Hard Checked (Ice Kings #4) - Stacey Lynn Page 0,36

lift my glass to my lips and hide my smile. “How do you know you make the cut?”

“Because I’m awesome.” He clinks his beer bottle to my glass and nods at Sebastian. “Talk. Now. Before I’m too tired to listen.”

“Right.” Sebastian’s lips press out and then roll together. He gives me a look that makes my heart squeeze painfully tight in my chest. “See you later?”

It sounds more like a question than a statement that I’m thrown. So I’m laughing pretty stupidly, trying not to hyperventilate at his nearness and his smile and his everything, that I end up choking out, “You know where I live.”

He smiles, shakes his head and follows Jason to a booth table on the other side and I turn back to the bar, dropping my forehead into my hand.

You know where I live? What kind of response was that?

Stupid, Gigi. Stupid.

Chapter Twelve

Sebastian

You know where I live.

Was that a tease? A taunt? An invitation?

A year ago, hell, months ago, I probably wouldn’t be questioning Gigi’s remark as I follow Jason to the booth. A month ago, I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it.

And yet, now, I’m remembering that tie-dyed psychedelic blanket thing hanging on her walls. The haphazardly stacked books all over the place. The canvases she’d started telling me about and the floors so covered in clothes I’m still unsure what color the wood is on her bedroom floor.

The bedroom… where I slept.

Passed out.

Whatever.

“So,” Jason says. “Tell me what happened.”

With Gigi? How does he know? It takes me a second to catch up and realize he’s talking about the trip to Minnesota and not what happened with the bartender.

Which is nothing… outside of passing out at her place and going on a hike with her. Totally innocuous activities.

I take a sip of my drink and kick out how cute her ass looked in those leggings she wore. “I didn’t really want to talk about it, I just didn’t want to go home.”

“Tough shit. I’m not missing out on another night with Tessa only to get drunk.”

Fine. He wants to hear the humiliation of what my marriage… or lack thereof, has become? I’ll tell him.

“Madison left before the holidays. I got served divorce papers on New Year’s. I just — before it’s done done, I needed to try. To make sure it couldn’t be saved. Or something. Maybe I just needed to say goodbye.” I take a drink of my beer to rinse away the vile taste in my throat. “You know I told you last fall we were having a hard time? That we were trying to get pregnant and it wasn’t working?”

“I remember.”

“Well in December we did more tests, and we found out the problem isn’t only Madison, but us together were going to make it pretty much impossible.” His brows furrow and God, I hate this. I’d rather choke on someone else’s spit than admit my guys don’t work right. “Doctor said I have issues, too, which would make getting pregnant pretty difficult even if everything was working correctly with Madison.”

“Shit.” He takes his own drink and grimaces. “That, that sucks, and I’m not blaming you. I get how that’d be hard to manage, but you didn’t have to hide it all, either. Not from all of us.”

“I know, but how do I walk into practice and announce, hey everyone, I’m sterile.” I laugh, but it’s cold and falls flat. Frankly, I could happily live the rest of my life and never have to talk sperm count. “Even with all that, I’m glad I went. She needs help and I hope her family can get it for her.”

“Help?”

This is the one thing I’ve always held back. From everyone until I briefly alluded to it in the locker room last week. No one can possibly understand what it’s like to watch your wife spiral downward, for days, weeks at a time sometimes, refusing to see someone for it. And every time I mentioned it, she grew angry.

I’m unsure if the infertility caused her depression or possibly exasperated something she never sought help for previously but either way, I’m hoping the parting words I shot to Ben the other night stuck.

I explain it all to Jason, through more beers George delivers when our first ones grow close to empty.

Jason responds with surprise, end-capped by curse words. He shakes his head at the appropriate moments. It feels good to get it off my chest. To finally share. Talking to Coach and him the other night