“Hey,” Jake said as Curtis skated over to the bench. “I know your wife would kill me for asking, but have you heard anything from Kelly lately?”

It had been two months since the visitation, and there hadn’t been a word, or even a single text to give Jake an idea if things were going okay for the woman. He hadn’t expected her to turn into a pen pal or anything, but some indication she was alive would’ve been nice. He’d broken down a few times and sent his own texts, but other than an initial Got it to let him know his text went through, there was only radio silence.

Curtis sighed and took a seat on the bench. They were doing a little voluntary practice to get ready for a preseason game later that night. Jake was looking forward to spending another game getting to know his linemates. It was a whole new experience getting used to working with guys he previously played against. There’d been some expected ribbing, but most of the guys on the team had at some point played with another team, and they were familiar with being the new guy.

“You’re what, twenty-four, twenty-five?” Curtis asked.

If age was being brought in, the response couldn’t be good. Curtis was five years older than him, so it wasn’t like he was some master sage or anything.

“Twenty-five, and how old I am has nothing to do with the question. Have you heard anything about Kelly or not?”

Since Curtis and Hannah had seemed to be a wealth of information before, he thought there was a chance they’d heard something. He hoped that since she hadn’t contacted him directly, things were going smoothly and the transition she mentioned hadn’t gotten worse.

Curtis raised an eyebrow as he turned and punched Jake in the arm. It wasn’t a hard punch, but it didn’t exactly feel great either.

“That’s for being an idiot and proving how much your age actually does have to do with it.”

Jake opened his mouth to comment but was quickly shot down.

“Just shut up and listen. The reason my wife, on multiple occasions, tried to get you to steer clear of Kelly was because Kelly needed some time to figure out what she wants in life. Namely, whether this stint of sobriety is going to stick. She’s the same age as you are, and while I’ve heard some of her backstory, there are lots of holes in what’s really happened in her life.”

Partially throwing his hand up, Jake said, “I don’t see how filling me in on that is getting me any closer to an answer. I understand she’s got issues. Once you told me she was a model, I looked her up. I know about the sex tapes, the passing out on stage, the war with Kylie Linden.”

Jake could have gone on, but he stopped. Kelly had a rough life it seemed. At seventeen she was “found” working in a diner on the South Side of Chicago. The four years that followed seemed like hell, especially if you went by the photographic evidence.

He hadn’t watched any of the five reported sex tapes. The photographic evidence he thought about was the thin gorgeous teenager turning into the skeletal woman who collapsed on stage. The images he saw of that event sent a shiver down his spine. He had no idea how a person who literally had bones showing through their skin was alive.

“Good.”

Jake looked over at Curtis skeptically. What was “good” about Jake seeing a woman knocking on death’s door? Curtis was quick to continue his thought.

“Then you know how much she had to fight to be the woman you met a couple of months ago.”

The conversation was going nowhere. Jake decided he was done with it and would just text again. Maybe this time he’d feign an emergency to see if it would get a response.

He stood, ready to hit the showers and relax a little bit before the game. The roster hadn’t been released, but he hoped he’d get another chance to play. There were a lot of guys trying to make the team, so not everyone got to play every game in preseason.

“Sit back down. We’re not done talking.”

Curtis held his stick in front of him to stop Jake from walking around him. Jake could’ve gone the other direction, but something in Curtis’ voice told him he wanted to hear what the other man had to say.

“Hannah’s concern is for you. I know the first thought when a woman is trying to keep a guy from a friend is to think she doesn’t like the guy, but in this case, we’re both worried about what an association with Kelly could do to your career. You’ve got at least four or five playing years left, and a misstep now could take that all away. Plus, we weren’t too sure how you’d feel about the drug use.”

Jake scoffed and laughed a little sardonically. It had been a long time since someone had claimed they were looking out for him.

“That doesn’t exactly give me warm fuzzy feelings about how she’s doing now. Just because she tried to take a little escape at the visitation doesn’t mean she was falling back into her old habits. She’s got some kids to think about now, right? She wouldn’t screw things up and make things even harder for those kids.”

He had absolutely no authority to make that statement, but the tortured woman who’d crawled into the car that day wasn’t someone who would just abandon kids. Even with her pupils as big as dimes, he felt like she understood her responsibility. She’d been angry and grieving, but she’d said the coke thing was temporary. Jake didn’t kid himself into thinking that meant it was a one-time thing, but he’d imagined her stepping up.

His faith was completely unfounded. He knew that, especially after seeing the things he’d found on the internet. It didn’t change the hope he had.

“So, you know about the kids. I wasn’t sure if you’d heard.”

Jake nodded. “Yeah, she told me at the visitation that she was stuck with them.”

Curtis’ brow furrowed at the admission. Jake could’ve worded it nicer, but if he remembered right, that was how Kelly put it.

“She actually told you? It’s not something you read about online?”

“She snuck into my car after I left you guys and told me a bunch of random stuff, including the stuff about the kids and how hard it was standing around listening to other people talk about her sister, even with the hit of coke she’d taken.”

There were times it felt like he replayed the conversation over every day. Trying to figure out what he’d missed – why she hadn’t responded. She’d honestly seemed eager to have the connection available to her. Jake could’ve been reading everything wrong, and as time went by, he figured that had to be the case.

He should’ve probably left the coke part out of his reply, but Curtis already knew she’d taken something that day. Jake wouldn’t have done the same, but he felt the need to defend the decision, or at least make her reasoning known.

“Did she by any chance give you her number that day?”

It was Jake’s turn to do a little brow furrowing. He hadn’t expected the question to come up. Since Curtis and Hannah had been against him talking to Kelly, he hadn’t mentioned the visit to his car or the kiss. He still wasn’t going to mention the kiss, but it seemed the car interaction was coming out of the bag.

“She did. I told her to call me if she needed anything, but she didn’t have her phone to plug in my number. So, she gave me hers. I’ve tried it a few times, just to ask her how she is, but she hasn’t replied.”

Curtis laughed, causing Jake to look at him warily. There was nothing funny about Kelly dodging Jake’s texts. When Curtis saw the look on his face, he shook his head and stopped laughing.

“Sorry. That just explains a lot. That wasn’t her number she gave you.”

“What are you talking about?”

Jake didn’t have a reason to doubt the number was Kelly’s. She’d texted back to confirm she got the original message.

“You’ve been texting Nina. We thought it was some kind of new-to-the-team joke or something.”

“Why would I text Nina?”

The idea made absolutely no sense. There hadn’t been anything personal about his quick “just checking in” messages, but if they were going to the wrong person, someone should have told him.

Curtis shrugged. “That’s what we were trying to figure out. She replied to the first one, because she figured you were letting her know your number for emergencies.”

Things still didn’t make sense. If it had been a one-time thing, okay, but he’d texted four times. At some point a response should have been sent. At the very least, Brady should’ve asked what Jake was doing texting his wife.

“It’s been two months. Why is this the first time I’m hearing anything about it?”

Jake also wanted to ask about why in the world Curtis knew about the texts. He knew the couples were close, but he didn’t see them sitting around talking about the new guy on the team being an idiot.

Or, maybe that was exactly how they spent their time. Jake had seen Brady, Nina, Curtis and Hannah since the visitation. Not one of those people said anything about weird texts.

“Don’t ask me. Nina is a ‘special person’, as I like to call her. It’s code for mega-bitch, but I’ve been told I can’t call her that anymore. She told Hannah about the texts. From what I gather, she’s decided you’re a little lost puppy dog who’s just looking for attention.”

Jake opened his mouth to try to erase the idea. Curtis was quick to keep talking, taking away the chance.

“Don’t worry. No one else came to that same conclusion. Brady figured you were just fucking with him because of the frozen shorts thing when you first moved here. Any way you look at it, Nina didn’t respond because she’s special, and I didn’t put the two things together until you mentioned Kelly following you. We all thought she’d just gone to the bathroom.”

Jake had his explanation about the texts, but it did absolutely nothing to answer the original question about how Kelly was doing. On top of that, his mind went to wondering why in the world she gave him Nina’s number.

Did she not want him to contact her? Was she just high and messed it up?

The number was from a New York area code, which he’d questioned at first, since she said she lived in Texas. But, she had worked in New York over the years, so he talked himself out of thinking it was a wrong number. She’d been relatively coherent, when she wasn’t passed out, so he had to believe she’d given him the wrong number on purpose. He ground his teeth together at the thought of it. She could’ve just said no instead of making him look like an ass.

“I guess that explains the total silence I’ve been getting. Are you ever going to answer my question about how she’s doing? Clearly, she doesn’t want me to know, since she gave me the wrong number, but I think I’d focus a little better if I knew.”

The latter wasn’t exactly true, since hearing that she was strung out and in jail or something wouldn’t help. Using the keyword “focus” brought things back to the game, though, and he thought Curtis would be more inclined to divulge information if Jake hinted it could hurt his playing.

“I can’t say I know why she gave you the wrong number, but I wouldn’t say she doesn’t want you to know. Suddenly being in charge of two kids rattled her, so she’s been calling Hannah for help. I swear, that first week, the phone never stopped ringing. Between the questions of whether a little wine was okay to get a kid to go to bed and how to get gum out of hair, we didn’t get a lot of sleep.”

Jake cringed thinking about it. Maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t given him the right number. If she’d called trying to ask him those things, chances were his responses wouldn’t have won any parenting awards. From what he’d seen of Hannah with the twins, the woman made it look so easy.

“Yeah,” Curtis said as he saw the horror on Jake’s face. “It hasn’t been easy for her, but from what we can tell, the house hasn’t burned down, and the kids are both still alive. They’re actually supposed to be at the game tonight.”

That statement got Jake to perk up. He’d hunched over some as the conversation went on, but his shoulders pushed back when he heard Kelly would be close by. Chances were he wouldn’t see her, but maybe seeing him would make her think twice about giving him the wrong number.

“Really? Has she been to any other games?”

They were still early in preseason, but they had some open scrimmages that fans got to come watch. As drawn to her as he was, Jake foolishly thought he would’ve sensed her if she was there. It was idiotic to the extreme, but he’d spent enough time thinking about her that there were times he thought he felt her fingers brushing across his skin.

“Hmm, I don’t think so. Nina offered her an open invite, but this is the first time she’s taken her up on it. Truthfully, it sounds like it’s taken her this long to figure out how to buckle the kids in their booster seats. Apparently, they both still use them, and their aunt has taped them into the seats before.”

The image Curtis painted made Jake laugh. He felt bad for laughing at Kelly’s misfortunes, especially since he’d probably be in the same boat.

“How old are the kids?”

Jake couldn’t remember if somewhere along the line he’d overheard that information or not. He figured they were younger, but not babies, if they were in booster seats.

“Six and three. The six-year-old could probably do without the seat in the car, but she’s kind of small for her size.”

Did that mean Curtis had seen the kids? Or was he basing the size on what he’d been told? Jake wasn’t sure why he felt the questions were important, but he wanted clarification on that detail.

Curtis stood up and tapped Jake’s calf with his stick. Jake looked away from the rookie who’d caught his attention on the ice, trying to do some stupid trick with the puck, and up at the man towering over him.

“Just so you know, she has asked about you. I’m sure our vague responses are why she’s coming tonight. You said something about focus a few minutes ago. It’s probably a good idea to keep that in mind.”

The captain didn’t say anything else, leaving Jake to think about his words. A lot of things rolled around in his head as he waited a few minutes to head to the locker room. The one thing that kept coming back to him was the hope that he wouldn’t be on the roster for the game that night. If he was playing, the chances of bumping into Kelly were pretty much zero, but if he got the night off, he could conveniently find Hannah and hope Kelly wasn’t far away.