Maxim (Carolina Reapers 10)

I spun around, dragging my suitcase along with me. I poised my hand on the knob, trying to catch my breath when it felt like my soul was bleeding out.

But he didn’t say a word.

And so I didn’t stop. I walked through the door and slammed it behind me without a second look back.

Several hours and one tear-fueled plane ride later, I was letting myself into Maxim’s house, because I had nowhere else to go. And his scent hit me, opening the fresh wound all over again until I could barely make it to my room.

“Evie?” Mila was stretched out on my bed, thumbing through a magazine, but hopped up the second she saw me.

“Mila,” I cried her name, full-on bawling as I fell into her arms. “I missed you,” I said through my tears.

“You couldn’t have missed me that much,” she said, pushing me back enough to study my face. She shook her head. “I’m going to murder him.”

17

MAXIM

“Five! Four! Three! Two! One!” the crowd shouted, counting down with the jumbotron.

My heart thundered.

The buzzer sounded.

Arms surrounded me.

Hands slapped at my back, my helmet.

The sound of fans chanting, cheering, filled my ears in a roar.

We’d won game one of the Stanley Cup finals on home ice.

“One down, four to go!” Axel shouted in the dogpile and we all yelled our approval.

The joy of it sliced through the apathy that had grown around me like a brick wall for the last ten days. But I was supposed to be happy, right? This was the yellow brick road, and Oz was only four games away.

So why the fuck was I still so damned…sad?

You know why.

We filed off the ice and fans hung over the entrance to the tunnel from the stands just like always, shouting for their favorite players. McKittrick handed his stick to a brunette who gave him a promising smile, and Axel did the same for a kid who’d been hoisted over the railing by his father.

“We’ll be your lucky charms, Maxim!”

I looked up to see a set of red-haired twins blowing kisses at me and pointing to their shirts, which had Maxim’s Lucky Charms spelled out between the two of them, forming one big shamrock.

What the actual fuck.

Forcing a smile, I gave them a two-fingered salute from my helmet and headed through the tunnel, into the belly of the arena. Even as pissed as I was about the article, I wasn’t about to take it out on fans, even if I just wanted everyone in the world to forget that it had ever been written.

That stupid goddamned article had singlehandedly ruined…everything.

“That was amazing!” Sterling slapped me on the shoulder. “That shot you made in the first is going to make SportsCenter tonight, no doubt about it.”

“We’ll see,” I said as we escaped into the locker room, narrowly avoiding the cameras and microphones thrust into our faces in the hallway. “You played great, too. That save in the third was golden.”

Sterling shrugged. “Sawyer played most of the game, but I think I’m starting game two.” Both our asses hit the bench and we started to strip off our gear.

Coach was the last of us in and he shut the door behind him, his eyes scanning over us, in search of the players he’d need for the post-game interviews. Banning the press from the locker room only protected so many of us.

“Not me,” I muttered. “Not. Me.”

“Axel!” Coach shouted. “Sawyer!”

The two guys groaned and nodded. They’d be fodder for the interviews tonight.

I hurried through my post-game routine, storing my gear and washing off the sweat before changing back into my street clothes, which happened to be an Armani suit.

That’s the Maxim I fell for. Not some flashy paparazzi, Armani-wearing version.

Evie’s words slammed back into me as I tightened my necktie, and I looked down at my feet to see if I was actually bleeding out, or if it just felt like it. Nope, no blood, just the shattered remains of whatever we’d been. And maybe Evie hadn’t fallen for the Armani-wearing version of me, but she hadn’t exactly stuck around for the man I was under it all, so who the fuck cared what I wore?

She didn’t. She hadn’t bothered to fight it out with me. Hadn’t thought enough of our relationship to see past a stupid fucking tabloid headline. She sure as hell hadn’t given me the benefit of the doubt, or even taken my thoughts or feelings into consideration at all. She’d simply read a bullshit article and decided that being with me wasn’t worth the work, the scrutiny that one fucking phrase put her under. She’d walked out, packed her shit while I was still on the plane, and she was gone by the time I’d gotten home.

I’d walked in ready to fight for our relationship only to find an empty house.