Page 85 of The Game Plan

I want it. I want us. I want this marriage, to the smartest, most determined, motivated, sassy and sexy as hell woman I have ever met.

I’ll do whatever it takes to convince her to stay with me.

“Hey, Jax, man, you might want to look at this,” Zach says, coming toward me with his phone screen held up. Some of the other guys have seen what’s playing on it and I know from the way they’re all staring at me that it’s not good news.

“What?” I ask, stepping down from my stool and taking hold of Zach’s phone. “The fuck?” I whisper as I watch the reel of me hooking up with a woman nine months ago. The married woman with kids. The video that Sienna first stepped in to make disappear for me. But will she remember it now? Will she know this isn’t new? Does she trust me? Can she trust me? How embarrassed is she going to be over this? How can I fix this? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“Jax!” Sienna says, holding her own phone as I look up to her. She looks white as a ghost. Has she already seen the video?

“Sienna, this isn’t what it⁠—”

“Carl told my parents, Jax.”

It takes me a second to catch up. “Told them what?”

“About Las Vegas. He called them and told them and sent them the minion video,” she says, eyes filling with tears.

“Shit,” I say, dragging a hand through my hair for multiple reasons, because while she’s obviously fucking devastated that her parents have found out about our sham marriage, I also have to hand her Zach’s phone and tell her, “I need your help. I’m so fucking sorry, Si.”

I watch as Sienna realizes what she’s watching: the video of me and the other woman, who doesn’t matter to me at all but whose kids I desperately wanted to protect all those months ago. I watch her bite down on her gums and shake her head.

It wrecks me when a silent tear rolls down her cheek.

I step to her but she holds up a hand – stop. Then she quickly swipes away her rogue tear and rolls back her shoulders. Nodding, she tells me, “I’ll deal with it.”

Her business persona is firmly back in place. Walls understandably up.

She hands me back Zach’s phone and I think she’s about to speak, then she looks to her feet and shakes her head. “I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

“I’m coming with you,” I say, urgently, frantically, and I can’t fully process why but something that felt within my grasp minutes ago is slipping through my fingers and every part of me is twisting and contorting and reeling from it.

“I’ll figure it out better on my own,” she says without looking back at me as she leaves.

I watch her go, raking my hands through my hair, not having a fucking clue what I’m supposed to do next.

“Go after her, Jax, for fuck’s sake,” TJ tells me across the room.

“She doesn’t want me to,” I tell him, hands still in my hair.

“Jax, man, if you don’t go after her now, every one of us will. She’s our friend, too,” Tray says.

I nod, slowly, faster. “Right.” Then I go after my wife to face up to the car crash of our fake relationship.

I’m slow getting back to the hotel because I am racking my brains for the right thing to do and say here. This is why I don’t do relationships. It’s a fucking mess.

By the time I walk into our room, Sienna is on her phone and something about the way she’s speaking makes me think Mitch is on the receiving end. She’s standing in the window, Columbus lights twinkling against the dark night behind her. Even in the low light of the room, her eyes are uncommonly red. The thought that she’s been crying over my past and my mess or because her parents know she’s married to me hits like not just one dagger but many cutting into me over and over again, in my chest, and in my gut.

I’ve experienced women crying on me, walking out on me after a one-night stand, hurt despite knowing that all I was offering was sex, but this feels infinitely worse.

“Thanks, Mitch. Jax is here, so I’ll update him. Then I’ll see you Monday.”

She ends the call and stares at me for excruciatingly long seconds from the opposite side of our bedroom.

I’m about to apologize, again, even though I decided on the way over here that apologizing for my past is not going to make any difference. It’s the fact I have one that’s the problem.

Before I can form words, Sienna cuts me off. “I’ve got your video down from the main social sites already and I’m working on the rest. I don’t have the resources I did at the company but Mitch is helping me out, too,” she says, as detached as she was when this video first appeared online.

I swallow down all the emotions I’m feeling about Sienna and me and drop into the persona of the ice hockey guy who needs the expert PR’s help, because I think that’s the first priority here. “You know that’s an old video, Si. That woman’s kids⁠—”