Page 39 of Whirlwind
He takes the tablet back and moves to another group to show them their numbers from the game.
“That’s the second warning I’ve gotten about Kit. Does everyone think I’m a monster?”
“A monster? No. A playboy who has no qualms hiring a sex worker, yes.”
“I’m not the first, nor will I be the last NHL player to hire someone for sex,” I argue. “I was single, too.”
“Is that a dig at me?” Cillian moves back to the aisle seat but keeps his eyes narrowed on me.
“Fuck, no. That’s not what I was getting at. I’m just saying that night didn’t harm anyone but me. It’s really nobody’s business.”
“You’re right. But Kit is family and is our business. Everyone’s just looking out for her.”
“And what if that’s the job I want?”
“What does Kit want?”
“She doesn’t know yet. Whatever she decides, I’ll live with it, because I just want to be part of her life.”
“A sentiment I know well,” Cillian says. For the first time, I see firsthand the regret he has for the time he missed with Isla and Sadie. For the first time, I feel a little bad for him. I’ve spent so long being jealous of what’s he had, what he lost, what he eventually won back; that I never saw him as worthy of Isla or Sadie.
It was natural for me to envy him, which made it impossible to see that he knew regret and pain intimately. Hating that he had everything I wanted made me only see Cillian Wylder as a smug, arrogant asshole. Not a human with a heart and love for his family.
Isla once told me “Lonely people do stupid shit.” I can attest to that, now. My stupid shit was mostly years of destructive thought process, but that takes a toll on you. It wears you down, day after day. Eventually, I was a husk of a man trying to fill the void any way I could. Mostly with random women. That hadn’t been my life before I dated Isla. Picking up whatever puck bunny looked the hottest after a long game didn’t appeal much to me. I was with women, I dated, but they were typically friends of friends or old acquaintances.
After Isla reconciled with Cillian, I stopped dating, stopped sleeping with the same woman more than once. Most devastatingly, I stopped connecting.
Then, I moved across the street from Kit Ashcroft.
“I don’t want to hurt her.”
“I didn’t want to hurt Isla, either,” he says. “Sometimes life gets in the way of even our best intentions. I wish I’d had people in my life giving me reminders of what was most important. Maybe things would have turned out differently and I wouldn’t have lost so much time.”
But then, I’d have not had the chance to know Isla and Sadie the way I did. It’s difficult to reconcile, wishing the best could have happened for the three Wylders while also not wanting to lose what I had.
Instead of saying the wrong thing to my teammate, I say nothing.
I’m not home ten minutes before incessant rapping starts up on my front door. There’s an urgency to it, and since only a select few people know where I live, I assume it’s Kit. My heart rate spikes as I take the stairs back down to the first floor. The rain pelting the sheet-metal roof normally soothes me—now it just amps up my pulse.
Not to be a misogynistic, overbearing asshole, but I do worry about her living alone. Nightmare’s a good noise-maker, but he wouldn’t be much help if she ever needed protection.
Throwing the door open, I find her soaking wet, shivering as raindrops stream down her face. She’s only wearing boxing shorts and a T-shirt, flip-flops on her feet. The woman dresses like we live in Hawaii, not next door to the Cascade Mountains.
“What’s wrong?” I demand, pulling her inside and out of the downpour. “Are you okay?”
“No,” she says adamantly, swiping wet strands from her cheeks.
“What happened?” I gently tow her farther inside, perching her in front of the gas fireplace. Flipping the switch, I grab the throw blanket off the sofa and wrap it around her. Kit follows my every move but doesn’t answer right away. “Kit?”
“Just say it, Kit,” she mutters to herself. After a long exhale, her eyes pop up to mine. “I’ve been thinking about what to say to you for days. Writing notes, memorizing key points. I even practiced in a mirror, like a teenager preparing for an oral exam. That’s why I’m not okay. You—you’re why I’m not okay. You distract me. You’re like an intrusive thought. I can’t focus for very long before your crooked smile conjures in my mind.”
“I’m an intrusive thought?” I manage not to laugh, but my smile still forms.
“Yes! As is that smile,” she accuses, pointing at me.
“Should I smile less?”
“No.”
