Livestreaming My Cheating Hockey Star Fiance novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Truck

Soren drives Hanna away with the whole stream recorded on his phone and wraps her cut hand, while Brady's statement calls her unwell and Cassidy waits at Dorota's door with the signed agreement.

Soren's truck smelled like cedar and old tape.

He had walked me out through the loading dock, past two security guards who looked at the floor.

He was still in his pads and skates, with his jacket thrown over them.

He opened the passenger door and waited for me to climb in.

I did, and the heater came on loud.

"You're bleeding," he said.

I looked down.

My phone screen had split in my fist when Brady grabbed me, and a line of glass had opened my palm.

I had not felt it at all.

Soren reached behind the seat and came up with a canvas bag with a red cross sewn on the flap.

"Give me your hand."

"I can do it."

"Your other hand is shaking."

It was.

I gave him my hand.

He opened it flat on his knee, picked the glass out with the corner of a tape cutter, and poured water over it from a bottle.

His fingers were enormous. The knuckles were split and healed over again, many times.

He did not squeeze or hurry.

He laid a square of gauze on the cut and wound tape around it.

His thumb stopped on the inside of my wrist and stayed there a second.

I could feel my pulse going under it, fast and stupid.

"Done," he said, and let go.

My hand felt colder without his.

I tucked it into my sleeve and looked out the windshield.

"Shouldn't you be in the tunnel? It's the season opener."

"Coach has my phone number." He started the engine. "He'll live."

"Soren. They'll fine you."

"Probably."

He pulled out of the lot and did not say anything else.

I tried to turn my phone on and it showed a spiderweb of cracks and 1,900 notifications.

I put it face down on my knee.

Then it lit up from underneath with a banner I could read through the glass: Ironbacks Hockey, new post.

I turned it over.

It was a photo of Brady in his jersey, with his captain's patch, looking down.

Under it: "Our captain and his fiancée Hanna are going through a very hard time. Hanna has been unwell for several weeks and we are asking everyone to respect the family's privacy tonight. Brady will play for his team."

Unwell.

Someone had written that in the twenty minutes it took Soren to drive me out of the lot.

"Several weeks," I said out loud. "I coached a pee-wee class this morning."

Soren glanced at the screen and his jaw moved.

"That's a statement somebody wrote before tonight," he said.

I looked at him.

"You think they had it ready?"

"I think a statement doesn't read like that in twenty minutes."

I thought about her telling me which door, and how little time it had taken her to find the button.

The notifications kept coming.

There was a clip already. Somebody had recorded my stream off their own screen, and it had four million views.

The comments under it were not all kind.

She's so dramatic, and Why would she film that, and Honestly it's her fault for trusting a hockey player.

I turned the phone face down again and pressed the heel of my good hand against my eye.

"Where do I go?" I said. "Brady's condo is where my things are. Cassidy's key is on my ring."

"Where would you go if none of that was true?"

I almost laughed.

"My grandmother's," I said. "Above the rink. Water Street."

Soren nodded and took the next left.

I watched Port Calder go by, the grain elevators and the dark lake behind them, and let my head rest on the cold window.

Ostrowski's Ice sat at the end of Water Street with its blue neon skate in the window.

Dorota's light was on upstairs.

So was the porch light.

There was a small gray car at the curb with its engine running.

I knew the car.

I knew the dent in the bumper, because I had backed into a pole with it when I was sixteen and she had taken the blame.

Cassidy was standing on the porch with my gray suitcase beside her.

She had changed her sweater.

She held two coffees.

"I got here first," she called, as soon as I got out of the truck. "Your grandmother's making tea, Han. She let me bring your things up."

She smiled at me, the same warm tired smile she had given me through a thousand bad mornings.

"I brought your things. And I brought something you need to read before you do anything stupid."

She held up a folded packet with a yellow flag on the last page.

I could see my own signature from where I stood.

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