Page 67 of Play Book

And come up with a plan on how to break things off with the hottest, most interesting and sexy man I’ve ever met.

TWENTY

Canyon

I fucked up.

I knew it the minute Saylor and I started talking about the girlfriend thing, but then Stevie interrupted, and they left before I could fix it.

Damn everything all to hell.

I’m beyond pissed off.

At myself, at my sister, and at the situation.

I can’t be mad at Ally because she’s just a kid and none of this is her fault. She certainly has made everything more complicated than it needs to be, though. I understand why she’s mad, and her mom almost definitely told her things to make her hate me, but I don’t know how to fix it without telling her the truth about her dad.

And she’s so damn young to hear that reality.

How do you tell a child she was sexually abused as a toddler?

I don’t know if Carly ever dealt with it, talked about it, or gotten either of them help. Carly was being physically and mentally abused, and then I’d caught Ally’s father—I grimace and shake the visual from my mind.

It had been horrifying then.

It’s still just as gross and sickening now.

I have zero regrets about beating the living shit out of the guy.

Or setting the subsequent chain of events in motion.

Carly sided with Ally’s dad, Shawn.

My mother had been dying.

My father chose the path that would upset my mother the least and protect my future in hockey.

My father paid Shawn to leave and never come back, and we lost my mom within the week.

At the funeral, Carly told us she was taking Ally and starting over in Chicago.

She blamed me for Shawn leaving them, and said she needed space.

And that was essentially the end of our family.

I hoped that with Shawn out of the picture, they would be okay, but I hadn’t known she’d gotten addicted to drugs or started dealing to support her habit.

Later, when I got my first big NHL contract, I started sending money for her birthday and at Christmas. She never called or thanked me, but she’d cashed the checks.

Now she’s gone and dragged me into her life by default.

Leaving poor Ally stuck in the middle and me having the biggest crisis of my life.

My father thinks I’m crazy for getting involved, and he and his new wife have no plans to help. When I reminded him that none of this is Ally’s fault, he replied that she isn’t his problem. And shouldn’t be mine either. He felt he hadn’t been a good father to Carly, so the last thing he wants is to mess up with her daughter too.

Except it’s not that easy.

Putting her in foster care doesn’t guarantee she’ll get adopted by a nice family.

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