Page 80 of Anger Bang
Hockey players were a superstitious bunch—something that had definitely rubbed off on Astrid, since she’d practically grown up rinkside as her dad moved from coaching job to coaching job. No reason to jinx the marriage before it began by ignoring the old wives’ tale that it was bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the big event.
When he didn’t answer, she crossed her fingers to ward off any curses and looked down at her screen.
She could only see Tig from the waist up, but it was enough to knock her knees out. Astrid went down hard, her ass landing on the very short (and thankfully close-lidded) kiddie toilet.
Instead of the tux he’d picked out, Tig was in a blue T-shirt and had an Ice Knights hockey baseball cap pulled down low on his face. All of it was a lot to take in, but the fact that the Cajun Rage’s star goalie was wearing the team’s arch nemesis’s gear sucked the air out of her lungs like a souped-up shop vac.
“Astrid, babe, I wish the deal the Knights offered hadn’t been so good, but it is. I had to take it,” Tig said as a single, perfectly timed tear slid down his cheek.“My agent said I had to leave today. Right now. They want me between the pipes for tomorrow’s game. It’s make-or-break time for the playoffs. My flight takes off in half an hour.”
There were a million thoughts sheshouldhave been having at that moment, but her brain was stuck on buffering, and the only thing that got through was the realization that unlike Tig, Astrid was not a pretty crier.
The tip of her nose turned red enough that she could have taken Rudolph’s job. Her face went blotchy and stayed that way for at least half an hour. And she could never, ever stop her nose from running, which was exactly what she wanted when that one sad song from the stupid toys-come-alive movie came over the grocery store speakers when she was PMSing hard enough to deplete the world’s strategic chocolate reserves.
Tig, on the other hand, looked like someone had just added a few drops of Visine to his eyes and then added a soft filter to the video call.
“I’m so sorry. I never meant for this to happen.” He wiped the tear away with the back of his hand and aimed a shaky smile at the camera.“You know I love you.”
The words came through muffled, as if they’d had to go through a couple of feet of stuffing, which seemed to be wrapped so tight around her that it was impossible to feel or say anything. She’d never really gotten the meaning behind the phrase “frozen like a deer in the headlights” before, but now she did. If she was that doe on the highway facing down a Mack truck, she’d have been roadkill for sure.
It was fucking ridiculous.
Here she was, wearing her dead mother’s wedding gown and doing her best stump-on-a-log impression, while several hundred people—including the entire roster, front office, and coaching staff of the Cajun Rage hockey team—waited in the church for the first strains of “Here Comes The Bride.”
She should be reading Tig the riot act. She should be plotting a revenge so epic folk songs would be written about it. She should be raging or crying or flipping the fuck out. Instead, she was frozen in the moment.
Only Tig Jones could do this to her.
Only Tig Jones hadeverbeen able to do this to her.
“I never meant to hurt you,” he said, his voice shaking just the slightest bit.“You have to believe me.”
How often had she heard that from Tig since they first started dating?
A million times at least.
“You’re not saying anything, and youalwayshave something to say,” Tig said, sinking lower into his seat at the New Orleans airport Delta Sky Lounge and shoving his baseball cap down as if that would help the guy who was supposed to be the Cajun Rage’s career franchise player and instead had opted for free agency go unrecognized.“Please,” he pleaded,“say something.”
For what may have been—probably was—the first time in her life, she couldn’t.“Astrid,” Tig said, jostling the phone in his hand as he got up so all she saw for a second was a plane on the tarmac before he pointed the camera back at himself as he started pacing.“I just—”
There were more words; Astrid knew there were because she could see Tig’s mouth moving, but she didn’t hear a single solitary syllable because something inside her cracked. Everything that had been muted and moving at the speed of a sloth stuck in molasses broke free and came rushing at her—the bone-deep hurt, the raw anger, the icy certainty that everything (including her) had changed forever. The realization slammed against her chest and knocked the shock right out of her.
“Shut up, Tig,” she said, relieved to find her voice, even if it had that scratchy tightness that usually preceded a whole lot of frustrated tears.
Tig knew her well enough to know what that tone meant, and his blue eyes went wide.
“I know you’re mad,” he said.“I get it. But I can’t get married right now. I’ll only be able to play hockey for so long before injury or age sends me into retirement. We have our whole lives ahead of us to get married, have kids, and whatever, but the hockey clock is already ticking down on me.”
Whatever. Did he really just say married, kids, and whatever? Like the life they were planning to have together was just a shrug of a whatever?
Whatever?!?
Anger blotted out her vision for a second as she tried to process what in the fuck was happening. She hadn’t been the one who’d pushed to get married. Nor had she been the one who’d talked about how cute their kids would be. And she most definitely had not been the one who’d insisted on a huge church wedding and photographers from fuckingEntertainmentfuckingWeekly.
She sucked in a breath and blinked her vision clear until she could see the man she’d thought she was going to marry. He was still running his mouth.“Stop. Talking. Tig.”
Her ice-cold tone should have gotten the message through, but it didn’t. Tig continued, holding the mic of his plug-in headphones close to his mouth as he plowed forward.
“Astrid, babe,” he said, his tone so obnoxiously reasonable.“I have to focus a hundred percent on my game now that I’ve gotten this Ice Knights contract. You’re a coach’s kid—of course you understand.”
