They went to a commercial.
She shook her head, beside herself. She wanted to teleport herself to St. Louis, find him and scream at him. She just did not get it.
She knew fighting was a part of hockey, a big part. She and Jason had talked about it, how he didn’t condone fighting just for the sake of fighting, but with high adrenaline and intense competition it was going to happen sometimes, and it was okay if it was for some noble purpose like defending another player or protecting the goalie. Although she didn’t exactly get what was noble about beating someone up.
She’d never seen Jason fight, but then she’d only seen a couple of games. He wasn’t known as a fighter. He was known as a smart player, big, but quick-thinking and intuitive, a player who used finesse rather than his fists.
Delise looked at her, her lips rolled in. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head. She didn’t even know what to say. She stood. She walked back and forth in front of the television until the game came back on, arms wrapped around herself.
Jason had, of course, been given a penalty. She didn’t understand it all, apparently he got more than one penalty, but in the end, the Wolves were shorthanded for the rest of the game. And guess what? St. Louis scored.
And won the game, thanks to Jason Heller’s stupid penalty.
“Think, Remi, think.”
She replayed everything over in her head. “He asked me to think about moving in with him,” she told Delise, meeting her eyes. It shouldn’t have been enough to scare him into panic-mode and send him running the opposite direction, but she didn’t rule that out, because she knew why he’d broken up with Brianne.
“For some reason he ended up out with his hockey buddies Saturday night. He must have had a lot to drink for him to drop his pants in a restaurant and create a scene like that.”
“Maybe he was celebrating making the playoffs,” Delise suggested, her face somber.
Remi paced around her living room, not really seeing anything.
“No.” She shook her head. “The playoffs already started. I can’t imagine why he’d do that. But clearly, he got carried away, drank a bit too much, got arrested…” she rolled her eyes, “and was too embarrassed to tell me. But that doesn’t explain why he played so little tonight or why he got in that fight that cost the game.”
“I don’t know, Remi.”
“Something’s wrong.” After examining all the facts, she concluded that something was definitely wrong. Clammy-hands, heart-freezing, gut-churning wrong. And if he wasn’t going to tell her what it was, she was going to go to him and make him.
Except he was in another city. Dammit. And he wouldn’t be back in Chicago until Thursday.
Jason sat down in his coach’s office, his insides a mass of twisted nerves.
“Okay, Jase. What’s going on?”
He was getting tired of that question. Tired of hearing it, tired of trying to talk his way around it.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. You go out and get wasted last weekend, act like an asshole, get arrested, show up for practice the next day so hungover your face was green and you could barely skate. Then you get in a stupid fight and take a dumbass penalty that cost us our first playoff game. Last night you didn’t play much better.”
Jason slumped in the chair, unable to meet Dan’s eyes.
“You’re saying that’s nothing?”
He shook his head.
Dan waited. “Fuck.” He shook his head, his mouth tight. “Okay, then. If nothing’s wrong, get your shit together and act like the professional you are. We’ve got another game tomorrow night, and if we lose, we only have one more chance. We need you, Jase, but I won’t hesitate to bench you if you aren’t able to get your head in the game. This is not the time to be out drinking and partying and acting like an irresponsible teenager.”
Jason winced.
He rubbed his forehead.
“You’re better than this, Jase,” Dan continued, his voice easing.
Shit. Jason’s stomach rolled over.
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what’s wrong? Maybe I can help.”
And that did it.
Jason leaned one elbow on the armrest of the chair and covered his eyes while he tried to get his tight throat to relax enough to speak. He tried and nothing came out. Cleared his throat. Swallowed.
“I found out on Saturday that my ex-girlfriend is pregnant.”
Silence. Then, “Jesus.”
“Yeah.” Jason took his hand away and met Dan’s eyes. “It’s not that…I don’t want…fuck.” He swallowed again. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve been seeing someone else—someone I really care about. Christ! I don’t want to hurt her.”
Dan nodded and leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. “Yeah, I guess I see the problem. So she’s pretty upset about this?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“Oh. Jesus, Jase. You gotta tell her.”
“I can’t tell her.” Anguish slammed into him like a body check. “I don’t know what to tell her, because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Am I supposed to break up with her so I can be with Brianne? So we can get back together and be parents to this baby? Am I supposed to ask Brianne to marry me?” His voice cracked.
“Oh, man.” Dan rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know the answers to those questions, Jase. I can’t tell you what to do. But a couple things I can tell you. First of all—you have to deal with this. We’re in the playoffs. We need you here and present, mind and body and soul, every game, all sixty minutes. You can’t let your personal life interfere with your professional life.”
Jason nodded. “I know.” He felt like dog crap on the sidewalk about how unprofessional he’d been. He tightened his mouth.
“And I can tell you that you’re a good man. You’ve got a good, solid background—your parents brought you up right. Yeah, you’re young.”
“I’m twenty-nine.” Not a kid. Not like Remi’s younger brother wanting her to bail him out of missing an exam. Jason was old enough to be taking responsibility for his own mistakes, just like he’d urged Remi to make her brother do.
Dan waved a hand. “From where I’m at, you’re young. But you’re right. You’re a grown man and you need to figure this out. You need to do the right thing.”
“I don’t know what the right thing is. The right thing for me is different than the right thing for Brianne. And for our child. And for Remi.” He rubbed the ache in his chest. “I don’t want to be selfish, but…I just don’t know.”
“Go,” Dan said. “We’re done with our practice. You’ve got the rest of today and tomorrow to figure this out. Go do what you need to do, but I expect you here tomorrow night for the game, a hundred percent ready to play.”
Jason nodded and stood. He felt like a teenager in trouble for staying out past curfew, except this was a way worse infraction than that. He left Dan’s office, trying to keep his head up. He got what Dan was telling him. They paid him big bucks to play hockey, not to mope around with his head up his ass, pouting because things weren’t going his way.
Yeah. He had to deal with this. He still didn’t know exactly what he was going to do, but one thing he knew—he had to tell Remi.
Chapter Fifteen
Usually Remi loved having kids visit her after class. Some of her current students stayed and some of her former students, now in grade seven or eight, often came after school to hang out in her classroom, sometimes helping her mark spelling tests or clean up, good kids who she enjoyed talking to and laughing with.
But today she had to get out of there, like now.