Page 134 of Hockey Wife

“No, you haven’t. But you were right when you said I don’t know anything about hockey, about your world.” Flash cards would only get her so far. “We’re in different places, you and I.”

He sounded so resigned when he said, “I hear you.”

He had always been a great listener. She’d miss him terribly, but this would be best for him. He could settle with someone who could give him exactly what he needed, be there for him through this next phase.

On a deep pull of air into her lungs, she reached for the words that she suspected would kill her.

“Banks, I think we should get a divorce.”

43

Jenny, his three-year-old niece, took a flying leap off the back of the sofa and landed right on Banks’s chest. His shoulder twinged but held up. A good sign? Maybe. But thirty pounds of little girl was a lot different than two hundred pounds of asshole hockey player.

April scooped her up. “Leave your uncle alone. He’s old and wizened.”

“Hey!”

“A wizard?” Jenny asked hopefully.

“No, more like a crone,” April said.

His sister returned his scowl with one of her own, which he liked to think was about 10% less scary than the day before, which was about 5% less than the day before that. Since he’d arrived home in Apple Falls, they’d given him the mostly silent treatment, all pissed at him because of Georgia. Even his gran. So much for Dylan the Golden Child. Everyone was on his case except his mom, who understood that he was in no frame of mind to rehab a marriage when he could barely rehab his body.

He went looking for her now and found her in the kitchen with Sandy, reading a recipe on her iPad. It reminded him of Georgia, learning to cook, and made him pissy all over again.

“Need any help?”

“Sure! Want to peel carrots?”

Sandy muttered, “Better if we do it. Pretend it’s a bag of hockey player dicks.”

His mom sighed. “How about you go to the store and get some ice cream for the apple pie?”

“But we’ve got plenty?—”

“I want the Madagascar vanilla bean one.”

His sister rolled her eyes. “Sure, Mom.”

Once she was gone, he picked up the vegetable scraper and ran a carrot under cold water in the sink. Then he got busy. If only he could scrape away the last four months. Figure out how he could have handled it all better—his shoulder, his game, his marriage.

“Is Gran okay?”

“She’s napping.”

“I never intended to disappoint her.”

She nodded. “I know. You don’t have it in you to hurt anyone, Dylan.”

Except Georgia. He’d taken it out on her, and while she was nice enough to forgive him, she didn’t see a future for them. He took comfort in the fact she had yet to send over the annulment papers. For now, he was still her husband.

He’d come home a couple of days ago after the Rebels were knocked out of the second round against Nashville in a Game 7 heartbreaker. (The irony that if he’d stayed with his old team, he might still be playing wasn’t lost on him.) He wasn’t obliged to travel with the Rebels or sit through any of the games, but these were his ice brothers, and he wanted to be there. He’d like to think he could have made a difference if he’d been on that ice, but the boys had skated their hearts out. He couldn’t fault their performance. Like hasty Vegas marriages, sometimes these things don’t work out.

“You want to talk about Georgia?”

He looked up at his mom, whose face was all concern.

“What’s there to talk about? We’re in different places in our lives. She’s young, just finding her feet, and I’m—not.”