Page 116 of Puck Love

She nods. “That doesn’t automatically mean that Vanis—”

“Show me.” Van wouldn’t do that.Right? I mean, why would he propose marriage if he was getting busy with whatever little puck bunny came along? “Show me,Lana.”

She grabs her laptop and rests it on the table between us. I sit down heavily on the seat and scroll through his Instagram feed. There’s a bunch of photos of him and Eli celebrating, and the rest of his teammates drinking, but then there’s a shot of him cannonballing into a pool, and several more of Eli and Torres posing in front ofit.

I shake my head and stare at her in confusion. “These don’t look like anythingsuspicious.”

Lana sighs and taps one photo to enlarge it, and there in the pool is Van . . . with a topless woman wrapped around him, and her lips on his. “No. This . . . this could have been taken a long time ago. Before he ever metme.”

Except the caption reads “Gonna win us a trophy. #stanleycupplayoffs #calgarycrushers #suckitsens.”

“Oh my god.” Sick to my stomach, I cover my mouth and run for the bathroom. I make it just in time for my tea, and anything else I downed tonight, to reach the bowl, and not puke all over the floor. Lana holds my hair back, and I shoo her away as bile coats my throat and burns like acid. Hot tears stream down my face as I hug the tiny toilet bowl andsob.

“You need to callhim.”

“No!”

“Stella, you have to call him. You need to hear it from hismouth.”

“I think the evidence speaks for itself. I just can’t believe I fell for it. I fell for Canada’s biggest player, and I gotplayed.”

“Oh, honey. I wish he’d been different. I wish you hadn’t made the mistakes I made. I wish you’d never crossed paths with an athlete. They’re no good atrelationships.”

“Yeah, well, more fool me for wanting something real that existed outside the spotlight. I guess now I know better. I can’t ever havethat.”

“Sure you can, but maybe right now you just need to be concentrating on you and yourcareer.”

“Because I haven’t done that for the last ten years?” I slowly pick myself up off the floor and brush my teeth, and then I leave the bathroom for mybed.

“Stella, you’re not going to disappear on me again, areyou?”

“No. Last time I ran I landed in a player’s lap. I’m donerunning.”

“You want me to release a statement? This picture has kind of broken theinternet.”

“No, I just want to go to bed and forget Van Ross ever happened,” I say, and close the door to myroom.

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