LEONA MONTGOMERY
I should go on vacation soon. Ironic since I'm on a plane as we speak.
I haven't gone away in a long time but I want to. Maybe I'll go out to Alaska for a little while. Yeah, because that makes sense. Leave one cold city and go to another.
I shake my head. I should focus on today first. It's been a while since I have been to a hockey game so I'm pretty excited about this.
We step off the plane and its early morning. I got to sleep for a bunch of hours on the plane so I probably won't sleep again until tonight.
Garrett had asked me to just stay with him in his hotel room, and I agreed. It's not a big deal and we have fallen asleep together on my couch before.
We are up in the hotel room now. He has to be at the arena in a little while for training but I don't have to be there until later, so me and Kayla are going to find something to do while we are here.
"I'll see you at my game, okay?" Garrett asks me and presses a kiss to my forehead.
He hasn't kissed me yet. I don't know why.
I totally haven't googled him, but if I did I'm sure it would say that he's slept around. Ignoring that, the reason for this isn't because I don't trust him, because he seems like such a sweet soul in the time I've been getting to know him. It's that if he has slept around so much why isn't he willing to simply kiss me?
Technically I could kiss him, but I'm way too awkward for that. Whatever, I'll just have to wait for him to kiss me first.
I kiss him on the cheek as he walks out of the room with his bags in his hands.
Kayla and Austin's room is a few doors down ours, so I'll just head over there.
I get dressed in my outfit for the day and grab a purse, putting my phone, keys, and wallet in it.
I walk down to her hotel room door and knock on it. A guy that is definitely not Austin opens the door. "Can I help you?" He looks a bit confused, which is fair and there is an older woman towards the back of the room.
He also looks older, and I recognize him as one of the guys on the team. I'm pretty sure this is Ryder.
At least he knows who I am because of that time I was at the rink for speed skating.
"Sorry, wrong door. Do you know which room Austin and Kayla are in? I'm looking for her and she said this was her room," I tell him.
"Yeah. Kayla is right there." He says and points his hand across the hall to the other door.
"Thanks," I smile in appreciation and walk to her door. "Coming!" She tells me when I knock on it. She opens the door holding a happy-looking Sabrina.
"How old are babies when they start to crawl?" I curiously ask, figuring if anyone knows the answer to this it would be her.
"It depends. It can be anywhere from six months to when they are a year old." She tells me and I nod.
I know I'm not a baby person, and that kids pop out knowing absolutely nothing but I feel like they should be able to crawl sooner than that.
She lays the baby down in the middle of the huge bed and stretches her arms.
"What should we do for a few hours?" She questions. I've been to Ontario before, but not in many years. That makes me feel old. "I'm dying for some frozen yogurt. We should find a place." I say and her face practically brightens up at that.
"Yes! Plus she can have a little," She points a thumb at Sabrina. "Let me just get her settled into her stroller then we can hit the road," I don't reply, just look at her setting Sabrina into the car seat and attaching it to the stroller.
I get back to thinking for a few minutes. Although I've been starting to like Garrett and told him something I haven't told anyone in years, I can't help but feel like we haven't truly connected.
I feel this way, but at the same time, I have never been this serious with someone before.
I doubt he would tell me all of that about his family if he didn't think we were serious.
Kayla finished strapping up the baby and made sure she was warm. "She looks like a mushroom," I say without thinking. I slap a hand over my mouth. I seriously need to start thinking before I speak.
Kayla doubles over in laughter and takes out her phone. Once she is finished cackling she snaps a picture of Sabrina and puts a mushroom emoji next to her head and sends it to Austin.
"How did you and him meet anyway?" I curiously question her. She blushes at this, so I'm going to assume it wasn't an innocent meeting.
"Well, you see, funny story," She starts. "Chill. You don't have to tell me if you'd not want to, it was just a question," I assure her.
"No, it's just funny. I was at a bar with some of my friends at the time. One of them was what a guy would consider a puck bunny. Anyways, the team went to that bar after the game and my friend decided Austin was the one she wanted to hook up with. Like most of the players that age, he did hook up with her." She starts. This doesn't seem so bad so far.
"They came back from hooking up and Austin came over to me and tried to hook up with me. Needless to say, I was not having it. Anyways, we always were at that bar and would always try to hook up with me. This made that particular friend mad and one day she did some stuff. I don't know what her intentions were but she drugged me. He found out and got a few of the guys on the team to come to threaten her." She laughs at that part.
That's the funny part? That's psychopathic, not funny. Dark humor at its finest I suppose.
"He asked me out on a date and I said no. Anyways, after a lot of begging we went out and then, BAM, here we are," She says with a huge smile on her face.
"Cute," I say with a small smile. We walk out of the hotel room and into the elevator.
Frozen yogurt near me, I search on google. One that is almost around the corner comes up so I show it to Kayla and we decide to just walk there.
"Hello there," A smirking teenage boy greets us as we walk into the building. He doesn't work here but is here eating some yogurt with his friends.
"I'm married, with a baby. She is dating a six-and-a-half-foot man, you look like your thirteen. Is that enough reason for you to stop talking to us?" Kayla questions the kid.
I just look at her. I'm not dating Garrett and he is not six and a half feet tall. Well, he might be...
No, he's not. He just seems taller because I'm short. "Whatever." The teenager grumbles and goes back to his yogurt.
It's self-serve, and then you weigh it and pay for it. I get some strawberry cheesecake yogurt and put a bunch of strawberries on the top. Kayla got salty caramel and put some caramel drizzle on it. She only put it on a small section of it because she's feeding the other half to the baby.
We sit down at a table after I pay for it. It was only a few dollars so there's no point in doing two different transactions.
"What else to do? We have about three hours until we have to be at the arena." Kayla says looking down at her watch.
"Just shop around I guess," I shrug. There are a ton of good places to shop, it, unfortunately, I can't buy too much because I don't have a lot of room in my suitcase.
"I mean, if you insist," She sarcastically says. We walk down the road and decide to get coffee first.
Well, she gets coffee. I get tea. "What is this?" I ask as we walk into Tim Hortons. "It's basically the Dunkin' Donuts of Canada," Kayla tells me as we walk through the doors.
Based on the inside it does look like that. They didn't have any tea that sounded good, so I just got a frozen hot chocolate.
"Let's buy lingerie," Kayla says with an evil smirk on her face. "Sure," I shrug as we walk in. "Technically I don't need anymore. But I have Austin's card and he won't fuck me so I'm going to torture him." She rubs her hands together, evilly, and smirks.
"You do that," I say, looking for a white piece. I'm bored and I have a feeling Kayla won't let me leave this building unless I buy some, so here we are.
I grab a white lacy piece in my size and head up to the cashier. If I check out now, I won't be tempted to buy anything else while I wait for Kayla.
I walk over to a bench by the door and sit on the edge of it. I gently rub the back of my thigh.
Whenever I walk it tightens and hurts a bit. I know it just has to heal, and there's not much I can do about it.
I grab some ibuprofen from my purse and pop three in my mouth and take a sip of my drink, swallowing them.
I watch as Kayla picks up a red piece and walks over to the cashier, checking out. "I can't wait for tonight," She happily sings as she walks towards me.
"Try not to be too loud." I joke. "I wish I had to worry about that. Austin is not going to give me what I want anyway," She complains with a childish pout.
"How dare he care about your well-being?" I sarcastically question.
"I know right! It's horrible," She crosses her arms over her chest. "Naomi," She scowls under her breath.
"Who?" I look over to her and raise an eyebrow. "You know my friend who slept with Austin before he asked me out?" She questions and I nod. We just talked about that.
"That's the little bitch, oh shit I mean that's the girl," She points her out to me.
"She lives in Ontario?" I curiously ask. "Honey. I wish she did," She says with a scowl. "Yeah, baby, that is someone we don't ever want to talk to," She coos to Sabrina.
"Oh shit," I mutter, seeing Naomi walking over here. "That's right hoe, come'ere," Kayla quietly says. Once Naomi gets close enough Kayla shoots her a fake smile. "Funny seeing you here," Naomi says and tries to hug Kayla, but she puts her hands up.
"Yeah. Where my husband is. Absolutely crazy," Kayla sarcastically speaks. "Sorry, I figured he moved on my now," Naomi snickers.
How is she not embarrassed? Like honestly. He slept with you once and moved on to your best friend and you talk to her like that.
"Had his kid and everything." Kayla continues to annoy Naomi. "Are you sure? He looks an awful lot like Matthew." Naomi keeps talking.
Kayla slaps Naomi across the face so hard I thought I felt it. Kayla starts to walk away with tears in her eyes so I catch up to her.
I put an arm over her shoulder and try to comfort her. "That girl is going to ruin my bad girl reputation," She grumbles, blinking a few times.
"I'm sure it will be fine," I fake console her. I'm not going to ask what that was about, because clearly, she doesn't want to talk about it.
Since I took the ibuprofen, the leg pain went away.
We shopped for a while and ate a lot of food. Eventually, it was time to head to the arena, so that's what we did.
This one took a long time to get into. At my dad's arena, you just have to scan your ticket to get in.
A security guy searched our bags and then scanned our tickets to let us in. We had to do the exact same thing to go into our box up top.
"Damn, these are nicer than at home," I say. I've never been in one at this rink before.
"Yeah, these are probably the nicest ones. Usually, I would just sit in a seat that I have reserved because of Austin but the baby is too little." She says. It would not be a good idea to have a baby down there.
I pull an electrolyte drink out of my purse. I feel like my sugar is dropping a bit so I drink some of that and eat some sugar.
"Can I have a KitKat?" Kayla questions me. I hand her a normal-sized bar and she looks like a crazed animal about to pounce it.
I eat a few bars and I feel better really fast. "Shit, is your sugar Low?" She urgently questioned a few minutes later. "No, it was but it should be good now," I tell her and she looks almost guilty.
For what? Honestly, who knows.
"I should have known that because of Austin. Sorry," She apologizes and I furrow my eyebrows. I don't even know what she is apologizing for.
Even if she did know that it was because I was low, she can't do anything anyway. It's my blood sugar.
We both stand up when they start to play the national anthem. After that was over they finished the ice and the players came out shortly after.
It's easy to watch both Garrett for me and Austin for Kayla since they are both on the first line.
At the end of the first period, the score was. 1-0, Canada. I'm sure that they will be able to catch up.
They haven't lost a game in forever. I'm not even sure when the last time they lost was. "Did Garrett tell you about that thing with your dad?" Kala questions and I shake my head in confusion.
"No. I don't think so," I say. I forget a lot of stuff, so he might have. "What was it?" I question, now curious.
"Your dad is an asshole, just saying," She tells me and I laugh. That he is.
"He truly is. What did he do?" I question, wanting to know. "You know Alejandro, the asshole?" She asks and I nod. Hate him more than I hate most people.
"Well, he leaked that I was pregnant. It's not that big of a deal because they would have found out after I gave birth. Anyway," She sighs.
That's honestly messed up. Yeah, sure, Alejandro is an asshole but that's low. People are crazy and by not letting it out that she was pregnant Austin was keeping Kayla and Sabrina safe.
"You only taught them for a little bit, but I don't know if you noticed how your dad favors Garrett over everyone and doesn't like Austin anywhere near as much." I haven't noticed this, but I can see my dad doing this with players, and playing favorites.
"I didn't know that, but I can see that." I say and she continues with, "Austin found this out after a game and was pissed. Coach basically said that it was fine. Garrett tried to help out Austin but it wasn't working. Your dad just let it go. Austin was just pissed because they shouldn't have a right to leak other people's personal information." She finishes.
"That's messed up. If Alejandro was mad and it's not like he just leaked something like where Austin was going to be at a certain time. That's a big deal," I say.
"Yup. Anyways. That's the story about another reason I don't like your dad," She says with a laugh.
Don't worry, I don't like him very much either.
A few minutes pass of us just giggling and talking until Garrett and Austin walk up to the box.
"Girls I brought you something," Austin says and I love my eyes to look at him. "What?" Kayla walks over to him and asks.
"Chocolate-covered strawberries," He places them on the table. There are a ton of them for some reason.
"I stole them from the player's room," He says while sending a smile to Kayla. He looks like this is the greatest achievement that he has ever made.
I look at Garrett and he shoots me a smile and rolls his eyes at Austin.
"Hi," I whisper when I get closer to him. "You've been playing good," I say. They haven't scored yet, but he has been playing well.
"Not really, but we will score next period." He says and I nod. "I didn't know that you guys were allowed to do whatever in between periods. I thought you would have to stay down there," I tell him.
"Nah. We can do whatever as long as we get back." He tells me and I nod with a smile.
"Want to go for a walk for a few while those two make out," He asks and I quickly nod.
"Please," I desperately say. Kayla had walked up to Austin and practically shoved her tongue down his mouth. Maybe I should do that to Garrett. That would get us to have our first kiss. No, bad Leona don't think like that.
We walk out of the box and head down a hallway. I'm kind of just blindly following Garrett, so let's hope he doesn't plan on killing me yet.
"This is odd," I say as we walk into a strange room. It's a huge room, probably almost as big as a full rink.
In it, there are a ton of smaller patches of ice. "It's a practice room." He tells me. I've seen patches of ice like this that people have built, but not in a big shot arena like this one.
"It's just for individual practicing. Not a lot of rinks have it because it's not very practical," He further explains. That makes sense considering how much of a team sport hockey is.
He takes his guards off of his skates and slides onto one. If he pushes off of one foot he could probably just glide to the other part. That's how small it is.
"How long do you have?" I question, knowing that he's been out of the rink for a while. "I should head back in a few minutes," He shrugs and steps off the small ice.
We walk to the player's room, which I would be allowed in any way because of my dad, but since Garrett brought me in I'm fine.
He looks at his watch and rolls his eyes. He puts a bunch of fruit on the plate. I just look at him. "Austin asked me to bring some up for Kayla," He tells me.
"Okay," I shrug as we walk out and head back up to the box. When we get back they aren't making out anymore, just sitting on the couch.
"We need to head back, here's your fruit," Garrett hands the plate to Kayla. He kisses my forehead, shocker, and walks out with Austin.
I look out of the box down to the rink and see the players all skating back out. The second period goes pretty smoothly until one of the Canada guys body checks Alejandro into the glass.
"How sad," I sarcastically say. Of course, I wouldn't say that if it was hard, but he was fine. "They should've done it harder," Kayla grumbles and I laugh.
She stuffs a strawberry into her mouth and sits down on a chair by the window. "What the fuck?" She rhetorically asks.
"What?" I lean over to look down and see what she's talking about. "Do you know who that is?" She jams a finger into the glass. "Um, no, there's like a thousand people right there," I shake my head at her.
"That's Thomas Blaken. NFL player. Total hottie." She sighs. I look at her and she raises an eyebrow at me. "What? I literally have a kid, trust me I'm not like that," She says. I've never heard of this dude before but he is kind of hot.
"Yes! Your hubby just scored!" She shouts. Informing the fact that she just called him my hubby, I smile at his goal.
"That was beautiful," I make a chef's kiss motion at his kiss. "So. Time for some girl talk. Let's eat strawberries and talk," She says and I sit down on one of the couches and she sits down on the opposite one.
There is the plate of strawberries on a coffee table in between us with both of our drinks on it.
I take a bite out of a strawberry and wait for her. "You should teach me how to do some figure skating stuff when we get back to New York," She tells me and I shrug. That seems easy enough. This isn't the type of girl talk I thought she meant.
"Do you know how to skate?" I wonder out loud. I'm sure she does, and even if she didn't Austin probably taught her.
"Yeah, when we started going out Austin taught me," I know everything. "Great. I'll teach you some stuff," I excitedly say.
"Should I get a job teaching kids how to skate?" I ask her and she gives me a look. To be fair we were talking and I said I wasn't going to get a job, a least not yet.
What can I say? I'm indecisive.
"If you want to. You love figure skating. Wait- you don't even like kids," She says. To be fair, I kind of forgot about that.
"Teenagers, maybe. They aren't kids and they aren't learning the basics anymore," I say. That definitely seems a lot more like something I would do.
"That you could do. If you want to, then do it. You don't need to though." She shrugs. Wait, I wonder why she doesn't have a job.
"You don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but how come you don't have a job?" I question her.
"I did until I was five-ish months pregnant. I decided to stop then. I technically don't work there anymore because I left instead of just taking maternity leave. Austin didn't care if I worked or not before then, but I don't really feel comfortable having to leave my baby with a nanny or something to work. Plus, now Sabrina and I will just go with him to all his away games," She explains and I nod.
It's not like NHL players are not paid well, quite the opposite, actually. It's hard for people married to professional athletes to be away all the time.
"What was your job?"
"You are going to love this," She stops to laugh. "I was a kindergarten teacher," She tells me.
I don't know why, but I can't see her doing that. Sabrina wakes up from her nap so Kayla walks over to her.
I let out a sigh and see that the second period is ending. They only have scored the one goal that Garrett got, so it's 1-1.
Austin and Garrett don't come up during halftime, because they have a break and then a few things to do with fans.