Page 85 of Playing to Win

Luke’s truck was in the driveway when I got home. I dragged my bag in behind me and found him in the kitchen, cooking chicken with rice and veggies.

“Hey! Congrats!” I said. The Inferno were now in the playoffs as well. By the skin of their teeth, after another team epically collapsed. But still, they were in.

He turned, but he wasn’t smiling the way I expected. “You’re back.”

“Uh, obviously.”

“There’s someone waiting for you upstairs.”

And he’d let that person in, so…

“She’s pretty upset.”

“Jayna.” Worry gripped me.

He nodded. “She wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“She had to retire. That’s a lot to deal with.”

“Yeah, she told me before. She still wouldn’t say anything.”

I lifted my hand. “If you were injured and out of the playoffs?”

He met my gaze. “That would be tough, but I could handle it. Just saying, this looks like more. Maybe I’m wrong.” He shrugged. “She’s been here for hours.”

He turned back to the stove and I climbed the stairs two at a time. Shoving open the door to my bedroom, I found Jayna huddled in my bed.

She was under the duvet, wrapped up to her neck like she was freezing. Not asleep, but staring out the window, which looked over the parking lot to some more townhouses. Not a riveting view, but even though I was as quiet as an elephant on skates, she didn’t turn or acknowledge me. Luke was right. This was more than what we’d been dealing with.

I dropped my duffel and pulled off my suit jacket and laid it over a chair. Then I crawled into the bed beside my girlfriend and wrapped one arm around her, holding her close. “What’s wrong?”

Her chin tilted up and she swallowed. “I don’t have a job.”

Yeah, she’d retired from hockey and her Bonfire job went with—Wait. “You mean with the Blaze?”

“Yep.” She popped the P and then was silent again.

What the hell had happened? I followed the club socials, mostly to keep up with what Jayna was doing. None of the things I’d seen before we caught the plane would explain not working for the club. I lifted my hip to pull my phone out of my pocket.

She must have felt me move. “You won’t see anything on there.”

I still checked. There had to be some reason why she wasn’t working for the team. And if I knew what it was, I’d know what to say. Help her get her job back? Yell at someone in management? Tell her she’d find something better?

Nothing had been posted in the last few hours. Still, something felt like it was my fault. Like this fake dating thing was behind it. Because that was the only sketchy thing I knew of in Jayna’s life.

“Do you want to talk about it?” That was the right thing to say, I hoped.

She shook her head. “Not really. But you need to know.”

It must be the fake dating. But could they fire her for that? Had someone found out? We were really dating now, so how could it be a problem? “Tell me if you want to. Or at least tell me how I can make you feel better. A drink? Something to eat?”

I wanted to do something concrete. Something to feel less useless.

She shook her head again and took a long breath. She huddled farther into the duvet. “The team found out we’re not pretending to be together.”

Was that a problem? And, “How?”

“The security cameras caught us when we were outside the arena, after the Bonfire lost.”

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