Page 27 of Cross-Checked

Her voice is a little unsteady when she responds. “I thought we agreed we weren’t going to talk about that again?”

“I don’t know what you mean byagain.We never talked about it in the first place. In fact, the first thing you did when yougot the GM job in Boston was call me into this office”—I glance around the space, thinking about how sterile it felt before she took over—“and tell me to get over the fact that you traded me two years earlier because we werenevertalking about it.”

“I—”

“But I’mnotover it, and I’m probably never going to be.” Okay, now my voice is rising, but to be fair, this is a conversation I’ve been wanting to have for eight years.

“Why? You’re playing a hundred times better for Charlie Wilcott here in Boston than you ever did back in St. Louis. You never made the All-Star team in St. Louis, and you certainly wouldn’t have been the team captain or won a Stanley Cup championship if you’d stayed there. You should bethankingme for trading you!”

It’s the way she drills her finger into my chest as she says this that has my blood boiling. That, and the fact that she has no idea what the actual fuck she’s talking about.

“I’m not pissed because of the hockey side of that trade!”

“Then what the hell are you pissed about?” she asks, dropping her hand when I step in a bit closer. She tries to take a step back, but finds herself trapped by her large desk behind her.

“I’d just put my grandma in a nursing home,” I tell her, and I watch the way her eyes widen and her lips part in surprise.

Everyone knows the story of my upbringing because it was one of those “feel good” sports stories that the media focused on when I was drafted. My parents died in a car crash while our next-door neighbor—an older woman who all the neighborhood kids called Grandma, even though she had no children of her own—was babysitting my sister and me.

We had no other family. Our parents had met as teenagers in foster care, and my sister and I would have ended up there too if Grandma hadn’t become our legal guardian. She didn’t have the means to raise us, and we barely scraped by for most of my life.She even sold her car to pay for my hockey expenses once I was a teenager, so we walked everywhere.

When I got my first endorsement deal in college, I bought her a new car. When I signed my contract with St. Louis, I bought her a new house. There’s nothing I could ever do to repay her for her kindness—the way she loved us, sacrificed for us, and gave us a better life when she didn’t have to.

“She was too old to take care of herself.” I continue after a moment of silence, our breaths the only sound filling the small space between us. “And my sister and I couldn’t be there all the time to make sure she was safe. The nursing home was the best option. But she hadn’t been there for two weeks when I got traded. And then she got pneumonia and died before I could even get back to see her. So yeah,” I say through a tight jaw, swallowing my emotions. “I’m still pissed off, AJ, because you made it so that I couldn’t spend Grandma’s dying days with her.”

Her eyes are watery, and she bites her lower lip before, “I didn’t know,” slips out in a voice so small and unsure that it doesn’t sound like her at all.

“Well, you made your choice. And now you know the implications of it.”

“I didn’thavea choice!” A flush creeps up her neck and across her cheeks as the words ring out.

“There’s always a choice.”

“Thechoicewas either to trade you, or your career was over.”

“Because I defended you when Chet was berating you?”

Sure, he was my assistant coach, and I probably should have treated him with a bit more respect. But the way he was talking to her, telling her that not only was she a shit hockey manager, but an even worse wife...my temper flared so quickly I reacted without even thinking. Because she wasn’t any of those things.

As our assistant general manager, we all loved her. In fact, we liked her a hell of a lot better than we liked him, which isprobably why he felt the need to belittle her. And she always bent over backward to do things for him, to make his life easier, to try to make him happy. We all saw it time and time again on the road.

He didn’t deserve her, and I’m glad she finally left his cheating ass.

“You didn’tdefendme,” she says, squaring her shoulders. “Youattackedhim.”

“I saw red. Any man who disrespects a woman like that in front of me is going to be put in his place.” It’s the god’s honest truth, but still, I know she’s right.

It was like I was looking for a reason to pummel him before I even threw the first punch. And all the others that followed. I don’t think he ever got a single shot in before I was being pulled off him by AJ and security.

“You thought you were going to continue playing for him after that? You would have ridden the bench for the last two years of your contract. Career: over.”

“Nah, Coach Miller loved me.” Our head coach was always checking in on me when I first joined the team, making sure I was settling in, helping me learn the ropes. He had the hockey knowledge and skills—plus the desire to make his players feel welcome—that set him apart from someone like Chet, who was only in it for his own glory.

I take in the way she’s crossed her arms under her chest. It’s a defensive posture, but it’s pushing her tits up into the V-neck of her sweater in a way that’s disarming me completely. I look back at her face, but I can tell by the way she’s looking at me that she noticed me checking her out.

“Miller agreed to the trade.”

“Yeah, because you convinced him!” My voice carries the heavy notes of exasperation I feel. Miller told me himself thathe didn’t want me to go, but that AJ and Chet were right...I couldn’t play for Chet after attacking him like that.

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