that it was a one-night thing and had left no note of goodbye, no details of how to contact her, although had he truly wanted to, he knew he could have called the distillery.
It would have been easy to believe it had all been a wild dream if his sheets hadn’t smelled so thoroughly of her. Of her scent, of her desire.
And he hadn’t mentioned her to anyone. He hadn’t told Karl of his secret tryst. He’d told his parents a mix of game fatigue and travel had left him so exhausted he’d slept straight through his alarm. And he hadn’t told any of his teammates in their usual locker room banter.
She was his secret.
And she would remain that way because there was no way he was going to be tied to Denver.
Nothing had changed. The rules he had for himself were even more important now. He had a big opportunity to prove himself with a higher performing team, who he needed to gel with quickly. He couldn’t make a single false step. He had the opportunity to show interested teams how easily he could slide into another organization and make a difference.
And he hopefully wouldn’t be here for long. The East Coast beckoned. Teams with a better profile, with more chance of winning, in rebuilding years. A place where he could lead from the front, instead of Denver, where the roster was full.
In another universe, at another time, he might have reappeared in her life with a large bunch of flowers and a hello. An offer of dinner. A grand gesture if she required winning over. He’d do everything in his power to persuade her.
Olivia had captured a piece of him.
But there was too much time left on his clock before his free agency kicked in to let it just run out now. He needed to stay in the game that needed the most attention.
And that was on the ice, not off it.
No matter how much it burned him to find out how that other universe and time might have played out.
Sonder was such an odd word. Some people even debated whether it was a real word or not. Yet the word set every fiber of Olivia’s body alight. And as she walked along the crowded Denver sidewalk on the way back to her apartment from the coffee shop, she focused on the realization that often hit her in a gloriously profound way that always made her feel better. That every single person she passed on this murky afternoon lived a life that was just as complex and nuanced and difficult and fabulous as her own. Certainly, they were lives that belonged to people she would never get to know. She walked past the lady in her sixties with fabulous pink hair. And the stoner in acid wash jeans and a hoodie that had frayed at the edges.
Somehow, knowing this gave Olivia comfort that her life was not unique. That she hadn’t been singled out to live a life that felt half-mast at its best. There was no special reason why she no longer had any living parents. Plenty of others had experienced that. And depression hadn’t peered through the looking glass and picked her out of a lineup. Knowing that the man rushing toward her with his cellphone to his ear, or the woman eating a late lunch in the deli, had a life as challenging as her own helped her keep her own monsters at bay.
She took a sip of her coffee and entered her apartment building, pausing to hold the door open for a delivery guy holding a large bouquet of red roses. While Olivia rolled her eyes at the lack of originality, deep in her heart was a pulse of envy. Nobody would be sending her anything today.
Valentine’s Day sucked.
It sucked giant chunks of cold, wet fish.
She pressed the button to the elevator, thinking of the work she’d been able to get done at the distillery. Sundays were a little quieter than during the week. Emerson had been in her office, and Jake had been running Dyer’s Medallion, their medal-winning gin, on all three stills. They had a deal on the weekends to pretty much leave each other alone.
Weekdays were fair game. Requests could be made, meetings could be held. Business was business. But weekend work was for getting ahead, for planning for the coming week, for getting some focus and quiet to work on their own parts of the business.
Beyond eating her salad with