Page 64 of Pucking Strong

She turns to me. “Teddy? Your turn, hun.”

I slip on the ring, feeling the coolness of the metal as it glides down my finger. Fuck, it’s a perfect fit.

Don’t read anything into this!

I glance up at Novy, always the prankster. “These won’t turn our fingers green, will they?”

He crosses his tatted arms. “Fuck you. Those are twenty-four-carat gold. You’re welcome.”

Henrik glances up sharply. “Send me the bill.”

“I’ll pay for mine,” I say in a quiet voice. Though I don’t know with what money.

“Out of the question.”

“Henrik—”

“I said no,” he growls. “Call it my third rule,” he adds more gently.

Right. So his rules for me in this fake marriage are that I have to sleep in his bed (even without him in it), I can’t have other men over to the apartment, and I can’t pay for my own wedding ring. It appears Henrik is something of a traditionalist.

“Well, you both look dynamite,” Novy says. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were married.”

“Theyaremarried,” says Poppy, waving to him as he leaves.

“Anything else?” Henrik asks as the door shuts.

She laughs. “Well, obviously. We only have to talk about the most important part of the whole PR plan.” She sets her coffee aside again. “Now, when you think of a tree, what’s the most important—”

“I’m sorry, but can you spare us any more of the protracted tree metaphors?” I say over her. “Please, just tell us what you want us to do.”

Henrik smirks, clutching his coffee with his newly ringed hand. I know he’s thinking the same thing as me.

Poppy presses the clicker, changing the PowerPoint slide to an image of the top of a tree. “I was going to sayleaves. They’re the flashiest part of the tree. And the final prong of this PR campaign will mirror their ‘hey, look at me’ approach when it comes to the media.”

“I don’t understand,” Henrik says for both of us.

“We need the world to look at you,” she explains. “We want to shove it in their faces that you two are a happily married gay couple and that one of you just happens to play in the NHL.”

Henrik sits forward, a worried look on his face. “I thought this was about minimizing attention. It’s about keeping Teddy and Karolina away from the media, not shoving them under a spotlight.”

“Yes, but the best way to minimize attention in this case is to seek it out. We all know that the easiest way to hide something is to show the world you have nothing to hide.”

It clicks in my head. “Oh, that’s clever.”

She smiles. “I know.”

“Well, so what do you propose?” I ask.

Her smile widens. “I propose we gobig. Total shock and awe. We’ll show them so many pictures and video clips of you both being happy and well-adjusted, that pretty soon they’ll just move on. There’s nothing the media finds more boring than two people living their happy, unbothered lives.”

“And then what happens?” asks Henrik.

“And then we win.”

He considers for a moment. “Okay. How do we do it?”

She clicks the remote, and a new slide appears with threecolumns. Bullet-pointed items are listed in each column. “Over the next few weeks, I’ve arranged a set of PR activities for you both, starting with an interview with my friend Janine over at ESPN.”

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