Chapter 13

Chapter 13
Max

Max had just dropped Brayden off at school—on time and with no panic, so gold star for him—when his phone rang. He pressed the button on his steering wheel to answer the call, eyes staying firmly glued on his surroundings.
A good ninety percent of the time he felt like the kids and their parents were playing Frogger, only the object of the game was for him to not run them over.
Parents barely stopping before opening their minivan door and shoving their kids out into the street. Students popping out from between cars, forcing him to slam on his brakes. Crossing guards jumping out into the crosswalk without looking.
It was the perfect definition of a shitshow.
“Hello?” he said, carefully navigating past the school.
“Max.”
Suzanne.
His heart frosted over, but this was his son’s mother and he was determined to keep things civil. “Hi,” he said.
No, it wasn’t puppy dogs and rainbows, but the greeting had been polite, okay?
Sort of.
“Max—” She broke off.
A kid darted out in front of his car, and he slammed on the brakes with a stifled curse. Fuck but school drop-off was bound to give him gray hairs.
“This isn’t the best time, Suzanne,” he said, careful again to keep his tone neutral. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m—” She sighed.
And he knew that sigh. It was the start of a long and complicated conversation, one that would no doubt have him pulling out all of those freshly grown gray hairs. He’d been with Suzanne since high school, knew how she operated. Delaying this talk would only make things worse.
The best thing was to buckle down and get through it.
“Hang on,” he told her and cleared the next intersection before finding a spot to pull over. “Okay, I’ve parked. What’s going on?”
“It’s early for you to be driving,” she said. “I thought you’d still be in bed.”
“School starts at eight.”
“Oh.”
Yeah. Oh.
As in, Suzanne was the mother of a school-aged boy. Yes, she might have forgotten that fact, but Brayden still had her DNA.
“Brayden misses you,” he said.
So much so that he wanted Max to find a woman to fill that void.
“I’m pregnant.”
He blinked, fingers tightening on the steering wheel.
“Say something.”
Fuck. Fucking. Mother. Fucker. How could she? He sucked in a breath, released it slowly. “Well, we’re divorced, and you’re a grown woman,” he said. “You’re allowed to do what you want.”
A long hesitation.
“I want to come home.”
Two years ago? The answer probably would have been yes. But now? He and Brayden had been through too much for him to bring his ex back into their home.
“That’s not possible.” Max knew his tone should be softer, that the mother of his child was clearly distraught. But where in the ever-loving fuck did she get off? She’d abandoned them, abandoned Brayden. She’d hired the woman who he’d supposedly knocked up.
Yeah. Seriously.
He’d been playing in L.A. at the time and the season had been a tough one, longer road trips than normal, a new coach who required extra practices and outside team-building exercises.
Brayden had been four going on five and had just missed the cutoff for kindergarten. He’d been hell on two legs, busy as fuck, and only in preschool for three hours a day. Max got it, knew that it was exhausting, that he was little help when he was out of the state, and Suzanne had always wanted to go to this fancy resort in Mexico.
He’d met with a travel agent and planned a week-long trip for her and her best girlfriend at the resort. He’d picked out and paid for spa packages—hair treatments, nail stuff, massages, the whole works—for them both.
And the last piece of that was a new wedding ring.
He’d been in the minor leagues when they’d gotten married, so her ring was smaller and less fancy than a lot of the WAGS—wives and girlfriends—on the team. Hell, it was tiny when compared to Los Angeles standards.
Suzanne had waxed poetic about a particular jewelry designer for years.
Half of her Pinterest board was devoted to the designs.
Max had set up a meeting with the young woman, Colette Sandindo. She was already visibly pregnant—this was important because Colette was the woman Suzanne had paid to say Max had knocked her up. It didn’t matter she was already in that state when he’d first met her. However, because she was pregnant when he demanded a DNA test to clear his name, her attorneys filed a motion that the court approved, making him wait until the baby was born before it was completed.
Four months.
That was how long he’d had to wait.
Not long in the grand scheme of things, but a fucking eternity when your story goes viral and suddenly you’re someone’s supposed baby daddy.
The sad thing?
Colette had delivered on the ring.
It was sitting in a box at the back of his closet. Pathetic, huh? But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to chuck it into the Bay. Not when some poor innocent creature might choke on it.
Max Montgomery. Pro hockey player. Adulterer. Killer of sea creatures.
Perfect.
He sighed. “You can’t come home,” he repeated. “I’m sorry, but I’ve worked too hard getting Brayden on a schedule.”
“Fuck a schedule. I need—”
“Suzanne. You terminated your parental rights. You don’t need anything.” He plunked his head down onto the steering wheel. “I pay you alimony, and I am happy to keep my verbal promise of renting you an apartment nearby so that we can arrange for you to see Brayden on a regular basis. But you can’t live with me again and especially not with—”
“I’m not a whore,” she snapped. “These things happen, or maybe you don’t remember.”
What had happened to the woman he’d married?
Or maybe the question should be: how had things gotten to this point?
“Do you want me to start looking for a place nearby?” he asked instead of replying to her statement. Somehow, his typical anger when dealing with his ex had faded, morphed into . . . nothing.
No. That wasn’t it.
He was tired. Drained. Not able to summon up outrage any longer.
Because Suzanne didn’t really matter.
“I fucking hate San Francisco.” Her tone was sharpened to a knife’s edge. “You know that.”
“Okay then,” he told her. “Brayden’s doing great. I’m doing great. Thanks so much for asking.” Max reached a finger for the end button on the steering wheel as she sputtered. “Nice talking with you. Hope everything works out. Take care—”
“Max—”
“Bye, Suzanne.”
He hung up, blew out a breath, and waited for her to call back.
She did, approximately a heartbeat later, but he rejected the call, turned on his Do Not Disturb while driving, and headed back to his house.
He needed to get a meal in, do his daily workout, and then he was supposed to be helping in Brayden’s class.
Something about cutting out paper flowers.
“Poor teacher.” He had the feeling his hands weren’t going to be the best for that particular task. He could just pretend the kids had done the cutting and not him, right?
Max chuckled and flicked on the radio.
“The Imperial March” flooded through the speakers—Brayden’s recent addition to their shared playlist.
That reminded him of Angie and her love for Star Wars.
Somehow—despite Suzanne’s news, despite the unpleasant phone call, despite the sharp right turn his life had taken because of his ex—he smiled.
Just thinking about Angie made him smile.
A woman who made him smile. Now wasn’t that a change?
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and thought of another thing that made him smile: thinking of Angie’s reaction when she saw what he’d sent to her office.