Page 33 of Body Check

And it feels so damn good to be laughing with you again.

“Guilty as charged.” Setting the teacup down, I lean back, elbows on either side of me on the bar. “When she asked where the magazine came from, I wouldn’t answer. Didn’t want to do that to Pops, y’know, even if he had just been deployed, halfway across the world, for his tour of duty. The very next day, she dragged me straight to confession. Told me in that proper Texan drawl of hers that I’d tell the priest exactly what I’d done.”

“So, you told him that you . . . that you . . .” She trails off, uncertainty crossing her face for the first time since she first sat down, and then huffs out, “masturbated” all prim and proper.

“Nah,” I say, “I turned my pops right in. Lied and told him that my dad handed me thatPlayboyand said, ‘now’s your turn to learn how to be a man.’ The priest laughed, told me to recite some Hail Mary’s for as many times as I’d jerked off, and then sent me on my way.”

“Your mother must have been ready to kill youandyour dad.”

“She still doesn’t know.” I let out a low chuckle. “The priest never told her, and I didn’t want her getting mad, so I kept it all to myself . . . until now.”

Our easy back-and-forth slips into a small silence, and then Holly murmurs, “I’m not even sure if I want to know this . . . but how many Hail Mary’s did you have to say?”

I grin, and I know it’s a wicked one just based on the way Holly’s eyes go wide. “I wasn’t done until Lent was over.”

It’s an exaggeration by far but it has the result I want.

Holly’s blond head tips back as peals of laughter strip from her soul and dance in the space between us. “You’re so bad,” she whispers, flicking a tear away from the corner of her eye, “so, so bad.”

Familiar heat settles low in my gut as I climb to my feet, and I catch myself just before I would have swooped in and wrapped my arms around her, binding her to me.

She told you not to cross boundaries.

I want to reject that voice of reason. I want to press my lips to hers and claim her the way I did for all those years that we were married.

But we aren’t married, not anymore.

The reality of our situation crashes down on me like tons—literal tons—being heaped on my shoulders. The reality of our situation is that we tried to meet in the middle and failed. The reality of our situation is that she deserves more than a man who prioritized hockey over everything else in his life.

Funny how, when it comes to hockey, I’m the force no one wants to reckon with, but with my own wife, I broke the second she looked at me from across the table at our favorite restaurant and said, “We need to talk.”

Fact is, I’m that pathetic sack of shit who let Holly slip through my fingers. She didn’t leap for joy when I mentioned divorce, but she sure as hell didn’t deny that maybe it was for the best, that maybe we’d simply grown apart.

You can’t “grow apart” from somebody when they’ve got your heart in a vice. At least, that’s how it’s always felt for me, even now.

I rake my fingers through my hair, turning my body slightly, so that the glare of the light isn’t shining directly on my face and in my eyes.

“Oh, crap.”

My gaze leaps to her heart-shaped face. “What?”

She edges past me to reach for the camera, then flashes me a sheepish grin. “Accidentally got all that on camera. I totally forgot that we were filming once you got into your story.”

Well, damn.

She presses a button, bottom lip sucked behind her front teeth, and then pumps a fist in the air. “All right, we’re good.”

“We are?” And damn me if my brain doesn’t automatically transcribe her words to mean thatwe’regood, as in us, our relationship, what little we have of it left.

“Yep!” She grins, then reaches up to tug on her ponytail. “You, Captain, have been deleted from my memory card.”

Deleted.

So fucking final—how incredibly ironic.

I force a grin to match the one she’s sporting. “Thanks for looking out.”

“Pshhh.” Winking at me, she begins to disassemble her setup. “I did it for Momma Martha, Jackson. Can you imagine if she saw all that on TV next week with the season’s pilot episode? She’d have a conniption. We’ll get a more . . .professionalinterview another day.”

---