Chapter Thirteen
Aiden
I take Saige to my favorite juice bar in Denver. She seems impressed I’d actually go to one and can decipher the menu.
“Want to walk for a while?” I ask.
“You never want to be in the hotel room, huh?” She sips her drink, opting for something with a lot of fruit.
“I get bored, and when I sit around all day, I always have a shitty game.” I turn us toward a park so that I have less of a chance of being recognized.
“That makes sense. I should snap a candid of you enjoying your juice before the game.” She takes out her phone. “Pose?”
“Do you want duck lips?”
She laughs and snaps the picture of me with duck lips, my juice straw sticking out of the side of my mouth.
“Why don’t we take one together?” I suggest.
She shuts down the phone and puts it in her purse. “Nope.”
“Why not?”
“I’m still building your fan base and most of them right now are women. Women who want to date you.”
“And?” I take another sip of my juice.
“And you’re not a dumb jock, Aiden, you know exactly why.” She sips her juice and continues walking, looking up at the bare trees.
“Why don’t you enlighten me?”
She gives me an expression that says, “Come on, you don’t need me to explain it to you.” But explain she does. “Women don’t want to see you with another woman.”
“But you’re just a friend,” I say—to be truthful, it’s just to see her reaction.
She looks at me quizzically. “You consider me a friend?”
I put my arm around her shoulders. “Of course. Do you not consider me a friend?”
She rolls her eyes and weaves out of my hold. “I thought I was your bitch.” She smiles at me and finishes off her juice, tossing the cup in a nearby trash can.
I chuckle. “Oh, you’re not my bitch. And you are my friend whether I’m yours or not.”
“Don’t act like I’ve offended you.”
I slow my footsteps, finishing my juice and tossing it in the trash too. “You did a little. There aren’t a lot of people I put in that category.”
“Well, don’t I feel like an asshole now. Why would you put me in that category?”
I glance over from the corner of my eye to not make it obvious how much she intrigues me. How much I enjoy sharing something like this—a walk in the park—with her and how it’s something I’d enjoy doing every day. But she’s involved with someone—my agent—so I can’t lay my cards out like that.
“When you brought that bottle of wine down to the Fury arena and used Joran to get to the locker room to see me, you moved into the friend zone. You didn’t have to do that, but you did.”
“We made a deal,” she says simply.
I shake my head. “Not at that point. I’d stopped at your office on my way down to the game, prepared to ask you to throw the drink in my face, but I didn’t go in.”
“You did?” Her forehead wrinkles.
I nod. “I thought I shouldn’t put any more pressure on you. I mean, what do you owe me?”
She swivels around to walk backward so she can look at me. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Depends,” I say warily.
“How hard is it being a professional athlete? I mean, I think everyone on the outside sees only the perks. Since I handle the social media for a lot of athletes, I see the flip side at times, but even I think it has to all be worth it.” She turns back around and walks at my side.
“Ever since I can remember, this is where I wanted to be. In the national league, skating. Not for the money, although yeah, it’s nice. But because I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. But the road to get here was hard and full of ups and downs, and there are never any guarantees. You lose track of friends and teammates because of trades. Maksim and Ford are probably my best friends, but if I get traded to another team, it’s like starting all over again. Eventually we’re just saying a quick hello before a game or catching up afterward. And the guys with families have it worse. When they get traded, they have to upend their entire families. Their kids leave their schools and their friends. It’s rough for everyone.”
She winds her arm through mine and rests her cheek on my shoulder as though it’s a natural thing we do all the time. “Surely you have friends who aren’t professional hockey players?”
“Friends who are ex-hockey players. Since most of my time growing up was spent playing, most of my friends existed in that world too. The majority of them didn’t make it to the professional level and are married now. When I go home, I visit and stuff, but it’s not like they can understand what my day-to-day life is like. All they see are the perks, like you do.” When she doesn’t respond right away, I say, “First world problems, I know. But they’re problems just the same.”
It wasn’t my intention to have this “woe is me” conversation with Saige, but she doesn’t think what she did for me that night was a big deal. It absolutely was, because she expected nothing in return.
“I have a confession,” she says, removing herself from my side. I inwardly groan when she’s not next to me anymore.
“Do I want to know?”
“You’re nothing like I imagined. That night at the party, I thought you were just some cocky guy hitting on me even though you knew I was there with someone else. But right now, you seem like the polar opposite of that guy.”
I nod. “I’m still a ‘see what I want, take it’ kind of guy. That doesn’t go away. It’s how I got into the NHL. Not accepting the word no. Never giving up hope. But I hope you feel like I’ve respected your situation with Joran since I found out.”
She looks at me and tilts her head down. “You do flirt.”
“True, and if you want me to stop, I will. Just say the word. But know that I’m not doing it to cause problems between you and Joran. It just seems like the default way we communicate.”
She’s quiet. I think she’s gonna ask me to stop and I’ll never see that pink flush to her cheeks again, but she never says anything. It would never be my intention to try to steal Joran’s girl, but what is he thinking, leaving her with me so much? There’s no way he can’t see how she’s not the type of girl who comes around twice in a lifetime. Surely Saige wants someone more attentive, and even if that guy can’t be me, I hate seeing some guy treat her badly—even if it is my agent.
“Oh my god!” Saige screeches and grabs my arm, pulling me down onto a nearby bench.
It’s cold as fuck and my ass rejects the metal, but I ease back down when Saige hovers her face in front of mine so that the back of her head is facing the path. I hear laughter from a couple walking by us, and Saige’s breath is fast and labored. She closes her eyes when the guy talks, and when she opens them again, her expression pleads with me not to say anything. As if I would. The only better position would be her straddling me and her lips actually on mine.
Once the couple has passed, she pulls back. “Thank you,” she mumbles.