Page 85 of Hat Trick

God, did someone twist the temperature up to steaming hot today? I clear my throat. Straighten my shoulders. “It’s a stuffed toy, actually.” Pausing, I force myself to continue. “I thought, maybe, one day we could get a dog. I’ve never had one. My mother wasn’t afan.”

Glancing over his shoulder at me, gray eyes meet blue. Humor tugs at his lips. “I’ve never had one either. Although I’ve got to say, I’d always envisioned a golden retriever, maybe, or a bullmastiff. Nota. . .”

“Chihuahua?” Igrin.

“I was going to say a puntabledog.”

“Puntable isn’t aword.”

“It is when we’re talking about yap-yap dogs,” he says on the tail end of a husky laugh. “But I also didn’t picture myself in a powder-blue tux for my wedding dayeither.”

Heat stains my cheeks. “It’s the only photo I could find for Holly from the internet. It’sfrom—”

“I know where it’s from, Gwen.” Marshall faces me, hands in his pockets. Like always, I can’t help but marvel at the powerful expanse of his chest and the breadth of his shoulders. He radiates control, strength, and—I hope—love. If I’m lucky. “What I want to know is, what did you plan to do with these? Keep them in the house? For fond memories we’ve created and memories we never had the chance tomake?”

Here we go. I struggle for a deep breath, squaring my shoulders to get out the words I’ve rehearsed every morning and every night for two weeks. If this is the moment I have to show what I feel for him is real and that it’slasting, it has to beperfect.

But then he cuts me off: “Tell me something, Gwen. How did you feel when I walked away from you at the engagementparty?”

Like I’d been stabbed in the heart. Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I wring my hands before me again. “As though I’d lost the one person who’d always been in mycorner.”

“Exactly.” His expression grows somber, as though determined to make me see how serious he is. “The thing is, Gwen, that’s how I felt when you walked away from me just the other day. Angry. Disappointed. Frustrated. All at myself, of course, but also at you,too.”

The laugh I give sounds awkward and stilted, and I do my best to keep my gaze off the cutouts that now watch me mockingly. Especially the one of me in a wedding dress that’s not mine and of Marshall in a tux he wore as a groomsman for a friend’s wedding. “I’m fully aware that I’m responsiblefor—”

He lifts a hand. “Hear meout.”

“Okay.”

With a short nod, he rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “I’ve spent my life trying to escape my past, Gwen. You heard what Dave said the other day—my actions landedhimin jail. And now the whole world knowsthat.”

“No,” I hastily say, “wait. You were trying to protect your mother, Marshall. I’ve read all the articles.” Ah, crap. Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that. But because it’s already out in the open, there’s no reason to pretend I haven’t read everything and anything I could find on him in the last two weeks. “You can’t—what happened wasn’t yourfault.”

“She didn’t want my help, I realize that now. She wanted out of that relationship and out of that house, and there was no better way to get a divorce than landing her husband in jail.” His gray eyes go flat as he stares at the floor. “I don’t want to claim that she used me or Dave to get what she wanted, but she saw an opportunity for escape and she took it. So, yes, I wanted to protect her. And, yeah, maybe Dave did actually feel an inkling to protect me or maybe he was just that pissed that he pushed me aside and wrapped his hands around thatknife.”

There are so many things I wish to say, but from the way a tick pulses in his jaw, I know he’s not done. He needs to finish his story—and I need to let him, without interruption, however much it kills me to keepsilent.

With a heavy exhale, he continues, “However it happened, my mom knew what she was doing when she called the cops and said that my father had beat her and then tried to strangle me.” At my horrified gasp, Marshall flashes me a humorless grin. “She didn’t lie about any of that. The knife was in my hand, but I didn’t do anything with it until my father’s hands wrapped around my neck. Striking out was survival and a childish hope that I could protect my mom. When I woke up from blacking out, Dave was covered in blood and my mother was whispering to the police that both my father and Dave had gone insane and attacked us. They both went to jail. She got out of the life she’d always hated, and I went into thesystem.”

Another nod, this one short and clipped as though in silent encouragement to himself to continue on. “I looked her up last weekend, just to see. She’s remarried, to a doctor this time. Has two little kids who go to a private school out in theBerkshires.”

I wonder if that’s what he wanted to find or if he’d hoped that she was still shacking up with his father, considering that his and Dave’s life have been a downward spiral. “What about yourdad?”

“Dead.” He says it with little emotion, as though discussing the weather. “Got stabbed in prison a few yearsago.”

My heart aches for him, bleeding for the little boy and the man he is now. “Marshall—”

He cuts me off with a shake of his head. “I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel bad for me, honey. I’m trying to show you a trend. I struck my dad, and Dave landed in jail. He’s spent his years out of it making sure I know how much I owe him for taking the fall, to the point that he went to the extremes and tried to get me kicked out of the NHL. I can understand why he’s upset. The mother he always thought was his, wasn’t. The man who was supposed to love him, beat him up on a regularbasis.”

Marshall’s gray eyes gleam with frustration. “But the fact remains that I was caught in the crosshairs too. That day I grabbed a knife because my dad had hurt my mother to the point where I couldn’t even make out her features. I didn’t ask for my mom to place the blame at my brother’s feet. Hell, I barely even understood what was going on I was so young. It was his choice to grab that knife and twist. It was his choice, and I’ve been dealing with the fallout of that for yearsnow.”

Even knowing that I should continue to stand my ground, I can’t stop myself from pressing my hand to his heart. It thuds beneath my palm, heavy andfast.

Marshall places his hand over mine. “And then in college, Gwen, I agreed to a bet because I was the odd one out. It was wrong. It was fucked up, and I’m more disappointed in myself than you’ll ever know. I guess . . . I guess what I’m trying to say is that I also don’t have much reason to trust people, just likeyou.”

My shoulders twitch. His words aren’t a jab but I feel startled nonetheless. Because I hear what he’s saying—he’s standing here in my apartment making a move. A move that I was too cowardly to take two weeksago.

I’m not too cowardly now, and when I make contact with the Fake Gwen in the wedding dress, I know what I need to do and what needs to besaid.

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