I shrugged in response, unsure what was so impressive about my performance. I turned to retrieve the pucks that had made it into the net only to see there weren’t any. I’d stopped every shot that came my way without even realizing it. No wonder everyone was quiet. I was floored, and I tried to think back to figure out how I’d managed to do it. But thoughts of Sasha were all that were in my head.

  I knew she wasn’t looking for a relationship, and I wasn’t entirely convinced that what had passed between us wasn’t just her rebounding from Ryan. I knew that I wanted something more with her, but what exactly that something was, I wasn’t sure. I knew I wanted her. And I also knew I didn’t want anyone else with their hands on her, either.

  Things were just so easy with Sasha. I didn’t second-guess myself with her the way I did with everything else in my life. At the same time, I didn’t feel like we had to make any decisions right away. There was no pressure. I wasn’t seeing anyone, and to the best of my knowledge, she wasn’t seeing anyone else either.

  “Hold on, Coulter,” Coach Tremblay said before I could follow my teammates down to the locker room to wash up and head out for the day.

  “Yeah, Coach?” I asked, tucking my helmet tighter under my arm.

  “Listen, Coulter, Henri’s been fighting off a cold the last week. You going in net the other day gave him a good rest, but he still hasn’t been able to shake it. He’s willing to play through it as best he can, but after how you did today, I’m thinking I might bench him tomorrow and see if we can’t get him a bit more rest to get rid of this thing once and for all.”

  “You want me to start? Tomorrow?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly.

  “You’ve been doing well in the practices, and you held your own the other night,” Coach Tremblay nodded. “We’re not going up against the Rajun Cajuns, so it won’t be as high-pressured as some of the other games coming up on our schedule. I think you’re ready. What do you say? How do you think you’ve been doing?”

  I fought to control my expression, but could tell from the amusement evident in Coach Tremblay’s that I was failing miserably. “I guess, I don’t know. I was just…in the zone earlier, but… Yeah, sure. I have to have my first home game sometime, right? Why not do it while things seem to be clicking for me. Henri will be suited up and on the bench if I screw it up,” I said with a forced shrug.

  I could see Tremblay’s lips pressed together, and I knew Coach wasn’t buying the bravado bullshit, but at least the man wasn’t calling me out on it.

  “Then I’ll let Henri and the others know, and you’ll be on the roster for tomorrow afternoon,” Coach Tremblay told me. “You don’t have to go announcing it to the world, but if there are people you’d like to have there, I’d give them a call and then talk to the folks in the front office. They should be able to get you tickets for one of the boxes.”

  “Okay,” I said, letting a grin sneak through. “Thanks, Coach.” I turned to head to the locker room. A few guys in the room remarked on my accomplishment during practice, which was a nice change from the sympathetic looks and murmurs of condolence following the announcement of my father’s illness. Even Martin, Gerry, and Dougie had made attempts at apologies following that revelation.

  Martin cleared his throat. “I was going to head to the restaurant to apologize to your friend. I was an asshole.”

  “She actually quit,” I said.

  Martin frowned. “Shit, I hope it wasn’t over what I said to her that night.” He groaned. “I swear, I don’t remember. But I know I was mouthing off.”

  “You weren’t the reason, Martin, but she told me what you said. And yes, it was that bad,” I assured him. “She’s working with Echo on her new line so she could stop waitressing. Dealing with guys like you is only one of the reasons she left.”

  “Well, next time you see her, let her know I take back whatever horrible thing I said,” Martin said. “Unless she’s willing.”

  I glared at my teammate. “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry. Bad joke.”

  “Why don’t you tell her yourself next time you see her,” I suggested. “I’ll see if I can get her to come one of the nights during the homestand.” Ideally, it would be perfect if I could get her to agree to come the following day for my start in net. Nervous as I already was, knowing she’d be there was far more comforting than the thought of my parents being in the crowd. Of course, if they were in the seats so soon after my father’s medical announcement, I knew the pressure I would wind up putting on myself would be difficult to manage.

  Most of the other guys had already finished showering, so by the time I was finished, I had the locker room almost entirely to myself. I was pretty sure Sasha would either be between classes or at Echo’s design studio for a fitting or something, so I figured I should go ahead and take the risk of asking her if she’d be interested in coming to see me play.

  I could invite her to dinner afterwards. My parents would probably want to do something like that, but they’d be okay with me bringing Sasha along. It could be a way of showing her that I was interested in making things between us more official. That I was comfortable with her in a situation where my parents would undoubtedly ask questions.

  I switched on my phone and started looking through my messages and emails. Would it be better to call my parents or Sasha first? I knew I’d rather talk to Sasha, but talking with her could be like a reward for dealing with my parents.

  I smiled at the thought of Sasha as a treat for my own good behavior, and absentmindedly flicked through my email messages, looking for the pictures I’d sent myself from her phone at the party the night before.

  My heart beat faster with panic when I couldn’t find them. I couldn’t find them. They weren’t in my inbox. I tried a few searches but nothing came back.

  Setting the phone on the bench beside me, I leaned my elbows on my thighs and rested my head in my hands, gripping my hair tightly in an effort to remember exactly what I’d done to her phone the night before. My memory of taking the pictures was crystal clear, as was every detail of what happened immediately after.

  Instead of the familiar arousal usually inspired by the memory of Sasha lying naked with her legs splayed, ready and eager for me, I broke out into a cold sweat. My stomach felt like it couldn’t decide whether to drop like a stone or climb its way out through my esophagus.

  There were two possibilities I could think of for what had happened. I prayed that what I’d done was delete the email with the photos when I’d intended to send it. I’d prefer to have accidentally deleted the photos altogether than the second and more likely mistake. But the sinking feeling in my gut told me that on some level I knew that I’d accidentally committed an error that was far worse. It was something I’d done before, though never with something so sensitive.

  I’d sent the photos to the wrong person.

  My big fingers and the small touchscreens of smartphones didn’t mix, and I was constantly hitting the wrong letters. I usually made a point of double-checking things before hitting the send button or confirming anything, but I still tended to receive emails in response from unintended recipients, alerting me to my error.

  What made it all worse was that I’d sent the photos from Sasha’s phone. On my own phone, I had the addresses and phone numbers programmed in so the chances of hitting the wrong thing were significantly smaller. But sending them from her phone… I couldn’t even go into the history to see who I’d accidentally sent them to.

  The urge to vomit was strong. I dropped my head between my knees. What if she received one of those emails from some stranger wondering who she was, and why she’d sent them a bunch of nude pictures? Fuck. One of those pictures was…

  I made a mad dash to the bathroom stall and got there just in time.

  I’d fucking lost the intimate photos I’d taken of her—of us. While my face wasn’t in any of them, there was one part of myself that most certainly was…and her face was certainly visible in several of them.

  Fuck. So much for my relationship with Sasha being uncomplicated. Now it was like everything else in my life that I’d managed to sabotage. Even if she could forgive me for this level of stupidity, I knew I’d never be able to live it down. Forget having any kind of romantic relationship with her. She’d never trust me again. I was suddenly making that prick Ryan look like a damn genius. I couldn’t even think of the guy as a prick anymore in good conscience, not when what I’d done was so dumb.

  I picked myself up off the floor and flushed the toilet, then moved to the sink to clean myself up. I couldn’t call her from the locker room. And calling her from Mars was out. I could wait at home for her to return and break the news to her in person. But still that felt like the coward’s way out, putting it off. Not to mention, the longer I waited to warn her and start looking into where the pictures might be, the greater the chances of the images being posted to some shady website.

  I would head home and call her from the apartment. I just prayed there was some way I could undo the mistake.

  14

  Sasha

  “You’re not in the middle of something involving needles and pinning fabric, are you?” Fox asked cautiously.

  “No,” I told him. “We just got here and haven’t started yet. What’s up?” I glanced over my shoulder to where Echo and Jen had retreated to the other side of the room to give me privacy. I was relieved, because whatever Fox had called to say about the story, I knew there was a decent chance I was going to be upset in a way I wouldn’t want them to see.

  “So, I discovered something today…” he began. I moved to sit down, waiting for him to start accusing me of things and calling me names I probably deserved.

  “Okay…”

  “When…when I went to look for those pictures of you that I sent to my phone…”

  I blinked, confused, before a ripple of terror skittered over my skin. The hairs on my arms stood on end, ready for the coming fight-or-flight impulse. This wasn’t what I’d expected. What was going on?

  “What about those pictures?” I asked slowly.

  “I don’t have them.”

  I forced myself to take a deep breath. “What do you mean, you don’t have them? Who has them?”

  He exhaled loudly on the other end. “I don’t know, exactly,” Fox admitted. “They’re on your phone,” he said, speaking quickly. “Unless you deleted them, which you probably should. And after I emailed them to myself last night, I should have checked right then and there to see if they came through. And if I’d thought to check then and there, maybe we could have stopped the message from going through or something—”

  The bottom fell out of my world.

  “You lost the pictures? What—? How could you do something like that to me?” I exploded as the impact of what he was telling me sunk in.

  “It was an accident and, to be fair, you were kind of distracting me at the time. And it was your phone instead of mine, you still don’t have my email address programmed in your phone,” he rambled on the other end of the line. “I’m so, so, so sorry and I’m going to do everything I can to get them back for you—”

  “You can’t just get them back,” I shouted, no longer caring that Echo and Jen could hear. “This is the digital age—once those things are out there, they’re out there forever.”

  “It depends on who I accidentally sent them to,” he insisted. “If I can find out and get in touch with them, I might be able to convince them to just delete the photos, and it never goes beyond a few of us.”

  “Did you do this on purpose?” A horrible thought shook me to my core.

  “What? Of course not. Why would I do it on purpose? Those pictures were supposed to be for me to enjoy, and I promise I won’t ever try to do anything like—”

  “To get back at me,” I interrupted. “For the story today. Did you do this to get back at me for not telling you sooner?”

  “Story? What story? Sasha, this was an accident, I swear,” he insisted.

  “You saw that the station aired my story, and you realized it was about you and you got pissed, so you ‘accidentally’ lost the naked pictures of me,” I said. “You’re pissed at me and I get that, but… seriously, Fox—those pictures could ruin my career. They’ll undermine everything I try to do as a journalist. It’ll make everything about my sex life for the rest of my life.”

  “You did a story about me? And you think I’m mad at you for it?” Fox’s voice sounded hollow. “What exactly did you say about me?” It seemed like he tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a choking sound.

  “For the record, it’s not really about you. I told them no, but they went ahead with the angle anyway,” I muttered, still focused on the tarnished image of the career I’d hoped to have. “What was I supposed to do? I was working on it for my final project for my internship, and the station decided to run it today because they had a scheduling problem for a different story. It aired at noon, and it’s up on the website. It’s just about the pressure put on young athletes.”

  His voice went icy. “You did a story all about how I choke under pressure?”

  Then I heard it. The hurt I’d been expecting from the beginning finally came through and dampened some of my fury over the pictures.

  “It’s…it’s not about you, Fox. I swear.” I explained. “I just… Seeing you go through so much every time you had one of those tryouts was maybe the inspiration. But you’re doing it,” I emphasized. “You’re doing great now with the team so…even if I got the idea because of—”

  “Just stop, Sasha,” he interrupted. “I’m going to find out where those pictures ended up. If you… If you check your phone…you should be able to see in the sent mail or sent messages thing what I typed instead of my address. That…that will give me a place to start.” His voice was hollow, chilled.

  “Fox… I’m… I meant to tell you about the story. I never thought the station would actually air it, and they didn’t give me much warning. I only found out this morning and when I went to your room, you’d already left for the day and—”

  “You know what? Just forward it to me, okay? Forward me the typo email address, and I’ll take care of it. I’ve gotta go.” He hung up.

  “Fox…” I said to the nothingness on the other end, then sighed and ended the call.

  “When I told you that you should talk to him,” Echo said with gentle sarcasm, “that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

  “I just…he lost some…”

  “Pictures,” Jen finished for me. “We heard.”

  “If they get out…and my boss sees them…or anyone at the station…or my professors…” I agonized, each possibility striking me like a punch in the gut. “I’ll never have a career. Not the one I want. And I’ll never live down the…humiliation. The stigma will follow me forever.”

  “Well, now, let’s not overreact,” Echo said, trying to calm me down. “How bad are these pictures?”

  “Bad. You can’t see them.” Sasha said firmly.

  “I can look at them for you and give you an objective opinion,” Jen volunteered, taking the phone from me to flip through the pictures.

  She wasn’t particularly skilled at keeping a straight face while she did so, which made my face burn. When she got to the end, Jen’s eyes went wide, and she pressed her lips together before turning the phone over and handing the phone back to me.

  “Okay, yeah,” Jen said with a nod. “If those get out, it would be bad. I mean, they’re tastefully shot, never would have guessed Fox had such command of lighting and an eye for composition—”

  “I got it,” Echo interrupted. “It’s bad for Sasha if these get out.”

  “They could be worse. In a lot of them you can’t see your face, so that’s something. But that last one—the little video thing…” Jen flushed.

  “Oh, God!” I moaned, as the clip in question began playing. I had visions of that clip splashed across the internet with gossip articles about how I was spreading my legs for the Coulter connections Fox had to offer. Something that my work with Echo would only appear to confirm. Headlines about how many different ways I could bend my body to the Coulters’ advantage. I’d be reviled. Called a gold-digger, a sell-out. The thought of Ryan’s reaction. The vindication he would feel, and the superiority he would project when he found out that I was fucking Fox.

  Thinking about how my family would react was actually worse, because I knew my father would see it as a big opportunity. He’d probably make some comment about how getting Fox to knock me up and marry me would set me up for life. My stomach rolled.

  “So let’s see who he sent them to instead of himself,” Jen said, pushing the hand I held the phone in up toward my face. “Forward him the address and he can contact them, or you can reach out to them directly and explain what happened and appeal to their sense of decency.”

  “This is not how I wanted to make my name in the industry,” I whispered, feeling too defeated to say much more.

  “When did Fox try sending the photos to himself?” Echo asked, her brow furrowed.

  “Well,” I cleared my throat. “He took them while we were at a party last night. As soon as…as soon as we were done and were getting dressed again,” I had to look away as I continued, “he realized that the phone he’d grabbed was mine and not his. So he took my phone and sent them to…whomever.”

  “It looks like he might’ve sent them to another Coulter,” Jen remarked as she peered at the phone.

  “Oh, God,” I groaned. “Who? Please God, not your grandfather.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Echo insisted. I was inclined to agree with the statement until I realized Echo meant something else by it.

  “What are you talking about? Of course it matters. It’s humiliating.”

  “Well, yeah, it is all that,” Echo agreed. “But if Fox sent the photos last night, and it’s the middle of the day today… Okay, maybe it would take longer than that for the photos to become a big thing, but the longer you don’t hear about it from anyone except Fox, the better the chances are that whoever he sent them to is going to sit on them and make sure they don’t get out. If he accidentally sent them to someone in the family, they’ll almost certainly keep it to themselves,” Echo insisted.