like for you to meet Matthew. He plays hockey with your Uncle Nate.”
Claire tilts her head and stares up at Matt, who is cradling Bella like a rare Chinese vase that might crack at any second.
