Page 31 of Much Ado About Hockey

“It’s no biggie,” he murmured, his voice low and tender, trying to keep his composure. “Just try to relax for the flight.”

“I will.”

Her voice was small, but it carried across the space between them. It echoed in the cabin, reverberating through him. He lingered there, half-hoping she’d say something more… that she would explain about the silence, the ignored text messages. Maybe that she would reach for him, or give him a look. But as she turned her eyes forward again, her hands were clenched in her lap, and he took the hint.

The flight attendant reappeared, announcing their imminent takeoff, and Jett stepped back toward his seat. He could have sat closer to Karen. He sure wanted to. But she wasn’t giving him much. No signals… no olive branch. Just a bit of small talk, silence, ignoring the smoke between them - which, in his book, meant something was on fire.

A big-ol’-forest fire like a wall of flames between them.

She was over there.

He was over here.

So be it…

He returned to his seat, set up his iPad, and tried not to keep from looking over his shoulder. He tried not to hope. Tried not to think about the fact that just a few feet away sat the woman he’d married. She was hotter than anything he’d ever seen before… and so darn cold, too. She might not be interested in this marriage - but he was.

The moment the plane leveled out, and the engines hummed with that steady, soothing rhythm that always came at cruising altitude, Jett made a silent vow to himself… quiet yet firm.

He wasn’t going to stay silent anymore.

Not when this mattered to him.

Jett sat stiffly in his seat, arms crossed, the leather creaking beneath his weight. He stared at nothing in particular—definitely not at Karen. If he looked at her, even for a second, he might unravel. He could feel the tension simmering just beneath his skin, that restless burn that came when you knew a fight was waiting right around the corner, but you were trying—desperately—to steer the plane away from the crash.

He didn’t want to fight with her. Not again. Not if they had any chance of making it as a couple.

There was a strange gravity to her presence in the distance. A constant pull he didn’t quite know what to do with. He kept thinking about what it meant to belong to someone, to have someone in your corner. To be someone’s person. That word—wife—still sounded foreign in his mouth, but lately, it had started to feel more comfortable rather than a weight. When he said it out loud, especially to the officials in Quebec, there was a presence to it. A pride. Like maybe this whole thing could actually mean something real, a chance to find happiness and build a future.

He couldn’t understand how his own father had chosen to never marry his mother. Then again, considering his old man took off and never looked back, maybe it had been the right decision. Still, Jett had never wanted to bethat guy– he never wanted to avoid commitment like his father had.

If he was in, he wasallin.

That’s why he had been told about the job requirement by his agent; once he was past the initial freak-out moments, he jumped into a marriage with both feet. It wasn’t just a meansto an end for him—it was a chance for something more in his life that he didn’t expect. If being married got him the job, fine. But if being married meant Karen —meant building a life with someone instead of floating solo all the darn time— then he was ready to go all the way, becoming a man so different from the one who’d abandoned him.

He wasn’t going to flake like his biological father had. He wasn’t going to ever leave. And he darn sure wasn’t going to spend the rest of their lives communicating through cold shoulders and unanswered text messages. He didn’t want silence between them, and if he had to be the first to speak – so be it.

“So,” Jett said, the word sounding louder in the quiet cabin than he intended. “Whatcha been up to?”

He saw her shift in the distance, pulling her gaze away from the window she’d been glued to since takeoff. She turned, the cool detachment on her face only deepening the ache in his chest.

“Getting ready for this move, remember?”

“That’s it?”

She blinked slowly. “What else would there be going on in my life? I was closing every open door I was leaving behind to…”

“Um, you could have been a part of making the plans,” he interrupted, the frustration bleeding through before he could stop it.

He winced.

That came out wrong.

He hadn’t meant to sound accusatory—he just needed her to understand how lonely it had been trying to build something for two people when only one was showing up. “When we first met, you said you needed plans – and then skated-out on me.”

“I didn’t‘skate-out’on you,” she shot back, sharp as ice. “You left in an Uber, remember?”

“After you told me to get out of your car.”

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