Page 23 of Pipe Dreams
“Okay,” he said, hearing in her voice that he was dismissed. He stood up, spotting his car out the front door, waiting at the curb. When he’d parked it there a few hours earlier, things in his life were completely different.
He left Shelly alone there in her quiet house, grateful to escape to his, where Lauren was asleep on her back, a book open on her chest. She’d been trying to wait up for him.
He climbed into bed beside her, carefully removing the book and shutting off the light. He stretched an arm toward her sleeping body. But something made his hand pause just over her arm. All he had to do was roll closer and hold her.
She would wake to his kisses, and sink into his embrace. They could make slow, sleepy love to each other, and he could leave the day’s troubles behind.
Afterward, he could tell Lauren all his problems. They would all come pouring out, every terrifying fear he had for the future. She would listen like the true partner that she was. Hell—she might even fire up a spreadsheet to try to find some answers.
Instead, he recalled his hand, letting her sleep. Something stopped him from going there. It was the bone-deep suspicion that this was all his fault. That hubris had finally done him in.
Waking Lauren to hear his nightmare suddenly felt like a colossally selfish thing to do. Instead, he watched the woman he loved as she slept. Lauren had plans to look at apartments in the city. Soon. If he opened her laptop right now he’d probably find it open to theNew York Timesreal estate search engine.
The woman he loved needed him to move away to a new life in the city.
The woman he’d married needed his help on Long Island.
And the little girl who called him Daddy was hurting so badly.
He’d made different kinds of promises to all of them. As he blinked into the darkness, it became perfectly clear thathe couldn’t get through the next few months without breaking some promises. Maybe breaking some hearts.
Lauren couldn’t fix it for him. And maybe he didn’t deserve to have her try.
He lay awake listening to Lauren’s gentle breaths, feeling his happiness slip away into the cool springtime night.
EIGHT
WASHINGTON, D.C.
APRIL 2016
“God, this is a total gongshow,” Lauren muttered to herself.
Watching game number five was like revisiting her old life. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t supposed to care anymore. It didn’t matter that she’d given up hockey. The stadium thrummed with energy. Thethwackof the puck flying off a stick and the crash of skates into the boards was the soundtrack of her whole life. And not just the parts she’d shared with Mike Beacon.
Hockey slang had been a part of Lauren’s vocabulary since she learned to talk. If milk spilled from her sippy cup onto the kitchen table, her father would grab a “Zamboni” to wipe it up. If he and her mother bumped each other in the kitchen, it was a “hip check.”
Her grandfather had played for Long Island in the seventies. When she was born, her father was a veteran player for Detroit. When he retired, they moved to Long Island where her father became a manager—and thenthemanager—of the Long Island team.
The sport was in her blood. Becoming a hockey fan wasn’t a choice. It was her destiny. But that all changed two years ago.
First came the new job in Manhattan. She loved it, but it was the first time in her adult life she worked with people who didn’t follow hockey.
And then Mike had begun acting strangely. As she tried to narrow down their apartment hunting options, he grew distant. His ex-wife seemed to be leaning on him for a lot of childcare as the hockey season ended, too.
“Is something wrong?” Lauren kept asking him.
He shook his head, looking troubled.
A few months shy of her thirtieth birthday, she was riding home on the Long Island Railroad from a day of training at Nate Kattenberger’s corporate headquarters when her phone rang. A picture flashed onto the screen to identify the caller. She’d just gotten her first Katt Phone the week before, and had chosen this shot for Mike. He was smiling at the camera, a cupcake she’d baked in his hand.
“Lauren.” His voice was a dry scrape into the phone when she answered.
“Hi! I’m still on the train. But I should make it to your house in thirty.”
There was a silence, and Lauren wondered if the call had been dropped. “I’m not there,” he said roughly. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
A chill broke out across her neck and shoulders. “Baby, what is it?”
