Gage kept his distance from Laurel the next few days. He had a dozen things going on and, frankly, it was hard being around her. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman in his life—including her—but she was fighting the attraction for all she was worth and they were both too busy to think about it most of the time. The team had won again last night, so spirits were high and they were leaving on their last road trip of the season. It would be Laurel’s first with them, and he planned to tag along. She was still in a serious battle of wills with Matt Forbes and though he’d refrained from getting involved, Howard and Franklin had both asked him what he thought about the whole thing.
Personally, Gage thought it was hysterical, classic Laurel. She tended to get in her players’ heads by doing the least expected thing possible, and asking a professional hockey player to write her an essay was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. Matt had dug in his heels, refusing to write it, and Laurel refused to let him play. One of the guys who hadn’t dressed for many games this season was thrilled to have the chance to play and he’d scored a goal last night. As far as Gage was concerned it was a win-win. He’d already told Howard he wanted to trade Matt when the season was over, and Howard had agreed, but until then they were waiting to see how the situation played out.
Laurel worked the whole flight from Anchorage to Los Angeles, headphones on her head, completely immersed in whatever she was doing on her laptop. Gage sat in the back of the plane, playing poker with Sergei, Kane, and Mikka, who didn’t speak great English but wound up taking them for everything they had. They only bet singles, keeping it friendly, but Mikka took the whole pot, laughing and talking to himself in Finnish as the others shook their heads.
“Dinner at Craig’s tonight?” Sergei was asking Kane and Jake as they got off the plane. The team loved eating at the popular Los Angeles restaurant.
“We have a reservation?” Kane asked.
“I make one whenever we’ll be in town. It’s Dani’s favorite.”
“Not tonight, babe,” Dani leaned over to kiss her husband. “I’m heading to Rodeo Drive. There may be a pair of Jimmy Choos in our future.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him.
“Yeah?” He yanked her against him and whispered in her ear, making her laugh.
“You two are gross,” Laurel teased as she walked past them.
“Wanna go shopping on Rodeo?” Dani asked her. “My husband seems to think I need new shoes…”
Laurel smiled. “I probably can’t—” She cut off abruptly, shaking her head. “I just, well, I have work to do. You go on ahead.”
“It’s always me and the guys,” Dani complained. “For once there’s another girl on a road trip. Come on, just for a couple of hours. It’s not like we have anything to do.”
“All right, let’s check in at the hotel and we can go from there.”
“Yes!” Dani pumped her fist.
Gage sat next to Laurel on the bus. “Shopping sounds like fun,” he said.
She shrugged. “You know me and shopping, still not a fan, but it’ll be nice to spend a little time with Dani.”
“I think you’d like shopping with the right incentive.”
She cut her eyes to him, narrowing them slightly. “Don’t you dare say anything about lingerie or anything else inappropriate.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything of the sort.” He couldn’t help but tease her. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking it.”
“Gage.” Her eyes widened as she looked around. “Don’t do that.”
“No one can hear us; they’re all talking among themselves or wearing headphones.”
“You can’t resist poking fun at me, can you?” she sighed.
“No, I can’t. And no matter how much you say you don’t, you know you love it.”
“Gage, I don’t think—” She was cut off as the bus came to a stop.
“Meet you in the lobby in fifteen minutes,” Dani called out to her. “We’ll Uber.”
“Okay.” Laurel hastily got up and followed behind her, not looking back.
Gage watched her thoughtfully. It almost felt like he was wearing her down. Maybe it was time to up the ante. She wasn’t easily impressed with expensive gifts, but she liked grand gestures and he had an idea for one. With a spring to his step, he got off the bus and headed up to his room.
Laurel and Dani had an early dinner after shopping for a little while. Dani found shoes while Laurel window-shopped and they both decided they were hungry.
“Will you tell me what happened between you and Gage?” Dani asked as they settled down with a glass of wine.
Laurel smiled wryly. “It was a long time ago, Dani. He was deployed not long after we got married and I realized very quickly that life wasn’t for me. I loved him, but not knowing where he was, not being able to talk to him, it wore on me. My mom died while he was over there and I couldn’t even tell him—he was on some secret mission and his unit said they couldn’t reach him. By the time he called me back she’d already been cremated, we’d had the memorial service, and I was back at school. My husband never even knew. I hated it.”
“But he’s been out of the military for years.”
Laurel focused on an invisible spot somewhere in the distance, trying not to let the familiar rage fill her. “Believe me, I know.”
“Oh.” Dani was as perceptive as she was nosy. “So he wouldn’t leave the military when you asked him to, but he left anyway after you separated.”
“Something like that.” That wasn’t exactly what had happened, but Dani didn’t need to know the rest. Hell, Gage didn’t even know the rest. Sometimes Laurel wondered why she hadn’t shared her pain with him, but part of her wanted to protect him. Even now.
“He seems to really care about you…and I think you still care about him. I mean, you two couldn’t keep your hands off each other last year at the Olympics and—”
“You saw?” Laurel was horrified. She’d thought they were alone by the time he’d kissed her that night. Or had she kissed him? There had been a lot of champagne.
“It’s not a big deal. You’re both adults. And you used to be married, so it’s not like it was the first time.”
Laurel snorted out a laugh. “No, it definitely was not. It was the last, though. For me anyway.”
“You haven’t had sex in over a year?” Dani seemed stunned at this news.
Laurel shook her head, twirling her wine glass in her hand. “Who has time for that? I mean, I go out on the occasional date but…”
“But they’re not Gage.”
“No. No one will ever be Gage. I wish what we broke was fixable.”
“Unless he hit you or something really heinous, anything is fixable. Even cheating.”
“No, he would never hit me, and cheating isn’t Gage’s style. It’s complicated, like these things usually are.”
“I see the way he looks at you and that doesn’t look all that complicated.”
“But it is. He’s…” Her voice trailed off. “He’s the love of my life. I don’t know how to explain what broke between us.” There were things she couldn’t tell Dani, for sure, but it was more than that. Even she had a hard time putting her finger on it.
“Don’t you want to fix whatever it is that broke?”
Laurel toyed with the piece of bread on her plate as she thought. “More than anything. I just don’t believe it can be done.”
“Did you think there was any way you would be coaching an NHL team this spring?”
Laurel smiled, because her friend was right, but there were no solutions. Not tonight anyway. “Can we talk about something else? I’m sorry, it’s just really painful. I know it sounds overdramatic since it’s been a long time, but there are some things in life that are hard to get past.”
“Then why did you take this job? I mean, I get that it’s exciting, but it’s short-term and at the end of the day it won’t get you anywhere in your career. We both know the NHL isn’t ready for a woman to be a full-time head coach. You wanted to spend time with him. You don’t have to admit it to me, but you should probably admit it to yourself.”
“Gage is seriously like crack to me,” Laurel acknowledged, downing the rest of her wine. “I’m still so angry about the past but I can’t face the idea of never seeing him again, of really, truly moving on.”
“You need to have a hardcore heart-to-heart with him about all that.”
“Every time we do, we fight, and the truth… Can you keep a secret?”
“Of course.”
“He doesn’t know everything that happened while he was gone. Part of it would hurt him, and the other part hurt me. How do you reconcile that, Dani?”
Dani was thoughtful, looking at her friend with sad green eyes. “You talk it out. Trust me, if I hadn’t gotten Sergei to get the past off his chest, to talk about his wife’s death and all of that, we wouldn’t be where we are today. It was really hard for him to move on, but we managed it together. Sometimes it takes two to make things happen. If you keep trying on your own, I don’t know that you’ll get anywhere.”
Laurel’s heart squeezed painfully. What she wouldn’t give to have another shot at this with Gage. Was there really such a thing as a happy ending?
“You okay?”
Laurel sighed but nodded. “Yeah. I’m sitting here wishing I was strong enough to try again, because I almost didn’t survive last time. If it hadn’t been for the Olympics, I don’t know what would have happened to me.”
“Something tells me Gage wouldn’t have let anything happen to you,” Dani replied softly.
The weirdest thing was that Laurel knew that too. And it was one of many reasons she’d never been able to move on. If Dani saw what was in her heart, there was no way she was hiding her true feelings from Gage either. And that was very, very scary.