Delise glanced at her and patted her leg, but Remi could tell she didn’t know what to say. Had she been rudely dumped? Or was there really something wrong? She nibbled her bottom lip until it was raw. The Wolves were not playing well as a team, and going into the third period, the score was three-one for St. Louis. Not a good start.

Even she could tell the Wolves were frustrated.

Then they got two quick goals and tied it up. They both cheered, but it didn’t make her feel much better. Gut-gnawing anxiety still chewed away inside her.

Another nail-biter, the clock ticking away time. She wasn’t sure if the same thing happened in a playoff game, if they did a shootout or if they kept playing, but she knew it couldn’t end in a tie.

The Wolves got a few more great shots on the net, but the St Louis goalie made some heart-stopping saves. She watched as Dominic smacked his stick into the boards with frustration. Where was Jason? Why weren’t they playing him much? They needed him!

And then, with only a minute forty-three seconds left in the game, there he was, circling on the ice, ready for a face-off. He crouched, alert, poised. The camera zoomed in on him and the St. Louis center, who said something to Jason. Jason said something back.

Remi had a feeling they weren’t making a bet on who’d pay for dinner after.

The ref dropped the puck and Jason smacked at it, but didn’t get control. The camera followed the puck, but then the crowd was screaming, the whistle blew and the television screen filled with an image of two players going at it, gloves off, fists flying, shirts wrenched.

“Oh dear God.” She felt her eyes go wide and her mouth hung open. She covered it with her hands. It was Jason in a fight.

Delise and Remi both sat forward, the popcorn forgotten. Remi couldn’t breathe and her heart accelerated.

The two men continued to hammer at each other and she swore she felt every punch that landed on Jason as if they struck her own body. She flinched and tensed. The refs circled them, the other players drifted over to the boards near their respective benches.

Then Jason dropped the other guy to the ice and fell onto him, punching at his face with fierce, frenzied blows.

“Jesus!” She pressed her hands to her mouth, wanted to cover her eyes, look away. She couldn’t stand it. “What are you doing?” she shouted at the television, as if he could hear her. “Stop, Jason. Stop it!”

The refs finally pulled Jason off the other player and dragged him away, bleeding from his face, chest heaving, hands still in fists.

They went to a commercial.

She shook her head, beside herself. She wanted to teleport herself to St. Louis, find him and scream at him. She just did not get it.

She knew fighting was a part of hockey, a big part. She and Jason had talked about it, how he didn’t condone fighting just for the sake of fighting, but with high adrenaline and intense competition it was going to happen sometimes, and it was okay if it was for some noble purpose like defending another player or protecting the goalie. Although she didn’t exactly get what was noble about beating someone up.

She’d never seen Jason fight, but then she’d only seen a couple of games. He wasn’t known as a fighter. He was known as a smart player, big, but quick-thinking and intuitive, a player who used finesse rather than his fists.

Delise looked at her, her lips rolled in. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head. She didn’t even know what to say. She stood. She walked back and forth in front of the television until the game came back on, arms wrapped around herself.

Jason had, of course, been given a penalty. She didn’t understand it all, apparently he got more than one penalty, but in the end, the Wolves were shorthanded for the rest of the game. And guess what? St. Louis scored.

And won the game, thanks to Jason Heller’s stupid penalty.

“Think, Remi, think.”

She replayed everything over in her head. “He asked me to think about moving in with him,” she told Delise, meeting her eyes. It shouldn’t have been enough to scare him into panic-mode and send him running the opposite direction, but she didn’t rule that out, because she knew why he’d broken up with Brianne.

“For some reason he ended up out with his hockey buddies Saturday night. He must have had a lot to drink for him to drop his pants in a restaurant and create a scene like that.”

“Maybe he was celebrating making the playoffs,” Delise suggested, her face somber.

Remi paced around her living room, not really seeing anything.

“No.” She shook her head. “The playoffs already started. I can’t imagine why he’d do that. But clearly, he got carried away, drank a bit too much, got arrested…” she rolled her eyes, “and was too embarrassed to tell me. But that doesn’t explain why he played so little tonight or why he got in that fight that cost the game.”

“I don’t know, Remi.”

“Something’s wrong.” After examining all the facts, she concluded that something was definitely wrong. Clammy-hands, heart-freezing, gut-churning wrong. And if he wasn’t going to tell her what it was, she was going to go to him and make him.

Except he was in another city. Dammit. And he wouldn’t be back in Chicago until Thursday.

Jason sat down in his coach’s office, his insides a mass of twisted nerves.

“Okay, Jase. What’s going on?”

He was getting tired of that question. Tired of hearing it, tired of trying to talk his way around it.

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit. You go out and get wasted last weekend, act like an asshole, get arrested, show up for practice the next day so hungover your face was green and you could barely skate. Then you get in a stupid fight and take a dumbass penalty that cost us our first playoff game. Last night you didn’t play much better.”

Jason slumped in the chair, unable to meet Dan’s eyes.

“You’re saying that’s nothing?”

He shook his head.

Dan waited. “Fuck.” He shook his head, his mouth tight. “Okay, then. If nothing’s wrong, get your shit together and act like the professional you are. We’ve got another game tomorrow night, and if we lose, we only have one more chance. We need you, Jase, but I won’t hesitate to bench you if you aren’t able to get your head in the game. This is not the time to be out drinking and partying and acting like an irresponsible teenager.”

Jason winced.

He rubbed his forehead.

“You’re better than this, Jase,” Dan continued, his voice easing.

Shit. Jason’s stomach rolled over.

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what’s wrong? Maybe I can help.”

And that did it.

Jason leaned one elbow on the armrest of the chair and covered his eyes while he tried to get his tight throat to relax enough to speak. He tried and nothing came out. Cleared his throat. Swallowed.

“I found out on Saturday that my ex-girlfriend is pregnant.”

Silence. Then, “Jesus.”

“Yeah.” Jason took his hand away and met Dan’s eyes. “It’s not that…I don’t want…fuck.” He swallowed again. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve been seeing someone else—someone I really care about. Christ! I don’t want to hurt her.”

Dan nodded and leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. “Yeah, I guess I see the problem. So she’s pretty upset about this?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“Oh. Jesus, Jase. You gotta tell her.”

“I can’t tell her.” Anguish slammed into him like a body check. “I don’t know what to tell her, because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Am I supposed to break up with her so I can be with Brianne? So we can get back together and be parents to this baby? Am I supposed to ask Brianne to marry me?” His voice cracked.

“Oh, man.” Dan rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know the answers to those questions, Jase. I can’t tell you what to do. But a couple things I can tell you. First of all—you have to deal with this. We’re in the playoffs. We need you here and present, mind and body and soul, every game, all sixty minutes. You can’t let your personal life interfere with your professional life.”