Together, we head down the street toward the practice facility. And I’m silently counting in my head. One Mississippi… Two Mississippi… Three Mississip—
“So,” Bayer says.
“Two and a half seconds, man. That’s how long you waited to pry into my private business.”
He snorts. “How do you know what I was going to ask?”
“Because I’ve met you?”
“Okay, fine. But your first mistake was assuming you have private business, when the rest of us have already had to put up with all the team gossip. That’s just what you get for hooking up with somebody in the organization. Ask me how I know.”
He makes a few good points. When he and Sylvie started carrying on, it was all we could talk about.
“So Sylvie and I have a few questions. Did you two…” He clears his throat.
“No,” I say immediately.
“You mean no like no, no? Or no, like, Charli would murder me in my sleep if I answered that question?”
“I mean no like fuck off.”
“But Sylvie and I have a bet going!” Anton says.
“Oh, well. Why didn’t you say so? It’s more fun spilling my secrets if one of you stands to make twenty bucks.”
“It’s a hundred.” Anton chuckles. “So did you, or didn’t you?”
I let out a sigh. “Go fish, man. I’m a vault.”
Anton cackles. “That means I win! You did obviously did it.”
“You don’t win, sucker,” I bark.
Well, shit. As Anton’s eyes grow round, I realize I just got played. Now he knows.
“Hold on,” he says in a hushed voice. “Really? You didn’t bang? Isn’t that what people do when they get drunk-married in Vegas? What is the goddamn point of reckless behavior if you don’t round all the bases?”
“We just…” There must be an exit ramp from this conversation. But I can’t seem to find it. “We just didn’t. There’s drunk and then there’s sloppy drunk, right? I overshot the target.”
Anton stops walking and grabs my arm. His face is full of shock. “You’re kidding me. You couldn’t close the deal?”
“What if you didn’t make such a big fucking deal about it,” I say through clenched teeth. “It wasn’t my finest hour.”
Anton throws his head back and laughs. “Ohhhhh, buddy. I’m sorry. Does Charli know about you?”
“What about me?” I ask in a surly voice. We resume walking toward the practice facility.
“Does she know you’ve had it bad for her since the first minute you met? Does she know you get all hot and bothered whenever she smiles? Does she know your eyes are always pasted to her fine ass?”
“They’re not,” I grumble.
“Sure, but that’s because you’re a gentleman. In your head, you’re undressing her half the time.”
“You shut up.”
He laughs. “Fine. But you did hook up, right? I didn’t even know she was into guys.”
That makes two of us. “That’s private.” Charli doesn’t need me to gossip about her behind her back. I’ve already done enough damage.
I expect him to rib me some more, but that’s not what happens. “Whoa, Drake—check it out.”
Glancing up, I see two TV vans in front of the Brooklyn Hockey headquarters and a couple of cameramen standing around looking for something to film. I think that something is me.
“Seriously?” I groan. The only other time I’ve seen camera crews here was during the playoffs. “Is that about me? For real?”
“I think so, buddy.”
“Hey! Cornelius Drake!” A reporter in a red tie steps out from behind his van. His cameraman swings around to focus on me. “Congratulations on a great showing at the All Stars.”
“Thanks,” I say stiffly, trying not to break stride. But there are still ten paces between me and the building.
“Tell us about your Vegas wedding!” he demands, flashing me a big smile to make this seem fun.
“Keep walking,” Anton whispers. “I got this.”
“How’ve you got this?” I have to wonder.
Anton spreads his arms out wide and shields me, like I’m a perp being led into the police station. “Drake is not taking questions at this time,” he says theatrically. “The happy couple eloped, because they like their privacy.”
I jog up the steps and pause at the top, turning around. There are two cameras recording everything I’ve done. Which is not much. I wink at the camera, because they came all this way. Then I turn around and pull open the door.
Anton doesn’t follow me. “I’m Anton Bayer. Jersey number seventy. That’s one better than sixty-nine. I also do some modeling, and I’m available for impromptu musical performances. Ask me anything.”
The reporters laugh as I head through the door. I guess it’s useful to have ridiculous friends.
“God, Neil!” Georgia squeaks as she hurries across the lobby toward me. “I tried to warn you that they were here.”
“Wasn’t looking at my phone,” I grumble.
“I’m sorry. There I was frittering away the morning at the diner without any idea you were going to be ambushed.”
“Don’t mention it,” I say. “It’s not a big deal.” At least I hope it’s not. “How can we make this go away?”
Georgia chews her lip. “Getting married isn’t much of a story, unless it causes drama for somebody else.”
“Like the team. Or my family,” I say slowly.
“Right,” Georgia agrees. “The team doesn’t care, of course. But your family is fascinating, Neil. Any girl who marries you is suddenly rich. Now that’s a story.”
I rub a hand over the center of my chest where tension is starting to gather. I think I oversold this gig to Charli. She’s not used to this kind of tabloid nonsense. “We’ve gotta stick with no comment, okay? There’s nothing I can say about my, uh, marriage that anyone wants to hear.”
“All right,” Georgia says quietly. “Both Mr. Drake and Ms. Higgins decline to discuss their personal lives, blah blah blah. The press will move on eventually.”
“Thank you.”
Anton steps inside, clapping me on the shoulder and steering me toward the tunnel leading to the practice facility. “Everything all right?” he asks as we hurry toward the players’ meeting.
“It will be.”
I’m unsettled, though. Until today, the coverage of my hockey career has largely ignored my family background. On the rare occasions that I’ve been asked to do lifestyle interviews, I always find a reason to say no. It’s cool if they write about my stats, but please leave the private-jet empire out of it.
But now it’s going to be harder to fly under the radar. And it should have occurred to me that Charli could be skewered in the media for marrying me.
Is that what a good guy does to the woman he’s crushing on? No, it is not.
“Are they still out there?” I ask a few hours later.
“From this angle I can only see one news truck,” Silas says, stretching his quads as he looks out the window.