Sugar and Ice - RJ Scott Page 0,3

couldn’t leave her.”

“But if you went out and said something, anything, then you wouldn’t be seen as the bad guy here.”

“I’m not airing… sharing stuff,” I managed. The whole mess had been on me too, and I was a god damn gentleman.

“She was the one who went on that reality show and blabbed all your secrets, she’s doing this to get sympathy for what was her own freaking fault.”

“She has issues,” I began, still in defense mode.

“Too right,” Logan muttered.

“Look, guys, I don’t care anymore, I had my day of self-pity. I’m done with it all now.”

“There’s something else, and you won’t believe it,” Logan said

I heard Josie’s sharp inhalation, and saw her shake her head in warning. “What?” I was tired of this, I was tired of being the bad guy, the one pushed off the pedestal I didn’t even want to be on in the first place. Dallas had wanted a poster boy for manners and friendliness, the league wanted the nice guy they could label a superstar and could wheel out for any and all occasions. They’d made Tate Collins, superstar, and all the other parts of me had been destroyed.

What else had been made public? The entire NHL, plus fans, knew I collected Star Wars stuff. I’d never made a secret of it, and my first ever Instagram photo was of me in one of the rooms in my Dallas place with whole shelves of merchandise. The fact I was bi, and liked men just as well as women was a secret, but that was my personal life and nothing to do with anyone. I groaned. Fuck. Was it out that I’d had an impossible crush on Tennant Rowe when he was at Dallas, and that I avoided him?

It had to be a Star Wars thing. She hated I wasn’t into collecting something more, in her words, manly. When I’d pressed her on what she meant by that, all she could come up with was dumbbells.

Who the hell collected dumbbells?

I’d never judged Lacey for what she’d done to my original Boba Fett that first night I’d caught her in bed with another guy. She hadn’t seemed herself, and after I’d gently asked the guy to fuck off out of my house, I’d held her for a while as she cried. Then I’d taken a pillow and slept on the couch. Lacey wasn’t the one but she ticked enough boxes that she could have been.

If I’d tried harder, maybe? I know some of it’s on me.

Finding the guy in her bed was bad enough, but having a Boba Fett, with his head snapped off, ripped from his original packaging and thrown at me was more of a shock. That was how numb I’d been to the whole Lacey/Tate love affair.

“She says she might have found new love, and that her heart is finally full blah blah,” Josie didn’t add anything else, and hell, what about that was going to worry me that it got Logan all riled up?

“I’m pleased for her.”

“Tell him about his cat, tell him about Obi” Logan pushed.

Josie held my hand tight, and I knew this was serious.

“What about Obi? What happened?”

“The photo of her in bed? You could see the other guy’s arm, but worse than that? He was holding Obi.”

You have got to be kidding me.

I had the rest of the day to get my shit together, I showered five times, worked out in the huge basement gym for three hours, drank coffee until my hands shook to get some spark in me, mainlined electrolytes, then spent a good four hours out in my huge yard which had a cleared area, with its own net and markings for deck hockey, shooting the puck and not happy until I shot fifty pucks in a row without missing one.

At nine I was in bed. Alone. Logan and Josie had both left after breakfast. Josie back to the set for her vampire time-travel show in LA, and Logan back to San Francisco where he was a starting pitcher.

The only good thing I clung to when I’d been traded to Arizona was that the three of us were close together again. Add Mom and Dad, and I had unconditional love in my corner, and when I pulled into players’ parking I had them in my heart, knowing that whatever happened in the Raptors locker room I could get through it.

I was early, hoping to hell I’d be first in, but Ryker was sitting in his cubby,