Decker, p.18
Decker, page 18
“It’s not like I have much waiting for me back in Vegas,” I said, shrugging.
“Can’t you fix things with Eden?” she asked.
“You don’t understand the enormity of my betrayal. She was fooled by two married men in the past, and now I did it too.”
“Why didn’t you just tell her?” she demanded. “I mean, you can’t tell me there was never a single opportunity to have a serious conversation.”
“No, there was. But at first, I didn’t know if there was enough between us for me to trust her with not just my secret, but yours. Then there were several times where we got interrupted. Literally. And toward the end, I was afraid. Because I knew I’d waited too long, and I didn’t know how to say it.”
“You’re a dumbass,” she said, shaking her head.
“I was going to tell her the other night,” I muttered.
“Too little, too late.” She tucked her legs under her and cocked her head. “So, what are you going to do?”
“First, you and I are going to weather this storm together. Then I’m going home to find out where I’ve been traded.”
“You think they’ll go that far?” she whispered. “To trade you?”
“Coach Wylde was furious. Not just mad, but like, red-faced, on the verge of a coronary pissed.”
“And Eden? Was she upset?”
“She was… eerily calm. No emotion whatsoever. She said something like, ‘I’m giving you the courtesy of not freaking out in front of your teammates, so don’t you dare say a word.’ And I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there. I may have begged her not to go or something, but everyone was watching, and I kind of froze.”
“My poor Decker.” She reached for my hand and laced her fingers with mine. “We’ve been through a lot, but you don’t have to protect me anymore. Your situation has made me realize that I never should have put you in this position. It wasn’t fair to you to carry my burdens. That was extremely selfish of me.”
“Your family is going to disown you.”
“I know. But honestly, my relationship with them has been a farce anyway. Sitting across a conference table from my brother at work every day makes me want to gag.”
“Will you tell your family what he did?”
“I told my mother years ago, when I was about eleven or twelve, and she laughed and told me to stop trying to get attention. That was the last time it was ever brought up. I had to sign something when I took on the role of CTO that said I couldn’t discuss family matters with anyone, blah blah. There was a lot of money at stake, so I didn’t.”
“But that’s going to be moot now, isn’t it?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know what I get by outing him. There’s no proof, so he’ll never be prosecuted, and we were both minors. The statute of limitations has probably run out as well. Him losing his family, potentially his wife and children? That doesn’t help me heal.”
“But what if he does it to his kids?” I asked quietly.
Her eyes narrowed. “When Cassandra was born I was at the hospital with the whole family, and I pulled him aside. I told him if I ever got so much as an inkling that he was doing to his daughter what he’d done to me, I would end him.”
“Really?”
“He blustered and turned red and fidgeted, but in the end, he nodded. So I know he heard me.”
“Fucker. I want to beat him senseless.”
She chuckled. “You did that more than once when we were teenagers.”
I grinned. “And it’ll never be enough.”
“All I want is to move forward without drama. Anja and I came up with an idea for a start-up software company, and I think that’s what we’re going to do. I’ve drafted my resignation letter and am emailing it to my grandfather today. I have tons of proprietary information and files in a safe deposit box. If he attempts to smear me professionally, I have a few things up my sleeve that will hopefully stop him in his tracks. And if not, I’ll distract the whole world with my coming out story.
“Are you going into the office at all?”
She shook her head. “I already took all my personal belongings. Everything else is theirs, and I don’t need or want it. I thought we’d go see the divorce attorney today and sign everything.”
“You already called?”
She nodded. “Everything has been in place for years. We knew the day would come eventually, and now it has. No need to make a big deal out of it.”
“You obviously haven’t been online today.”
“Oh, I’ve been online. While you slept in, I was up at five working out and catching up on the news.” She poked me. “There was no reason to blow up your life, Decker. I don’t need you to protect me anymore.”
“You’re going to lose everything.”
She laughed. “What? A job? Money? That’s nothing compared to the freedom I’ll have living my life with honesty and openness. I wish it hadn’t taken you falling on your sword for me to come to my senses.
“What about your family’s legacy? You sat at your grandfather’s knee from the time you were little, waiting for your chance to run the company.”
“We all make sacrifices for the things we want. I don’t want to be in the closet anymore, so that’s my truth. And now you have to face yours. Hockey. Eden. The life you want to have with her.”
“That ship has sailed,” I said, staring out at the blue water of Lake Huron. “Right now, I have to focus on damage control for my career. My broken heart has to be secondary.”
“It doesn’t.” She forced me to look at her. “Listen, we’re going to spin this how we have to so we can salvage as much of the situation as possible,” she said, sitting up and opening her laptop. “I contacted a crisis control publicist, and she’s going to handle this bullshit for us.”
“What?” I frowned.
“We’re going to make a statement. Together. As friends. We came from conservative, overly religious families. When we turned eighteen, we got married because we felt safer as a couple. Whatever. She’s working on the wording, and we’ll read whatever statement we agree to. Once I realized my sexuality had been repressed, we formally separated but remained married because of my love for my family’s company. We’d recently been talking about divorcing, so we could both move on with our lives but were putting it off until your season was over. Or some such bullshit. I’m moving on to other professional opportunities, and you’re going back to hockey. You regret that blow-up with your brother, but that had nothing to do with your career. Something like that. No questions. No drama.”
I frowned.
It all sounded so simple when she put it this way.
Yet, my life was an absolute disaster at the moment, and she had no idea what was going to happen once she tendered her resignation.
“I know you take your role as my protector seriously,” she said, her dark eyes softening. “And I’ll always love you for getting me out of there, but now it’s time for both of us to fly free. I’ve been holding you back, Alan. It’s time to let go. You’ve got to go home and get your life back, and I’ve got to stay here and deal with mine. You married me to help me get through a tough time in my life. But I’ve used this time to grow and get strong. I’m ready to do this on my own.”
“I don’t know how to fix what’s waiting for me at home,” I admitted. “I’ve always kept my head down when it came to hockey, kept my personal shit out of it. And this thing with Eden—it’s gutting me, but I don’t have a solution. I lied to her about the one thing that would hurt her the most. I don’t know that we can come back from that.”
“You can. Go after her, Decker. I don’t need you here once we make our joint statement. And you don’t need me when it comes to talking to your coach or whatever you’re going to do. If you need me to talk to Eden, I can call or fly out. I want her to know there was no victimized wife, I was not cheated on.”
“Does this mean we’re not besties anymore?” I asked after a moment.
She made a face and then burped. “Seriously? You’re such a dumbass. Unless your future wife has a real problem with your gay best friend you will never get rid of me.”
“I don’t think I could love or marry a woman who had a problem with you.”
“Never say never, big guy.” She got up. “Now, go get showered and put on something other than sweats, you heathen. We’ve got an appointment at the attorney’s office at one, and if we can agree to the wording, we’ll make a recorded statement while we’re there for the publicist to deal with.”
“What publicist are you using?” I asked curiously. “The wife of one of my teammates is one of the top crisis PR people in the country.”
“I didn’t ask,” she said. “Does it matter?”
“We should probably find out. Her name is Kate Martensson. I don’t know if it’ll be a conflict of interest, but we should make sure.”
“All right.” She picked up her phone as I headed for the shower.
It was going to be a long day, but hopefully I’d have some semblance of my life back once it was over.
Then I was going to find Eden.
29
Eden
The tears came after I got to Zoe’s apartment in Switzerland. Everything I’d been holding in poured out, and while I was relieved to finally let it out, it didn’t seem to help. That odd, tight feeling in my chest lingered, leaving me stressed and anxious and out of sorts. I was putting one foot in front of the other, desperate to find normalcy, but it eluded me. As did sleep. I couldn’t seem to stay asleep more than three or four hours at night, then I would just lie there, staring at the ceiling or the television.
It was nice being back in Switzerland, I loved it here, and seeing Zoe was wonderful too. But the emptiness, the feelings of betrayal and longing and depression, it all tainted my world view. A world full of color and vibrance and adventure had been reduced to a black and white silent movie. I moved within it, but nothing gave me joy or even contentment.
Tears, I thought wearily on the fourth night in Switzerland, were a waste of energy.
Finally, because I couldn’t stand it anymore, I started to read Decker’s texts.
DECKER: Please call me.
DECKER: I’m worried about you, will you just tell me you’re okay?
DECKER: I know I fucked up, but you have to believe I didn’t mean to. You mean everything to me, Eden.
Each message got longer and more detailed, becoming an almost narrative story.
DECKER: I’m sending you photos of the separation agreement. We’ve been legally separated for four years. There’s nothing between Kristy and I beyond friendship.
The picture came next, and as I enlarged it and read the dates, it appeared to be legitimate.
So he hadn’t been cheating.
That, at least, meant something.
But he’d still lied.
And it didn’t change the fact that he was legally married.
DECKER: Kristy, my wife, lived on my street growing up. She was a tomboy who played hockey too, and we were best friends. She was sexually abused by her brother starting when she was about eight. There was a lot of that going on at our church and that was the beginning of the end for me, as far as my relationship with the church, religion, and ultimately, my family.
I wished he’d told me that before. So much of this could have been avoided if he’d just opened up to me earlier.
Why hadn’t he?
DECKER: We got married as soon as I was drafted by the NHL and knew I could afford to take care of us if I had to. But we were never a couple. Kristy is a lesbian and has known since we were about fifteen. The marriage has never been consummated. We’ve never been intimate beyond a few kisses when we were teenagers, and she was figuring out her sexuality.
There was a long line of unread texts, and I was trying to wrap my head around all this information. It shouldn’t have made a difference, but it did.
DECKER: Kristy’s parents are even worse than mine. Her grandfather started a company called Bowden Electronics in the forties. It morphed into Bowden Technologies in the eighties, and by the time Kristy was old enough to read and write, she would sit at her grandfather’s feet watching him work. All she ever wanted was to run the company one day. But her family would never have allowed a homosexual to work there. They have strict morality and religious clauses in their contracts, so we came up with a plan that would help her.
There was more to the story, things I didn’t completely understand, and it frustrated me all over again that he hadn’t taken the time to tell me about these things in person so I could ask questions. Yes, I would have balked when he told me he was married, but the separation agreement and all these details would have made a difference. A big difference.
DECKER: The next photos are of the divorce papers. We filed a couple of days ago. She’s willing to talk to you, explain her situation in more detail, so you understand that while we have had a legal bond, it’s one of friendship. There’s nothing romantic or sexual between us and there never has been.
I swiped at new tears that had started to fall, and I didn’t know if it was because I was relieved or heartbroken all over again.
The silver lining to all of this was that he wasn’t the terrible human being I’d thought he was, not like Lawrence and Josef, who’d simply lied for the hell of it and were adulterers.
It didn’t fix what was broken between Decker and I, though.
The trust.
The lies.
The humiliation that still burned deep down in the inner recesses of my soul, the one he’d so carelessly scorched with Kristy’s secrets.
DECKER: I know I shouldn’t have lied and kept my situation with Kristy a secret, but I had to be careful so no one found out. By the time you and I got to a point where I felt comfortable telling you everything, I’d started falling in love with you… I was afraid I was going to lose you. Please give me another chance, Eden. Please.
This round of tears came the moment I read the words “falling in love with you.” I hadn’t dared hope he would be ready to use the L word yet, but he had.
Too little too late?
I didn’t know, and the whole thing made me crazy.
“You okay?” Zoe came into the bedroom, worry edged on her face.
“Read these.” I handed her my phone as I went in search of a tissue. I’d thought I was all cried out, but not yet.
“Oh, wow.” Zoe looked at me when I sat on the edge of the bed next to her. “That’s a lot.”
“What do I do?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Run back to Vegas and throw myself in his arms.”
“So do it.”
“Why don’t you do that with Slava?” I countered. “Because you know you want to.”
“In my case, Slava and I didn’t fight, he didn’t do anything wrong, and everything going on is because of me. I’ve got something bothering me, and until my therapist can figure it out it’s better for Slava I stay away. For now anyway. Your situation isn’t the same. You and Decker have an issue, which you can get through by talking and working it out.”
“How can I ever trust him?” I whispered.
“Sweetie, I’m on your side. Always. But the truth is he didn’t cheat. He was legally separated, which means he had the freedom to get involved with someone. It sounds like he and Kristy are very close, and she’s dealing with her own secrets. He would have had to trust you with those as well as his own, and I don’t blame him. It would take me a while to trust a new man in my life with your secrets, or Daisy’s.”
I dropped my head, my chin hitting my chest as I tried to come to terms with the first glimmer of hope.
If Zoe thought it was salvageable, maybe it was?
“You have to be comfortable with whatever you decide, but maybe it’s worth one in-person conversation?”
“I know. It is. It’s just… hard.”
She leaned over and wrapped her arms around me. “It is hard. But worthwhile things usually are.”
“I don’t know what to do, Zoe.”
“Call him.”
“I can’t.”
“Then text him and tell him when you’re getting back to Vegas. Maybe he can pick you up at the airport.”
Could I face him again?
I had to.
I wanted to.
I needed to.
Bloody hell.
I picked up my phone and stared at his name for a long time.
Finally, I started to type.
EDEN: I don’t know if I can forgive you, but I’m willing to talk.
I’d half-expected Decker to be waiting for me at the airport, but it was Jean-Michel instead. I had a ton of luggage, and Daisy had a book cover deadline, so he’d come in her stead.
“Welcome home,” he said once he’d gotten my bags in the back of his SUV, and we were on the way to the house.
“Thank you.”
“How are you doing?”
“That’s a loaded question.”
“I figured.”
“I’m… okay? Not good, not terrible, just kind of floating somewhere in the middle.”
“Understandable. Daisy was afraid you weren’t coming back.”
“I have a job,” I said quietly. “And I gave Renee my word that I would stay for two years. After that, anything is possible, but for now, this is where I’m going to be regardless of what happens with Decker.”
“He’s pretty torn up,” he said after a moment.
“I can’t have sympathy for him right now,” I replied. “I’m hanging on by a thread, trying to be a mature, responsible adult who doesn’t let a broken heart derail her plans. And it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
