by Toni Aleo
“Asshole,” JT threw at him, but he ignored it as he looked for their friends. When he spotted his teammates Erik Titov and Phillip Anderson, he made his way toward them, ignoring the hot little hostess who was trying to catch his eye. He wouldn’t have anything to do with her. Not here. If she were in Nashville, it would be a different story, but he didn’t touch anyone in Chicago.
It always worried him that Lacey could find out. Not that she even cared anymore. Even though a little piece of him hoped she would. He knew that was pathetic and disgusting, but he hoped anyway.
Letting out a breath, he shook hands with his friends before dropping into the chair as Erik said, “Man, you sucked today at practice. Better clean that up before the game tomorrow. What’s up with you?”
For shit’s sake.
“I asked the same thing. He’s being a fucking pussy, still caught up on some girl from thirty years ago,” JT said and Karson glared.
“Aren’t you only thirty?” Erik asked with his brow up.
“Yeah, and fuck you, JT. Why am I even your friend?”
“’Cause I am fucking awesome, dude. Duh,” he answered like it was as true as the sky was blue.
Which it wasn’t. JT was kind of an asshole, but everyone still liked him for some odd reason.
“Oh, that Lacey chick, she lives here, doesn’t she?” Phillip asked and Karson rolled his eyes.
“Guys, let’s drop it. I don’t want to talk about it.”
He never did. Not to anyone. Not his mom, his sister, not even his dad. Not that he would ever tell his dad anyway. They were superclose, but they didn’t talk about emotional shit at all. When Karson had come home, broken over Lacey, all his dad did was hand Karson a stick and stand in goal, blocking each shot that he shot until Karson basically collapsed to the ground in tears and exhaustion. Even then, his dad simply patted him on the back before walking away. Karl King didn’t do emotion. But he must have told his mom because Regina King was out there in a second, fussing and fawning over him.
As she held him tight in her arms, all Karson could do was wish that he could do it all over again.
He would have chosen her.
He wouldn’t have given in to her father and allowed him to ruin them. He would have told him to fuck off and prayed that he could give Lacey the life she deserved. He was pretty sure he could have too. He went third in the draft, first round. He didn’t even go into the AHL; he went straight into the pros, playing for the Lightning with a great contract. He loved Tampa; it was great but it wasn’t home, and most of the time he was just lost, trying to mend the pieces of his broken heart.
After playing for six years with them, he was traded to the Assassins, and crazily enough, he felt as if he was finally home. It was weird. He had been with the same group of guys for six years and hadn’t felt as comfortable as he did when he stepped into the Assassins’ locker room. It wasn’t just a team; it was a family. For the last three years, he had played great hockey but also had become part of an extended family. He loved the Assassins, minus JT, but he knew he would give it all up for her.
He once tried to do just that too.
After a year apart, when he knew he was settled and was sure he could take care of her if her cancer came back, he tried to contact her, but that went south quickly. Grady, her brother, threatened to kill him, and her dad changed her phone number, but that didn’t derail him. He was about to go to Chicago to see if he could get her back, but what stopped him was when his coach bumped him down to the fourth line, saying he wasn’t performing the way he should. Karson knew it was all crap, that it was Nate Martin warning him to stay away. And like a coward, he again did what Nate Martin wanted and again chose hockey over Lacey.
At that point, he decided he didn’t deserve her and left her alone, even though it didn’t feel right. He was young and stupid though because now, he would give it all up. Everything. Because what is a life without love?
It’s cold. Lonely. Worthless.
Yeah, he didn’t go without a warm body to keep him entertained, but it wasn’t love. It was a quick act of pleasure, and then they were gone. He tried once to date, but that was a disaster. Every girl he dated, he would compare her to Lacey. And since Lacey was on the highest pedestal ever, no one could amount to her. It was sad, and when Kacey, his sister, joked once that he was never going to get married, he knew she was right. Not unless it was to Lacey.
Which would never happen.
“Karson? You there?”
Karson looked up from where he was staring at the white plate in front of him to meet Phillip’s annoyed gaze. “Sorry, what?”
“The waitress would like to know what you would like?”
Lacey. He’d love to have the chance to love her again.
“A shot of tequila and a beer, please.”
“Whoa, killer, we have a game tomorrow afternoon,” Erik reminded him and Karson nodded.
“Two drinks won’t kill me,” he answered as he leaned back in his chair, his mind flooded with thoughts of Lacey.
It was as if a movie of their whole relationship, their breakup, everything was playing in his head. It was like he was standing there, reliving it, remembering the first time his eyes set on her, sitting up in the stands watching him practice. Or when she would study, drinking a mocha coffee and getting so lost in her books. The first time she showed him her scarred, deflated breasts from the cancer, and all he could do was think how strong and beautiful she was. Making sweet love to her for the first time and then asking her to follow him wherever he went. And then finally, when she broke down in front of him as he told her he couldn’t be with her anymore. He was a liar. A coward. He didn’t deserve her back then, but man, he wished he could do it all over again. He wished he could kiss her lips again, feel the softness and taste the sweetness of them. Feel her in his arms as they molded into one. He just wished he had another chance. Just one. He wouldn’t fuck up a second time.
Maybe he should seek her out, but as soon as that thought came to mind, his chest seized as his breath came out in a whoosh.
Man, he hated this city.
It fucked with him to the fullest.
“I think we lost him again,” Erik said as Karson looked up at the ceiling, pulling in a deep breath.
“Yeah, he’s gone. Idiot,” JT muttered.
The sooner he could get out of this city, the better.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”
Lacey Martin glanced back at her longtime best friend and sister-in-law, Rachel, and shook her head.
“I told you, if you don’t like the pictures, we can nix the idea, but at least let’s try. It will be good for the business.”
Lacey’s brows shot up. “Who thinks that? Because I don’t see how posing in my own lingerie is going to drive sales.”
Rachel set her with a look while the models that Rachel had hired, Carey, Winnie, and Amy, smiled tentatively. Lacey didn’t mind them; she thought they were sweet, but they agreed with Rachel on the photo shoot idea, and she didn’t like that. Not when she was doing everything in her power to nix it. Yes, she understood that it was good marketing to be in magazines, blogs, and all over Pinterest, but couldn’t they hire actual models for this? Why in the world did she and Rachel have to be a part of this?
“Your dad and Grady think it’s a wonderful idea,” she said, but Lacey didn’t believe that at all.
“My father and brother think it would be a good idea for their daughter slash sister and daughter-in-law slash wife to pose in lace solely to get sales?”
She shrugged. “Maybe I left that part out.”
Lacey laughed. “So when the pictures come out and I’m not in a pantsuit, we could have problems from the Martin men?”
“Who cares? This is your company—we do what we want,” Rachel announced and Lacey’s brows shot up again.
“Are you going to say that when we get bitched at?”
“Yes, I am. We look gorgeous, and we are going
to rock this photo shoot.”
Lacey could tell Rachel tried to say that with enough conviction to convince her, but it didn’t work. Shaking her head, she glanced at herself in the mirror and grimaced.
“You can see all of my tattoos through this one. We should have gone with the black lace,” she moaned as her shoulders fell.
“You love your tattoos,” she stated, shooting a look at Lacey.
This was true, but still. “I don’t want them showing, though.”
“They are supposed to. I wanted to show as much as I could of each kind of woman. We have the double mastectomy breasts, Carey; the young breasts, Amy; the plus-size breasts, Winnie; the mother breasts, me; and then the reconstructed breasts, you. It’s every stage we offer. It’s our brand.”
For some reason, it annoyed Lacey that Rachel said reconstructed breasts. She didn’t understand why she did that. Why not call them what they are? “You mean fake boobs.”
“Reconstructed,” Rachel reiterated.
“Fake.”
Rachel’s eyes darkened. “Why are you being a bitch today? You were on board with this last week.”
She had been and was even excited about doing the shoot, but then she opened the morning paper today and saw who was playing the Blackhawks tomorrow. Within seconds, Lacey knew that her day and weekend were going to suck. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to go home and hide, something she had been doing for the last nine years to make sure there was no way she would see him, but there wasn’t a chance of that happening today. Not when they had the photo shoot and her brother’s birthday.
Placing her hands on her lace-covered hips, Lacey said, “That was before you put me in a stark-white lace bra and undies and told me to smile. You can see everything through this lace.”
Matching Lacey’s stance, Rachel glared. “That’s the point of our lingerie, but Phil is going to Photoshop our naughty bits out.”
“I don’t have naughty bits. I have tattoos and that’s it. Oh wait, I have a vagina. I don’t know if I feel comfortable with this,” she snapped.
She knew that she was being a bitch, even that she was being completely out of line since she did love this idea, but she was on edge and didn’t know how to bottle up the emotions that were coursing through her. Rachel looked at her for a second and then came toward her, pulling her away from the group of women and the photographer and into the bathroom.
Shutting the door, she placed her hands on her hips and asked, “What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing,” she lied, looking away as she fidgeted with the bandage on her arm from this morning's bloodwork at her annual checkup.
“Don’t lie to me. I have been your best friend for ten years, Lacey. I know when you are lying. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Letting out a breath, she didn’t lie this time, but still only said part of the truth. “I just don’t feel sexy.”
Rachel’s eyes softened as she took ahold of Lacey’s hand. “How? You are gorgeous, Lacey. Look,” she said, turning her to the mirror.
Lacey looked at her reflection and again grimaced at what she saw. Yeah, she thought she was pretty. She had round, pale green eyes, framed by dark lashes, that were done up with dramatic, smoky black eye shadow, making her green eyes brighter. Her long blond hair that usually curled only at the ends was in big, full curls and pinned back at the top. She even thought her nose and dark red lips were cute, but as soon as her eyes drifted down to where her fake breasts were, she fought back the tears.
After finding out that her breast cancer was very aggressive at the age of seventeen, she was soon in surgery getting a double mastectomy. She was scared out of her mind, and doing it without her mom made everything ten times worse. Her mom had lost her battle with breast cancer when Lacey was seven; that’s why they opted for the double mastectomy so early. They wanted to save Lacey, and she understood that, but that hadn’t mean she wasn’t terrified. Her father was very adamant about it, saying he couldn’t lose her too, and she didn’t want to die, so she did what was suggested.
She knew she wanted to get the fake breasts after the surgery, but when her father informed her that they didn’t have the money for them, her confidence was broken. Hell, all of her was broken. She wasn’t Lacey anymore; she didn’t even know herself. She spent most of her time hiding and completely shut off from everyone, especially her brother and father. She was mad that her mother wasn’t there, that she had to lose her breasts to cancer, and that no one understood how it felt not to have all the pieces that all the girls in school had. She felt like the world was over for her.
When she graduated from high school though, she decided that she couldn’t dwell on not having her boobs. She was alive, she had another chance at life, and she was wasting it by crying over not having boobs. It was such a self-centered thing to do. Her mother wouldn’t want her to do this, and she was disgusted with herself. She then decided that it was time to start over, to be Lacey again. So that’s what she did. She went to college, she lived life to the fullest, and even though she went through the greatest heartbreak of her life, she trudged on and didn’t regret anything.
That was until she got involved with Ethan Stanford.
She should have known from the beginning that Ethan was going to be a problem. She met him at the grand opening of Lacey’s Lace. He was her age, twenty-three, played hockey for the Blackhawks, and at the time was good friends with Grady. He was handsome and charming and somehow pinned her down for a date, something that no one had been able to do in years. She blamed it on the Merlot, but he said it was because they were made for each other. She wasn’t sure about that, but everyone thought he was perfect for Lacey, so she figured she’d give it a try. She went on the first date, and to her surprise, it was great; Ethan was amazing and treated her the way she deserved to be treated. It had been so long since someone had romanced her, and she liked the way he made her feel.
Like she was special.
Her father loved him, Grady was happy, but something didn’t seem right. She wasn’t one hundred percent committed to him, and she knew it was because her heart still belonged to someone else. She didn’t want him to have her heart, though. He left her. He didn’t want her, so why was she still all caught up on him? He probably didn’t even give her a second thought, so she made herself fall for Ethan, which was the biggest mistake of her life.
Especially when she slept with him for the first time.
Ethan was horrified when she took her shirt and bra off. He didn’t tell her that he was repulsed, but she could see it on his face, and she was beyond embarrassed. She felt like she did when she was younger; she felt disgusting. He apologized, said the scars surprised him, and for some dumbass reason, she believed him. When he suggested that she get breast implants, she agreed because she knew that was the only way she was going to be able to keep him.
She needed to keep Ethan.
She had to forget him.
She had to move on.
So she had the surgery, and she actually felt pretty, or so she told herself. She actually convinced herself that she was in love with him, and when Ethan proposed, she said yes. Her dad and brother were ecstatic, overjoyed that she was “happy” again. They planned on a wedding in the summer since Chicago was so beautiful around that time, and she had always wanted to be a June bride. Her mother had been a June bride; it was meant to be, or at least that’s what she told herself. She had to tell herself a lot of things back then, not only that she loved Ethan, but that she loved the idea of living in the suburbs, that she loved going to the country club for lunch with his parents, or that she loved being prim and proper at every moment because he liked her to look good all the time. That she loved the way she looked with fake, weird looking nipples, and that she loved being a C cup instead of the B she was when she was younger. It was her life, a life she needed instead of being locked away, crying over someone who didn’t want her. It was what she was meant to do; all she needed was Ethan…that was unti
l she found him having sex with the cashier in the bathroom of Lacey’s Lace the week before their wedding.
Oh, the betrayal.
The sad thing was, she didn’t even cry from the betrayal.
That’s how she knew she didn’t love him, that she had been lying to herself for two years. It was despicable and one of her biggest regrets, but what she hated the most was that she’d allowed him to have so much control over her. She should have told him to shove it up his ass when he didn’t like her breasts. She had accepted them—she loved herself—but she had allowed him to make her feel differently about herself. Wanting to get back her love for herself, she did the only logical thing—went and covered her breasts with tattoos, trying to hide what she’d allowed Ethan to do to her.
Through the white lace, it was easy to see the black and white lotus flowers that decorated her breasts in such an elegant, soft way. In the middle of her right breast was a bright pink breast-cancer ribbon with the words, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger,” curving under her left breast. She loved her tattoos, she even liked having fake boobs, but she hated why she had them. She thought if she had done them herself, for her, it would have been different, but since she’d done them for Ethan, they were ruined. He wouldn’t even let her pay for them; they were his gift to her.
Another reason she hated them.
Meeting Rachel’s gaze in the mirror, Lacey felt like an asshole. It wasn’t Rachel’s fault. She was trying to help the business, and Lacey was allowing the fact that she was basically putting Ethan’s wishes on display and that he was possibly in town to sour her mood. This was going to be great for business. It was going to show women that, no matter what, they could look sexy in Lacey’s Lace.
“I’m sorry, Rachel. Every time I look at myself, I see Ethan.”
Shaking her head, Rachel said, “You have to stop that. It’s been three years. You can’t let him have this hold over you. You covered his wishes with your own. This is your body, and you have to love it, Lacey.”