Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 116231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Kylie
I learned early in life that love isn't just given, it's earned.
Now I've decided love isn't worth it.
At least that type of love.
Until him.
He was broken.
It was safe.
But then I went and did the unexpected.
I fell in love with him, knowing he would never love me back.
Knox
I thought I had it all.
I was playing hockey in the NHL.
Three beautiful kids and a wife who loved me.
Until I walked in on her in bed with my brother-in-law.
Everything I thought I had was a lie.
She was everything I thought I didn't want, and when I least expected it.
I just hope when I finally figure it out, I haven't lost her for good
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
To the first man I ever fell in love with.
Dad.
one
Knox
I pull out my keycard and swipe it on the black magnetic strip, waiting for the garage door to open. Advancing just a touch when the door starts to slide up, I drive down the ramp and look over to see Clive, the valet guy, is waiting for us to arrive. He gets out of his chair and walks over to where we usually stop. Putting the SUV in park, I open the door. “Morning, Clive.” I smile over at him. “How’s it going?”
"Could be better,” he says, and I nod at him, knowing the feeling, “but there’s always next year.”
“Coming back better and stronger.” I slap him on the arm as he passes me to go to the driver’s seat, and I walk over to the black steel door and pull it open.
I step into the hallway and see a bustle of activity coming from the front offices, different coaching staff people walking in and out of the doorways. “Hey,” I say to a couple of them as I walk down to the locker room.
The hallway is bare now that the season is over, no sticks lined up outside the room. No equipment staff running in and out with skates in their hands to sharpen or fix. Stepping into the room, I see most of the guys are already here. “Hey,” I greet to the room, walking over to my spot on the bench right under my name.
“Hey,” Jaxon, my teammate and our team’s best defensemen says, looking over his shoulder at me, giving me a chin up. “How you doing?” he asks me as he reaches for something on his shelf and tosses it in his duffel bag on the bench.
“Sucks.” I shrug, trying not to feel the dread of another season that has come and gone with us not winning the Stanley Cup. “But it is what it is.”
“Getting knocked out while in the wild card spot is harder than not making the playoffs,” he says. “It isn’t something anyone wants to happen, especially when it went to the last game of the season.”
He’s not wrong about that. We were tied with the Edmonton team for the wild card spot, and we had the same number of points, but they had an extra game in hand. It was our last game of the season and felt like playoff hockey already. We were going on a five-game winning streak on top of that. All eyes were on us; everyone was ready for that first round of playoffs.
But the hockey gods had other plans for us. We needed one freaking point to be contenders but lost the last game of the season. I’m pretty sure it sucked as much as going to the final round in the playoffs and losing that chance to hoist the Cup. At least that is how it felt for me.
That was last week and now we were asked to all come in today to do final interviews with the press and pack up our lockers. You never know what can happen over the summer break, even if I have a contract with the team for the next two years. I’ve seen it time in and time out; trades happen in the summer. Here today, gone tomorrow. I’ve been at this game for the last twelve years, and I’ve been lucky to only be hit with a trade once. That trade brought me from Montreal to the LA Warriors, done in the summer months.
I want to say I didn’t know it was coming, but my contract was up, and they were trying to wring me to take less than I knew I was worth. My agent at the time was looking out for me and didn’t back down. He took a couple of calls from other general managers, and I gave him four teams I’d be okay with being traded to. LA was one of them and then, in the span of three hours, I was traded. I was in the middle of my honeymoon on a boat in Capri when it happened. Josephine was beside herself since she’s from Montreal. Her whole family was from there and now she had to move to the other side of the continent. It took her a full year of going back and forth for her to finally settle in LA, but it was only because she was pregnant at that point. Now that she’s here, she loves every single thing about the city.
“Morning,” Kirby, the other top defenseman says, coming into the room. His phone in his hand, he tucks it in the back pocket of his shorts. “This fucking sucks,” he mumbles as he walks past me, slapping me on my back.
“It just makes you want it more next year,” I reply as I stand in front of my locker. “What’s going to suck more is the exit interviews.”