“No. Of course I do. But … I dunno. Would it kill him to not be so eager about getting one? Or maybe stop avoiding me? I’m not mad at him, but if he keeps blowing me off, I will be.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Phoebe says as she dumps her handbag on my kitchen counter, “Dex is a mess. When I saw him, he was hunched over his computer, doing that thing where his mouth moves with every word he’s trying to read as if saying them out loud would help him understand. He wasn’t his usual bubbly self.”
That’s what I was afraid of. “I’ll go knock down his door later today and make sure he knows this isn’t all his fault.”
Phoebe deflates. “Damn it. I don’t want you two to get divorced. You treat my brother right, and you love him to bits—”
“Except your brother doesn’t love all my bits.” I gesture in the general area of my junk.
“I can understand that,” Sienna says. “I mean, dicks aren’t really all that pretty to look at, are they? They get the job done though.”
I screw up my face. “And this conversation is done. I don’t need to know anything about my sister’s love life.”
Phoebe goes to open her mouth, but I point at her.
“That goes for you too.”
Her mouth slams shut again.
That’s what I thought.
After Sienna and Phoebe leave, I get in my car and drive to Dex’s place near the practice arena. His house looks like it came out of a fairy tale in the woods. It’s all stone and brick, has five bedrooms, and cost him a cool three mil. But it’s not … him. At all. He bought it last year when one of our guys got traded and put it up for sale. It’s on the same street as some of the married guys on the team, and I think Dex only bought it because Jessica sold him on the idea.
How Dex didn’t realize she was pushing for a ring is beyond me.
This house screams married with 2.5 kids.
I approach and knock on the door, but when he doesn’t answer, I use my key and head straight upstairs, bypassing the ugly-ass modern chandelier hanging from the ceiling.
Jessica said it’s supposed to look like flower petals raining from the sky.
When I reach Dex’s bedroom, the sound of his shower hits my ears, so I throw myself on his bed and wait.
He walks out five minutes later, buck naked, towel over his head as he tries to dry his hair with one hand, and it’s obvious he has absolutely no idea I’m here, because with his other hand, he reaches between his legs and gives his semi a hard stroke.
“Don’t stop on my account,” I say.
Dex jumps so high it’s comical, while the towel drops to the floor. “You scared me.”
“What are husbands for?”
His face immediately falls, and so does my mood.
“Come on, Dex. You said we’d be joking about it one day. Why not now?”
Dex picks up his towel and sadly wraps it around his waist. “Because I haven’t found a solution yet.” He looks at the ground. “I actually gave up days ago, but I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Leave it up to the team. They have actual specialists on how to deal with athlete drama.” As if speaking about it makes it happen, my phone starts ringing with the PR department phone number popping up. “See. This is them now. I bet they have a solution.” I answer with as much optimism as I can muster. “Please tell me it’s good news.”
“I wish I could, but no. The story just broke on TMZ.”
“Fuck.” I try to school my reaction, but it tumbles out of me before I can think. And when I turn to Dex, I know it’s too late to try to cover it up. Dex sits on the end of the bed by my feet with his head in his hands.
“My reaction exactly,” Graham says. “I need to meet with you and Dex again, but it can’t be here at headquarters. Photographers have already started showing up. Where are you?”
“We’re both at Dex’s house.”
“Good. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t leave. You’re both a target right now.”
He ends the call, and like that, panic mode kicks in. One of us is going to be traded.
It’s a long-ass twenty minutes before Graham arrives, not ten, and Dex lets him in.
Graham looks like he could murder one of us. Or both.
Just how hard do NHL teams vet their PR staff? This is Vegas. Plenty of desert to stash our bodies. Though, I’d like to see Graham’s scrawny fifty-year-old body carry us out to his car.
And now I’m being dramatic.
“Drink?” I ask him since Dex has seemed to have lost his voice.
“Water, thanks,” Graham says.
I fill a glass for him and then lead us over to the couches in Dex’s formal living room. The couches are more for decoration than comfort, and I can’t sit still.
Graham takes a sip. “So. We don’t know how the news got out, but there’s no putting it back in now.”
“So no annulment?” I ask.
Graham shakes his head. “It’s too late for that. And you can’t get divorced without admitting it was an offensive joke.”
“Trade?” I croak.
Both Dex and I say at the same time, “I’ll do it.”
Graham’s gaze flicks between both of us. “There might be another way, but you’re probably not going to like it.”
“I’ll do anything if it means neither of us gets traded,” Dex says.
“You pretend for a while that you’re in love and the marriage is real.”
Whoosh. My heart sinks. On the one hand, pretending to be in love with Dex will be easy—especially since I won’t need to pretend. On the other, just how far do they want us to take this charade?
“Will people even believe that?” Dex asks. “According to everyone else, I’m still with Jessica.”
“You don’t follow her Insta account?” Graham asks.
“I didn’t even when we were together,” Dex says.
Graham takes out his phone. “It’s my job to know everything my players and their partners are doing at all times.”
He hits Play on a video of a smiling Jessica. She’s in a bikini, wearing sunglasses, and looks like she’s at a party on a beach somewhere.
“Well, it looks like the cat is out of the bag. I want everyone to know that Dex and I had an amazing friendship, but that’s all it was. He and Tripp are so cute together, and I’m so happy they can finally acknowledge their love publicly. And don’t you guys worry about me. I’m perfectly happy.” She wraps her arm around a toned male body, but when the guy lowers his head to the camera and smiles, both Dex and I gasp.
“Fensby?” I exclaim. He’s a forward on our second line and is always the first one to tease Dex about being dumb.
The video ends with them kissing, just enough to still be tasteful yet getting the point across.
“I’m so sorry, Dex,” I say.
He doesn’t take his eyes off the frozen screen. “I don’t care. I should … but I don’t.”
Well, I fucking care. Not only did she move on from Dex to another teammate of ours, she’s released a statement on social media confirming things she has no right to.