Unravel Me (Playing For Keeps Book 3)

I’m an emotional hockey player.

I think it comes with the territory of being a goalie. Losses are hard, and I’ve always found it hard not to lay blame on my shoulders. Even worse, when something’s going on in my personal life—like, say, finding my long-term girlfriend riding her side piece in our bed—it distracts me. My thoughts are elsewhere, and sometimes that leads to careless mistakes.

Not tonight, though. Because tonight I’m not broken.

I’m fucking furious.

Tampa’s left-winger races down the boards, around our exhausted defenseman. Jaxon took a careless penalty a minute ago—the result of someone chirping in his ear—so we’re down one man, and I’ve been throwing myself all over this net to stop the countless shots.

Tampa’s captain soars across the blue line, into our defensive zone, calling for the puck. The winger sends it across, right through the legs of my defenseman, and the captain winds up, firing the puck at me at lightning speed. I dive to the right, my glove coming up right on time to catch the puck before it can hit the back of my net. The whistle blows, I drop the puck in the ref’s hand, and grab a drink of water as our lines change.

“Jesus fuck,” Carter mutters, clapping a hand to my head as he circles my crease.

“You’re not letting a single thing by you tonight.”

“Nope.”

He gives me an assessing once-over. “You okay?”

“Nope.”

I haven’t seen Rosie in forty-eight hours, and aside from a couple texts, we haven’t had the chance to talk. She worked all day yesterday, had twelve hours of clinical today, and she’s been driving herself up the wall studying for the NAVLE, her veterinarian licensing exam in January.

As I look around this arena, all I see are ways I’ve added to her stress.

Where do I send my application for baby mama #3?

I’ll let you shoot ’n’ score & I won’t ask for more!

I’ll take 2 minutes for hooking if it’s with Woody!

Jesus fuck, who lets these girls in here with those signs? For the first time this season, I hope Rosie isn’t watching.

Carter follows my gaze. “She knows better than to put any stock in those signs.”

“Doesn’t mean they won’t make this harder on her.”

I toss my water bottle back in my net, getting into position at the edge of my crease as everyone lines up for face-off. The whistle blows and the puck drops, and I slide left and right as the play moves around our end of the ice. The shit-disturber centerman trying to block my view of the puck is pissing me the fuck off, so I slip forward and shove him out of my way.

“Get the fuck out of my net, Marchanbo.”

“Feeling testy tonight, Lockwood?” Dark eyes flick to the women slapping the glass, shoving their signs against it. “I thought you let just anyone score these days.”

I track the puck as it passes between players, around the back of my net, as Garrett pins someone against the boards, trying to dig it free.

“That’s why you’ve got two baby mamas, right?” He glides in front of me, and I shove him out of the way as Jaxon’s penalty ends and he jumps out of the box. “How many more do you think are out there? I bet women have been poking holes in condoms for years, trying to get a piece of the golden boy.”

“Fuck off.”

“I like the one with pink hair. Seems spunky. And that ass? Oof . Love me something to grab on to.”

I chuck my stick and gloves to the ground as I get in his face. The play around us skids to a halt when I grab him by the collar. “You shut your goddamn mouth.”

“Think her kid will call me Daddy?”

My fist rears back before I hurl it forward, a lot like I did the last time we saw Brandon, when he made sure Rosie knew how disposable she and Connor were to him. Because here’s the thing: everyone thinks I’m some sort of golden boy, that I’m docile and sweet all the time. But the second you open your mouth and insult the two people I love more than anything in this world, you’re gonna see a whole new side to me, one that’s anything but docile.

Marchanbo wipes the blood from his cracked lip, chuckling under his breath, a sound I barely hear over the roar of a crowd who loves to see fists fly. “Guess you’re not all that golden,” he murmurs, right before he launches himself at me, tearing off my helmet.

I catch his fist in my hand before it can connect with my jaw. Right before I let mine fly again, another body collides with Marchanbo at full speed, crushing him into the boards.

Jaxon’s chest heaves as Marchanbo slumps to the ice at his feet. “Don’t touch my fucking goalie.” He tosses my mask at my chest. “Here. Your face is too pretty for black eyes.”

It feels like I have them anyway, two black eyes. Everything hurts, a throbbing ache behind my eyes and in my temples that hints at the exhaustion running rampant through me, dragging me toward the ground as I head back to my hotel room. All I want to do is bury my sorrows in a bucket of beer and a platter of deep-fried pickles, then collapse in my hotel room with Rosie’s face smiling back at me from the other side of my phone. But I don’t have any of those things.

I stare down at the last two messages from Rosie as I kick my shoes off inside my room. One is pregame, Connor in his Vipers pajamas. The other is halfway through the third period, right around the time I clocked Marchanbo in the face, and she repeats Jaxon’s words back to me.

TROUBLE

Have I ever told you your face is too pretty for black eyes? Your face is too pretty for black eyes, Adam.

I’ve read it at least twenty times now. It’s about the only thing that’s put a smile on my face today.

The truth is, I don’t know how to face Rosie, and it’s killing me. I’m afraid of what I might see reflected back in those pools of sage. I know the same old kindness will be there, and all that love. But it’s the hesitation, the disappointment that might overshadow everything so intrinsically Rosie…those are the things that will gut me.

I don’t give a fuck about my reputation. Not that the media is twisting my words from my speech at the gala, where I called Connor our son, and guessing that he’s biologically mine. Not that Courtney’s giving them her best sob story, that it wasn’t her that did the cheating in our relationship, but me . That she found out about my mistress when she caught me visiting Rosie and Connor in the hospital, just hours after he was born. All of it, a load of fucking shit that paints me in the worst light, and I don’t give a flying fuck.

I don’t give a fuck about my reputation, but I give a lot of fucks about Rosie’s.

Homewrecker. That’s what they’re calling her. It’s on every Vipers’ fan page, her picture and Connor’s as she loads him into the back of my SUV at the damn grocery store. And I did this to her.

It’s because of me.

She stuck with me through one mess; how can I ask her to stick with me through a second, this one way messier than the first?

My head whips up as the door opens behind me, my friends strolling in mid-conversation, arms filled with bags.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were going to the bar?”

Carter unloads piles of take-out containers. “You said you weren’t in the mood, so we’re staying in with you.” He hands me a mountain of deep-fried pickles. “You have to stop looking like that.”

“Like what?”

Garrett drops a box of Fruit Roll-Ups on top of my pickles. “Like this entire shitstorm is your fault.”

“It is,” I say simply.

Carter shakes his head. “You know, this feels entirely too reminiscent of that night you came home to Courtney cheating. Back then, you wondered if it was your fault. If you could’ve loved her better, given her more of what she needed. But it’s the same story now as it was then. You couldn’t have prevented this. Whether you answered her phone calls or went to that meeting. She wants something from you, whether it’s a dad for her son or money to support herself.”

Jaxon cracks the top off a beer and hands it to me. “She wants both, and she thinks you’re nice enough to accept your fate without questioning it.”

Emmett takes my treats and sets them on the small table in the corner. I shake my head, squeezing it between my hands as I sink to the chair there.

“That’s not my baby. No fucking way. I know I was drunk. I know I don’t have the best memory of some pieces of the night, but…there’s no way I would sleep with her. There’s nothing she could ever say that would make me second-guess our relationship status, no matter how many drinks I had.”

Honestly, it makes me sick to my stomach to think that she was in my bed at some point that night, even if it was only to take a picture.

My phone rings, my publicist, Angie, on the other line. I accept the call and put it on speaker as I tear open the box of Fruit Roll-Ups and peel one apart. “Any news?” I close my eyes, press my fingers against the headache pounding there as I wad the Fruit Roll-Up into a ball and toss it in my mouth. “Sorry. Hi. How are you?”

She chuckles. “There’s no room for pleasantries right now; I get it. I made a fake Instagram account and followed Courtney. Looks like she’s been seeing the same guy off and on since you two split. But there are no pictures of them together after June.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but when they do, hope sparks in my chest.

“I think she was already pregnant at your party, Adam. My best guess is this guy bailed on her when she told him, so she came to your party hoping you’d sleep with her.”

“So she could pretend it was mine.”

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Carter shakes his head and drops an entire slice of pizza in his mouth. “I saw this on Maury once.”

“That’s literally what Maury’s about,” Emmett tells him.

“Yeah,” Garrett whispers. “Keep up, you donkey.”

“Shut up ,” Carter whispers back, and I slap his hand away when he reaches for one of my Fruit Roll-Ups.

“What should I do?”

“Guess you just gotta wait and do a paternity test when the baby is born,” Emmett suggests.

“No way.” Jaxon jabs at the table. “Demand that shit now. There are tests they can do before.”

“I don’t even want to know why you know that, Jaxon,” Angie says with a sigh. “The boys are right, though, Adam. You have two options. You can see how much money she wants to go away, or—”

“Fuck that.” Sure, I can afford to pay her off, but I have a thousand better ways to spend that money. The summer camp I’m opening next year, Connor’s education, a garden full of peonies in the backyard, and an engagement ring that Rosie never wants to take off her finger, to name a few. “She’s not getting a cent.”

“Or ,” Angie continues, “you request a paternity test. This all goes away one or another. I know it feels so much more complicated than this, but really, it’s that simple.”

She’s right about one thing: nothing about this feels simple. It’s a game of waiting, and I’ve done enough waiting in my life.

Life started the moment Rosie and Connor walked into it, and all I want to do is dive headfirst into the rest of it. I should’ve never been put in a position where I had to forget how to love myself, how to be proud of everything that makes me who I am, but it took finding them, letting them love me, to remember how.

And I won’t let Courtney steal that from me all over again.

“What’s he doing?” Garrett whispers.

“I don’t know,” Jaxon murmurs. “That’s, like, his fifth Fruit Roll-Up.”

“I don’t think he even realizes he’s been eating them this entire time,” Emmett adds.

“I’m worried about him,” Carter says quietly. “He’s not even doing the tongue tattoos. He’s just…eating them whole.”

I stick my hand in the box, frowning when I come up empty. “Did you get me more than one box?”

Without breaking eye contact, Garrett slowly slides another box across the table. “So, hey, big guy, we were thinking—”

“Emmett, get Cara on the phone. I need her advice.”

He leaps from his seat, dashing across the room to grab his phone. “She’s been preparing for this her entire life.”

It’s nearly one a.m. when I’m walking up my driveway two days later, desperate to crawl into bed after our road trip. It’s been too many days of missed calls, pictures sent from different time zones, and overanalyzing toneless text messages.

I miss Rosie so goddamn much, my alarm is already set for six a.m. so I can drive myself to Starbucks, fill up on everything that makes her warm and smiley, and show up at her door before she takes herself to school. If it wasn’t the middle of the night, I’d be at her door right now, begging to come in.

I fiddle with my keys at the front door, pausing when the porch light flicks on. The door opens, and Rosie stands there in nothing but my T-shirt and my thickest socks, and Jesus fuck, I’ve never been so happy to see pink.

“You’re here.”

“Where else would I be?”

My stomach dips, the weight on my shoulders easing. “You’re not going anywhere?”

“Why would we do that? Connor and I were a family before we found you, sure, but now…” She shakes her head, eyes shuttering at the thought of a future she doesn’t want, the same one I don’t want: one without each other. “Something would always be missing without you, Adam.”

She takes my hands, pulling me into the warmth of the house, the warmth radiating off her. Gentle fingers brush my curls off my forehead, and a tender smile touches her lips.

“We don’t only choose you when it’s convenient and easy and happy. We choose you through all the hard, challenging moments in between. That’s how families love each other, Adam. And Connor and me? We’ll always be by your side.”

She swipes at the lone tear running down my cheek before pressing her lips to mine.

“There’s no better view than right here beside you.”