Mr charming, p.15
Mr. Charming, page 15
“What does this have to do with today?” Decker asks.
“What can I say? The kid looks up to me. He loves me.” He laughs at his attempt at humor. “Jeez, okay.” His shoulders slump a bit. “I guess Bodhi heard Jade and Henry talking about Tedi and me the other night and thought you were the reason we weren’t together.” He glances at me. “So, that was his friend, Micha, who hit you with the puck. They kind of planned it.”
“What?” I gape.
Tweetie raises his hand. “They weren’t intending for this to happen. They were actually going after your… lower half.” He cringes again.
Decker’s hands go between his legs as if he needs to protect his manhood.
“They’re kids.” Tweetie’s shoulders lift. “But shit, I’m sorry, man.”
Decker narrows his eyes at me. What does he want me to do here?
Tweetie stands and pats Decker’s leg. “I’ll give you two some privacy.”
I don’t miss the way his eyes linger. It’s clear Tweetie feels like an idiot when this entire situation is on me.
“Thanks, Tweetie, and I hope Bodhi isn’t in trouble,” Decker says right before he leaves.
Tweetie chuckles. “Well, I think he’s off his video games for a little bit, but that’s more because he had zero regrets for what he did.” He shakes his head. “Someone needs to tell him that I’m not the one he should idolize.” Again, he glances at me.
It’s nearly impossible not to rush over to Tweetie and throw my arms around him and tell him how wrong he is.
“I’ll see if I can get the doctor to come in.” He smirks. “Use the clout of being the best Falcon and all.”
Decker chuckles at his attempt to inflect humor, but I can’t find it in myself to laugh. In fact, I feel like the worst person in the world.
He leaves, and I hear him asking a nurse when the doctor will be in to see Decker. Tweetie throws his name out and says he can get some tickets to whoever can fix Decker up and get him out of here the fastest.
“That was nice of him to check on you,” I say.
Decker’s eyebrows rise.
“What?”
“He didn’t come in here for me. He was here for you.”
I look down at my lap.
“It’s coming, Tedi. Pretty soon, he’s not going to be able to keep his distance.”
I don’t look at him.
“Because when a man loves a woman like he loves you, there eventually comes a point where he doesn’t give a fuck who or what’s in his way. He’s going to fight his demons and yours to win you back.”
Thankfully, the curtain opens, and a doctor comes in, so I can try to ignore the fact that there isn’t enough armor in the world to protect myself from Tweetie.
It’s one of the things that keeps me up at night. The knowledge that if he does come for me, wanting a real second chance, I don’t have the fight in me to stop us from making another mistake.
Thirty-Two
Tweetie’s Journal Entry
Eight years ago
Florida
* * *
To my teenage self,
* * *
Our worst nightmare just came true, and I’m not sure where we go from here. I want to apologize, buddy. I fucked up and understand if you never forgive me. A part of me doesn’t even want to write this down, but another part of me needs to purge what happened onto the page to see if I can make sense of it myself.
* * *
It’s like someone put the biggest dark cloud over me, and it refuses to move on no matter how much I beg and plead.
First, my injuries.
Next, my trade.
Then, Tedi.
I was used to the gossip. Used to fans, both men and women, saying shit that wasn’t true and had no basis in reality. Okay, it was mostly the women. Especially when I was single. But once Tedi and I got together, the blogs turned my way. Reports of how happy I looked and how they liked seeing us together. And slowly, I saw that wall lower around Tedi. Brick by brick, she tore it down until I didn’t feel the need to reassure her all the time, to make sure she knew I wasn’t going to ever cheat.
So after the trade, I took it for granted that she knew that still held true. I was so hung up on my injury, on my trade, that I didn’t put her first. Things got to a crisis point, and as I held a crying Tedi in my arms and saw her fear of losing me, I promised myself I wasn’t going to wallow anymore. I wasn’t going to be pissed off that she didn’t move to Nashville with me. We talked it out that night, and I made love to her over and over again so that by the time she got on the plane back to Florida, she would be assured I wasn’t going anywhere.
But with the way my life had been going, I should’ve been prepared that that wasn’t the end of it.
So the morning Tedi opened the door to find a tall blonde who looked vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t put my finger on why, I didn’t realize that was the beginning of the end. I wasn’t even sure how the woman got into the building, let alone knew where my apartment was.
“Who are you?” she said to Tedi as if Tedi was a girl I was cheating on her with.
I came up behind Tedi, holding the door open and only wearing my pajama pants and no shirt. Tedi was wearing my shirt, just how I liked it.
“I’m sorry? Who the hell are you?” Tedi’s back was up immediately. She didn’t look to me to see why a woman was standing outside my door, and I stupidly patted myself on the back for the job I’d done being an excellent boyfriend the night before.
“I’m the one he got pregnant,” the stranger said.
“What?” I shouted.
Tedi took the door from my grip and slammed it shut. Turning around, she crossed her arms. “Please tell me she’s delusional.”
“She is,” I affirmed, panicking.
Tedi swung the door back open.
The woman turned as if to walk away, but then she stopped.
Fuck, that moment will haunt me for a long, long time. My heart stopped, worried that Tedi would believe her.
It took weeks, but a hefty lawyer’s bill and a blood test freed me from the woman who had falsely accused me. I’d never even slept with her. The investigation I launched revealed that she was dating someone in my building, and I’d run into her and him in the elevator a few times. He was a big hockey fan and always chatted me up.
The woman wouldn’t admit that she’d never slept with me, and I saw the doubt that lingered in Tedi, although she came to every lawyer’s appointment with me. She stood by my side without asking me every day if I was telling the truth. All of it took a toll on Tedi and me, and I didn’t know how to undo the damage.
In the end, the woman said that she had been hoping that I was alone in the apartment that morning to try to seduce me to get back at her boyfriend. But when Tedi opened the door, she didn’t know what to do, and she panicked, then it all got out of hand.
She blew up my fucking life because she didn’t know how to rein in her false accusations. I was beyond pissed and retreated into my apartment, then went into overdrive with Tedi to make sure she didn’t think I would cheat, but I felt everything we’d built crumbling.
I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know how bad until I returned to my Florida house when I had a two-day break and walked downstairs to find Tedi crying.
She’d had plans with Saige the night before, so I’d hung with Aiden and Ford. I’m pretty sure she told Saige all of our problems, and I told Aiden and Ford my version. I didn’t love the advice the guys gave me, and Tedi had come home in a worse mood than when she left.
So tonight was our only night alone together, and I wanted to take her out and make it special.
As my feet hit the main floor, I heard the sob from the kitchen. Tedi’s back shuddered, and she was trying to catch her breath.
I broke the distance and wrapped my arms around her from behind, sorrow and frustration and fear filling me. “What’s the matter?”
“I can’t do it.” Her voice was a raspy whisper.
I looked over her shoulder to see the phone on the counter. Her screen was black, and I didn’t want to see what I’d uncover if I opened her phone. I didn’t want to know that she was still checking the hockey blogs. But I was the delusional one, because I honestly didn’t know it had gotten this bad between us.
“Babe, we’ve talked about this. It’s all bullshit.”
She nodded and slid out of my grasp.
I shouldn’t have given her the space from me, because she grabbed her phone and threw it across the room.
“Tedi.” I’d never felt weaker than that moment. I didn’t know what to say or do that I hadn’t done already.
She walked over to the couch and sat down, burying her head in her hands.
When I joined her, her body stiffened.
As if some other creature emerged, her back straightened, and she lifted her gaze and set her eyes on me. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
Her words crushed me like a hit from behind into the boards. Sure, she was different, we both were. But it was all temporary, and we’d get back to who we were.
I couldn’t find the right words to say.
“See? You know it. God, Tweetie, you know it too.”
“It’s just all the shit we’ve been dealing with. It will pass. All of it will pass.” I didn’t know if I was trying to convince her or myself.
She shook her head, and when I felt the devastation of that one small movement sink into my soul, my walls went up. I couldn’t deal with the feeling of abandonment I knew would follow if she did this. I’d been ignoring that creeping feeling since I went to Nashville, thinking that if I didn’t give it room, it couldn’t grow, but it did. Like a slow creeping vine, it had been winding its way around us, and we didn’t notice until it choked the life out of us.
“Say something. Please.” She looked at me with as much devastation in her eyes as I felt inside.
“It’s all my fault.” My voice didn’t hold any emotion as I mentally prepared the walls around my heart.
This was it. We were ending this right now, right here, and I knew in that moment I would never have with another woman what I had with her. I’d never even be able to sit in my family room again without envisioning Tedi’s tear-stricken face.
“It’s not either of our faults. But we can’t go on ignoring it. I loathe myself. I’ll convince myself one day that everything is good, we’re happy, then the slightest thing will set me off and this version of myself that I loathe comes out and I want to book a flight to Nashville so you can reassure me everything is fine.” She cried into her hands, deep, racking sobs. “I can’t do it anymore.”
My body went cold, and I went numb. I had no idea what to do, how to change this. Suddenly, I was that twelve-year-old kid again, sitting on the step and waiting for my dad to show up. Not worth anyone’s time. Anyone’s attention. Not worth sticking around for.
“So that’s it. It’s over?”
Her head popped up. She narrowed her eyes at me.
I didn’t know what she wanted me to do to fix this that I hadn’t already tried. It was my fault we were in this position. It was my injury, my trade, my job that had fucked this all up. All the hockey blog bullshit was because of me and my need to be the center of attention and Mr. fucking Charming all the time, and it wasn’t going to go away anytime soon.
Then my earlier conversation with Aiden and Ford ran through my head.
“If you want her, you have to show you’re serious. You’re asking her to give up everything for you. You need to give up something too.”
They were two men I’d looked up to. Two men who had found and kept the women they loved. I looked up to them as examples of great men and hockey players.
So I did the only thing I could. I fell to one knee and grabbed her hands.
“Tedi, will you marry me?”
Thirty-Three
Tedi
“Easton!” Conor shouts across the bar.
Decker told me he was bringing reinforcements today, but I didn’t think it would be a teammate. Last I’d heard, Easton Bailey was in Alaska.
All the guys shake hands and do that man-hug thing.
“I thought you were back home with the moose,” Tweetie says to Easton, sitting down next to him.
“Hey, babe,” I say to Decker, and he actually bends down and kisses my cheek before sitting next to me.
“How are the hips? Holding up, old man?” Easton jokes with Tweetie, and everyone laughs.
“His hips will be the last thing to go. Too much conditioning,” Kyleigh says.
The guys all huddle together on one side of the table, and the women do the same on our end.
“You’ve been busy, huh?” Eloise asks me.
“I’m trying to get this campaign to be successful with all the roadblocks the GM has put in my way. And the traveling takes more out of me than I thought it would.” I sip my wine.
I somehow got on a group text with the girls, and they do a lot of things together. With and without the guys. I declined the last three meet-ups, not wanting to put Decker through the paces and not wanting to be around Tweetie by myself. But I figured a quick meal would be okay. I told Decker to meet me so he can leave early if he wants, but it just keeps it in Tweetie’s head that I’m off-limits. Although he’s not trying to win me, so maybe this is all for nothing. Maybe this is all for me and not him.
I don’t want to examine that thought too hard.
“Well, I loved what you did the other day at his endorsement deal, and you did that whole ‘how do you make a hockey player go from rough and tough to handsome and polished’ thing. Who would’ve thought Tweetie cleaned up so well?” Kyleigh, the one who seems to be the hardest on Tweetie’s lifestyle, says.
“Yeah, the women loved it too.” Reading the comments on the posts reminded me of the nutcase I had been back in the day, and it only made me want to accept their invitation tonight just to make sure I never see that pathetic version of myself again.
“I hate those comments, right?” Eloise rolls her eyes.
“Hey,” Jade says and looks at Decker then back at me. “I’m really sorry about the whole puck-in-the-face thing. Bodhi just—”
“It’s fine.” I wave off her concern and look at Decker.
There was a light fracture. He has to go back for a few scans in the coming weeks, but you’d never guess it by looking at him.
“I felt horrible. Like the worst mother when he admitted what he’d planned.” Jade blows out a breath and shakes her head.
I place my hand on her arm. “It’s kind of cute.” Which it was. All three women peer over at me, so I’m quick to correct myself. “That he tried to get you and Henry together.”
“The verdict is still out on which one of us got them back together.” Kyleigh elbows Jade.
Eloise holds up her hands. “I wasn’t in the picture for that. So I’m as much in the dark as you.”
“I thought it was cute how he tried to get Decker out of the picture,” Jade whispers, and I sigh.
“Just so you guys all know, there is no chance of anything happening between me and you know who.”
They all kind of look at one another and raise their eyebrows.
“I’m serious.” I double down.
“Okay,” Eloise says in a singsong voice.
She and Kyleigh talk about something else, and Jade places her hand on my arm. “I get it. The past can be really hard to overcome. If you ever want to meet for a coffee or anything, I’m here.”
She’s so sweet. Just like Saige. It would be easy to drag Jade to a corner and tell her all of our shit, but what good would that do?
“Thanks, I appreciate that.”
She nods but doesn’t push me for more, which makes her even more sweet.
“Shut up, you’re doing it?” I hear Easton and look down the table.
“Yeah, I’ve always been able to handle a lot of spice.” Tweetie stands, glancing in my direction for a second before he approaches some woman in the corner.
“What’s going on?” Eloise asks.
Conor puts his arms around the back of her chair. “Tweetie’s entering the hot wing contest.”
“Who bet him?” I point around the guys.
Easton slowly raises his hand. “Guilty.”
I shake my head.
“Hey, we need one more,” Tweetie shouts to the guys.
“Does he think we’re stupid? I’m not playing tomorrow night with my throat burning.” Rowan shakes his head.
“Come on!” Tweetie holds his arms out at his sides. “East, man, you’re from Alaska.”
“Which has what to do with me eating a hot-ass chicken wing?” He chuckles.
Tweetie’s quick to move on. “Decker, my guy, let’s go.”
“I’ve had about my fill of trying new shit.” Decker eases back in his chair.
“I thought you loved this shit,” Easton says to Decker.
Decker shakes his head.
Tweetie comes back over to the table. “The lady says if one of us wins, we get a free T-shirt and our picture on the wall.”
“Oh yay, a T-shirt.” I roll my eyes.
“What about you?” Tweetie asks me.
“No way.” I shake my head.
“We need one more!” the woman says over the microphone.
“What is this even for?” Decker asks.
“They have some new flavors or something they’re trying out. It’s a publicity thing.” Tweetie shrugs, like, who cares what it’s for? It’ll be fun.
Easton eyes Decker. “You need better press. Do it, and I’ll snap some pics, put them on my socials. You know, to help you out and all.”
Decker flips off Easton.
Decker does have a pretty shitty social media game.
“I will say”—Tweetie holds up his hands—“connecting with the town you’re playing in is part of the game.”
