Page 57 of Playmaker

She put her bag in the overhead bin, then settled beside me. We exchanged smiles, but didn’t say much for a while.

Then she was checking something on her phone, and her expression suddenly darkened. “For fuck’s sake,” she muttered, and typed something with sharp, irritated taps on the screen.

After she’d apparently sent the message, I cautiously asked, “Bad news?”

“Not really.” Sighing, she leaned back against the seat. “Just a reporter sniffing around, trying to get me to talk about Ty.” Sabrina rolled her eyes. “They didn’t ask me about him half as much while we were married as they do now.”

“Wow, seriously?” I made a face. “What do they even want to know?”

She made a tired gesture before letting her hand drop onto the armrest. “I think they just want dirt. Like everyone is convinced there’s something scandalous about it. Either I left him for Kendra, or he was cheating, or…” Closing her eyes, she sighed heavily. “I just tell them we weren’t compatible. I wanted to play hockey, and he didn’t want a wife who played hockey.”

“Was that—was that actually the issue? Did he try to stop you from playing?”

She nodded slowly, gazing with unfocused eyes at the back of the seat in front of her. “That was what finally made me leave, yeah.”

“And they don’t think that’s juicy enough?”

“Apparently not.”

“Wow.” I studied her. “Can I ask you about something personal?”

Sabrina let her head loll toward me as she raised her eyebrows. “Sure.”

“When you were married—”

Her wince stopped me in my tracks.

I chewed my lip. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to… If you don’t…”

“It’s fine.” She picked up her glass. “It’s wasn’t a great time in my life, but I can talk about it.”

I hesitated.

“It’s fine,” she said again. “What’s on your mind?”

I proceeded cautiously. “Just… I saw some interviews with you during that time. And you were at a lot of his games—things like that.” I paused, watching for signs that I really was treading where I didn’t belong. “You never seemed happy.”

She winced again and dropped her gaze. Before I could insist she didn’t have to talk about it, she said, “I wasn’t.” She swallowed. “I never was.”

I chewed my lip, not quite sure how to ask what I thought was the obvious question.

She watched her thumb running back and forth along the edge of the armrest. “To tell you the truth, I think Ty was more in love with my name than he was with me.”

“But you changed your name when you were married to him.”

“Yep.” She laughed bitterly. “What better way for him to lay claim to me than to make me take his name? He wanted the clout of being Doran McAvoy’s son-in-law and Mark McAvoy’s brother-in-law, and he wanted the world to know that I washis.”

My lips parted. “Seriously?”

Sabrina nodded, not looking at me. “It was, um… It was oppressive.”

“That sounds miserable.”

“It was. And looking back, I basically walked right into a marriage like my parents’ marriage. In fact, my mom is a big part of why I got away from him when I did.”

“Yeah?”

Sabrina nodded. “Ty and I came to visit during the off season. While he was golfing with my dad and brother, I went over to her place. She sat me down and said, ‘You aren’t going to want to hear this, but it’s what I wish someone had told me while I was married to your father.’”