Page 165 of Offside Devil

I try to imagine what I would’ve been thinking if I’d rolled up to that lunch and found Paige eight months pregnant.

Probably, It’s not mine.

That’s what I thought when Jodie Barnes knocked on my front door with a little blonde-haired kid glued to her leg.

Paige lied to me enough times that it would’ve taken God Himself to descend from the heavens and confirm paternity before I would have given her a dime.

But I didn’t go to the lunch. I blocked Paige’s number, cut off all contact, and never heard from her again.

In some ways, it was for the best.

The two of us were always a disaster waiting to happen. If I’d found out she was pregnant, I would’ve gotten back with her, if only to be there for my kid. But it would’ve been a fucking wreck.

Paige turned me into a cynic. The up-and-down, loop-de-loop disaster of our relationship made me doubt I could ever have something healthy. Something functional.

Which is why I keep telling myself that I can’t hire a private investigator to look into my own girlfriend.

Owen pitched that idea during our weekly coffee meeting. I didn’t tell him exactly what’s going on because he’s suspicious enough of Mira as it is, but I hinted that there might be more to her past than she’s told me.

“I’ll give you the number of my P.I.,” he said, sliding his reading glasses on and flipping his ancient phone open.

I shouldn’t have been surprised he had a private investigator on speed dial. This is all coming from the man who Hulk-smashed through my front door and dug in my bathroom trash can. Trust isn’t his strong suit.

Yet another reason why I don’t want to take his advice: hiring someone to tail Mira and dig into her past is not the stuff healthy and functional relationships are made of. If Mira found out, any pretense that we trust each other would dissolve like smoke.

Then again, things can’t keep going like they are.

We’ve been passing ships for days now. I told Daniel I’d talk to Mira, but we came home from the double date and went straight to sleep. The next morning, I went in for an early practice. Then Mira went to the movies with Taylor that night. She got home late and slept in her own bed so she wouldn’t wake me up.

Every day that passes without me saying something makes it harder to work into a conversation.

All the time, I keep thinking, Why isn’t Mira bringing it up?

She knows she lied. She knows I know she lied.

We’ve been living with an elephant that neither of us wants to point out, but it’s getting hard to focus on anything else.

At home or on the ice.

“Whitaker!” I hear Jace yell my name half a second before a body slams into me.

I crash into the boards hard enough that my helmet bounces off the tempered glass.

I manage to stay on my skates and whip around, shoving whoever the fuck just plowed into me in the chest. “Watch where you’re fucking going,” I spit.

Carson grins, skating backwards. “Sorry, pal. I didn’t see you there.”

“The fuck you didn’t.”

Jace skates over, ice spraying as he skids to a stop. “Walk it off.”

I hear the warning in his voice. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t let him get to you.

The problem is, Carson has already gotten to me. And to my family. His little stunt made me realize that I don’t trust myself or anyone else as much as I thought I did.

No matter how much time passes, I’m always one slip up from being back where I started.

One drink.

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