LEONA MONTGOMERY
I decide to take a nap so I will chill out. I hate when I get like this, and I hate even more that I can't control it.
I lay down on my side and pass out a few minutes later.
When I wake up it's almost five. Damn. I can sleep a lot.
I have a bunch of notifications from Garrett. I'll probably just not hang out with him so I can get my emotions in check.
Usually, I'm only out of wack for a day or two, so that's easy enough to lie about not being able to hang out.
"Hey," He answers as I accept his call. If I avoid him from calls and texts too, he will be suspicious and might come to check on me.
"What's up?" I ask. I probably have some attitude in my voice but I can't help it. I'm just so frustrated right now and I don't know how to fix it.
"A few of the guys and their wives are going out for dinner. Do you want to come?" He questions and I cover my mouth and let out a silent whimper as tears come to my eyes. "I can't. I have to do something, maybe next time," I tell him.
I can't be too specific because if I said with Kayla, he would know that's not true. After all, I'm sure that she and Austin will be there with him.
We hang up a few minutes later and I just stuff my head into my pillow.
I was mad at Garrett that he asked me that. I don't even have a logical reason for this.
It just frustrates me that I'm being snappy with him even though he did nothing wrong. I let out a sigh and just let some of the tears fall.
After crying for a bit I get up and check my blood sugar. I need to call my insurance company and see about just getting my stuff through them instead of my primary care doctor.
Pulling my phone off of the charger I find the number and call. This is going to be a nightmare.
"Name, address, and phone number," The automated voice asks when I answer the phone.
"Leona Jade Montgomery," I start, and tell them the rest of my information. After a few minutes of quite literally talking to robots, I finally get a person.
"My Dexcom and omnipod stopped working and I need my old ones replaced," I tell the woman.
I would have had to call my insurance company anyway because I had a ton of old ones that got ruined anyway.
"What type do you use?" She questions and I resist the urge to hang up when I hear her chewing gum very loudly. "Dexcom G6," I reply.
I've been using that one for most of my life because it simply just works for me.
Sometimes when diabetics are looking for something to use it takes a few tries. I got lucky and it worked well with me on the first try, not that I remember.
Some just don't get accurate counts on you, but they do on other people. I shake my head and keep answering all of the questions that she's asking me about myself, my insurance, and my diabetes.
Eventually, I find out that I'm able to get them all replaced and get my new ones.
I only need to get different ones for the first time, after that, I can do what I always do and get my prescription filled at the pharmacy. Then, I just have to pick everything up once in a while.
I put on some slippers and head downstairs to the kitchen.
Once I put up the heat a few degrees, I grab some stuff to make a salad. I'm just throwing it together with what I have.
After everything is out I fry a few pieces of chicken up and cut up some vegetables and avocados.
I combine everything I want in a big salad bowl and then add a bit of dressing that I made to the top of it.
As usual, I make myself a tea to go with it.
Once everything is made I sit down at my island and start to eat.
I hear a knock on the door and furrow my eyebrows. Only three people would bother to come to see me and I can't see any of them coming.
Garrett is busy out with some of his teammates, so he wouldn't be here.
Kayla is at the same place that Garrett is, so she wouldn't be here.
My dad isn't here because there is still some drama going on between us.
I go to my front window and slowly move the curtain so I can see who's there.
I see a group of people there. There is no reason for them to be here right now. I don't even know who they are.
After a minute of glancing out the window, I realize that my address must have got leaked again. Great.
I crack my door open a bit and see that most of them are older teenagers. "LEONA!" One of them yells out.
That specific one looked like she was at least sixteen. Honestly, who raises these kids? It's common decency that you don't go to someone's house like a creep just because you look up to them.
"You guys can't be here. You all need to leave." I say, trying to be nice.
I'll give them a chance, but if they don't leave after that then I'll do something else.
Being popular doesn't mean that you should have your privacy invaded like this.
I'm not some celebrity or Instagram influencer who decided to live like this. I was forced to be in the world of figure skating from a young age.
I wouldn't have chosen to have people showing up at my house and be able to get away with it because they use the excuse they thought it would be okay.
Nobody moves and I let out an angry sigh. "All of you need to get the fuck off of my property before the cops get involved," I say and almost slam my door.
I lock it and make sure everything that leads to my house is locked. Once I'm sure I am okay I go upstairs to my room and sit on my bed.
Shaking my head I stand up and pace around my room, watching everyone not leave. I take a picture of the teenagers just roaming around my front yard.
I decide to call the non-emergency 9-1-1 number. It's annoying, but not an emergency.
"How can I help you?" A male voice questions me as soon as he picked up the call.
"Um- hi. My name is Leona Montgomery and I have a popular social media. I think my address got leaked and there are a ton of teenagers roaming around my front yard. I asked them to leave once and then told them that I would get the cops involved but they were not leaving. Is there anything you can do?" I question the call operator.
"We can dispatch an officer who will get everyone cleared out. More likely than not, unfortunately, nothing will happen to them but they will be gone. Did you want to stay on the line until an officer gets there?" He questions me. "No, I'm good."
It's not that big of a deal, and I know I'm safe but I hate stuff like this.
I open the safari app right away to check something out.
www.google.com/leonamontgomery
I search up my name to see any new articles.
Olympic figure skater Leona Montgomery's address leaked.
The Olympic gold champion was spotted leaving her home by a fan, who posted on his social media address.
The post has been demonetized by Instagram and removed.
I stop reading after a few sentences. People suck.
It doesn't take as long as I thought it would for a cop car to show up in front of my house. As soon as the people crowding my front lawn saw the lights on top of the car they started to scram.
If you are scared to get caught, doing what you are doing, then you probably shouldn't be doing it.
I shake my head as a female officer steps out of the driver's seat.
By time she can even talk most of the people are gone. I don't know where they went and I don't particularly care, either.
As long as they don't come back it doesn't matter.
Not only is it weird that someone saw me leave my house, but I seriously need to be more careful.
I leave my house all the time to walk over to Kayla's house. If someone was watching, they could easily pick up on the fact of who Kayla is.
To hockey fans, Kayla is nobody. She is just a random hockey wife.
A lot of figure skating fans also watch hockey and vice versa.
I see the cop walking up to my door and head down there. My salad is going to be soggy by time I'm done with this bullshit.
It probably already is soggy. Ugh, I hate people so much right now.
"Can you step outside for a minute?" The officer questions me. "Uh, sure," I mutter and step out of the door.
"I hate to do this, but a few of the remaining people in the crowd said that you verbally attacked them and wanted to submit a complaint," He says.
I just roll my eyes. "I asked them to leave nicely. They didn't leave so I told them to leave again. Not going to lie, the second time it definitely wasn't nice. I said fuck but that's it." I say.
That's not really a big deal. "Great. Do we have proof of that?" He questions me as he removes his arms from behind his back.
"Proof of what? I have proof of a bunch of people coming onto my property and not leaving." I snarkily reply. I have cameras, but no sound on the front door one.
Isn't stalking illegal? Or trespassing? Honestly, I shouldn't have to prove that I didn't do something.
Also, I'm pretty sure that yelling at some teenagers is worse than those said teenagers refusing to leave.
I was looking into moving, but now I might have to.
Even though the original post is gone, my address is going to keep being spread for a while.
I don't have to stay too close, but I would like to stay because it's easier having Kayla right here.
I could move closer to Garrett's direction and live somewhere in between the two.
There might not be any reason to move. Sometimes, I tend to get ahead of myself. I shake my head at myself as the officer starts to talk again.
"Miss, someone complained. I need proof of what happened." The officer says and I resist the urge to roll my eyes. People are so annoying.
The other officer, the female one walked up to us at this point. She asks to be caught up, and the male officer does.
"Can we see the footage off of that camera? Just to make sure of what you are saying is true?" The female officer calmly asks, pointing at the camera pointing down.
"Well this one doesn't have sound," I say. They can see it, I don't really care. But, it's not going to prove anything.
The officers stay there while I run inside really quickly so that I can grab my laptop.
I sigh into my account to view my cameras and go back a few minutes so they can see me opening the door.
Obviously, you can't hear what I say, but you can see me say something relatively calmly, and then get a little mad.
I had a right to be mad, though.
It's a total invasion of privacy, and not to mention illegal. I turn the laptop towards the two officers and let them watch it. The female one nods her head.
"You are good. Nothing would have happened anyway, because they were illegally on your property. Have a nice day," She tells me and they walk off.
Well, this is certainly not a good way to help my anger.
GARRETT HALE
I look down at my phone and see the lack of communication from Leona today. She doesn't send a ton of texts all the time, but she'll usually check-in.
Once I'm done with a bunch of the guys on the team, I head home. I'm not sure what Leona had to do tonight, but it doesn't matter.
It sucks that she couldn't come, but she has her own life that she controls.
I want to take her somewhere so I can tell her I love her. I realized that I love her not too long ago and I have been dying to tell her.
Right now, I'm waiting a few days. Something is off with her and I'm a little bit worried.
I decide to FaceTime her. Since it's later, she should be home from wherever she was.
"What's up?" She asks as soon as she answers the phone. I can tell that she's in the bathroom by the background.
Usually, she will say hey, or hello, as soon as she answers the phone but for some reason, she didn't this time.
I shake my head and tell myself to calm down. It's kind of late, and she is probably tired. It's not a big deal if she answers the same way every time.
"Where did you go?" I ask her. "Why? You don't trust me or something?" She asks seeming kind of angry which surprised me.
"I trust you, Leona. I just want to talk to you and hear your voice," I softly respond to her. "Oh. Well, I just went out. I'll talk to you later?" She asks and I nod.
I can tell that she just didn't want to talk right then, which is fine. She doesn't always have to want to talk to me. I'm not going to care if she doesn't want to talk every once in a while.
It wasn't just that, though. It seemed like something bigger was wrong with her.
I decide to just change and head to bed. I strip out of all my clothes except for my boxers and lay down.
I fall asleep, eventually, after thinking about Leona for a while. I tend to do that a lot these days.
I wake up later than usual the following morning. I don't mind, because I have a later practice today. I pull on some sweatpants, not putting on a shirt.
I walk into my kitchen and quickly cook up an onion and broccoli omelet with some bacon on the side.
I check my phone for notifications but don't have any from the person I was looking for.
I get up so that I can head to the gym for a few hours. Being a professional athlete, I don't really have a choice in the matter.
I'm not exactly getting younger, and as much as we work out on the ice and condition, that's not enough.
We have mandatory workouts that we have to do outside the ice rink, but that doesn't really matter to me.
Working out is almost a stress relief. It helps me relax. I start on the treadmill and put my headphones over my ears while starting a quick jog.
I did legs today. It had been almost three hours by time I was completely done with my workout.
Once I left the gym, showered, I picked up some lunch and headed over to my parent's house
It was just some takeout Indian food, but my mom loves it so I thought that it would be a good idea.
I park my car once I pull into their driveway. Immediately, I unlock the door and walk inside.
"My baby is here," My mom pulls me down into a hug as soon as I am within a walking distance from her.
"Hi mom," I smile at her and place the takeout bags onto the dining room table. "Thai?" She questions me, peeking into the bag.
As soon as my dad saw me with the food he went into the kitchen to get two sets of plates, forks, and knives.
"How are you doing?" I question her. She seems well, which is way more than I could possibly ask for. "Good. I'm definitely good. After my surgery everything has been going smoothly and way better than I imagined I would be after they cut a piece of my scalp off," She says.
"That's great. Have Evelyn or the boys come to visit?" I ask her, taking a gulp out of my water.
I always call my brothers boys, even though they aren't too much younger than me, it always felt like it.
"Yeah, all of them have come to visit a few times. Unlike you, young man. You are slacking." She slaps my arm and shakes her head while tsking at me.
"I'm sorry mom. I've been busy with practice, games, and having a girlfriend. You know I love you. I'll come to visit more." I tell her and a huge smile breaks out on her face.
I was never necessarily close with my mom growing up, definitely closer with my dad.
Now I'm closer to my mom. I still love them both though. "You should bring Leona next time," My mom tells me.
I should have figured that it was only a matter of time until she was brought up in conversation.
"If she is willing to come, I'll bring her," I tell my mom and she just nods, looking like she is thinking.
"You love her," She tells me, not even asking. She just knows me. "Yeah."
"I do," I say and she smiles. "Great!" She claps. The three of us just eat our food while making small talk.
After a while of this, there is a knock on the door, which I get up to get. Evelyn has a look of disgust on her face when she sees me open the door.
"Ew. It's you," She says, being her usual overdramatic self. "Ew. It's you," I mock her back and she pushes herself past me and into the kitchen, where her jaw drops at the site of the food laying all over the table.
"What the fuck is this?" Evelyn asks and my mom glares at her from across the table. "Watch your mouth," My mom says and Evelyn rolls her eyes.
I swear, she hasn't changed since she was a teenager. "How's the wedding planning?" My mom asks Evelyn.
She and Leo have been working hard on planning a nice wedding, but haven't been sharing any of the details.
They don't want a huge thing, just a small and quiet wedding. "Good. It's going to be in about a month. We just mailed the invitations today, so be expecting them. Garrett, bring my bestie," Evelyn says.
"I'll bring her," I tell her. There probably aren't going to be a ton of people there, knowing Lynn and Leo.
Leo is definitely the antisocial one between the two of them. While he's not unfriendly, he just doesn't talk a ton.
Evelyn just doesn't like a lot of people, so she won't want a lot of people there.
"Where is it?" My dad questions him as he rinses off his plate and placed it in the dishwasher.
Evelyn takes a plate and dishes up some food onto it.
"It's going to be in Maine, actually." She says which shocks me.
"Before you freak out, I didn't know this. It just kind of happened. I made sure that it likes up with Garrett's schedule. I may or may not have talked to your coach. You have no games and you can miss some practices." She quickly says, probably expecting me to get pissed off.
To be fair, you wouldn't talk to someone else's boss about them getting time off.
Hockey is my job. People can't just do bullshit like that. Not only is it not right, but I already have my coach up my ass for dating his daughter.
He's been being more of a dick to me. "You can't do shot like that," I tell her, harsher than I meant.
She doesn't consider me playing hockey a job. It's known that I make more money than her, which is not the only reason that it's a job but she refuses to understand that this is my life, and without it, I wouldn't have a lot left.
"I did it for you," She complains as she throws her hair up. I love my sister, but more times than not, she is a god damn pain in my ass.
"This is my job, you can't just decide to make me miss it," I say, and then decide to just drop it.
What's done is done. I doubt what I have said meant anything to her, but she's hard-headed.
I pick up my plate and walk over to the sink. Once it's rinsed off I place it in the dishwasher.
She showed us pictures of the venue where the wedding is going to be held, and it is a nice place.
Once I left I decide to grab some flowers and chocolate for Leona and head over to see her.
If there's anything that my dad taught me about dating, it's that you never use flowers or gifts, in general, to make up for when you mess up.
That's why when I hurt Leona like that I didn't get her flowers or anything.
To me, flowers should just be something that are a random thing here or there, not an apology.
I pull up to her house and grab what I need out of my car before walking up to the door. It's dark inside and I don't hear anything so she might not be home.
She opens the door a minute later looking like she just woke up.
"Can I come in?" I ask her and she sleepily nods while rubbing her eyes.
She's wearing a big tee shirt that I recognize as mine with just underwear under it. She also has a white throw blanket wrapped around her.
She's so fucking cute.
She smiles at me as I hand her the flowers and walks into the kitchen where I follow her to.
I see a hole in the hallway wall as we pass it and assume that it was Leona's hand that put it there. Who else could it have been?
I look down at her hands and see the bruises and an open cut on her right hand.
"Why happened?" I ask her as I pick her hand up to look at it. "Nothing. Don't worry about it," She shrugs her hand away from me and walks over to grab a vase for the flowers.
"Why'd you come over?" She questions, almost like she wants me gone.
"You've been off. What's going on?" I softly ask her. I don't know what's wrong, and I don't want her to think I'm judging her for anything right now.
"Nothing," She says with her lips pulled into a frown.
"Maybe you should go. I have to get ready to go out soon," She says and now it's my turn to frown.
I don't want her to think I don't trust her, but I know she lying. I know that she isn't cheating on me or anything, but she is still lying about this for some unknown reason.
"I know that you don't, Leona. What's wrong?" I ask her, a bit more serious this time.
She looks shocked at the sternness in my voice and almost looks a little hurt.
"What? So now you don't trust me?" She practically snarls at me. "Baby," I softly say, grabbing her hands in mine.
"Can I just have some space?" She questions in the same soft tone.
I don't know what's up with her mood changes right now, but it's kind of strange.
I stand up and kneel on the floor in front of her. "I know you aren't okay. I would rather you just tell me what's wrong instead of keeping it inside and trying to distance yourself," I tell her and she rolls her eyes at me.
She just huffs at me.
"Come on," She grumbles and walks up to her room with me following right behind her.
"Lay down," She mumbles and lays on her side. I lay behind her with my arms wrapped around her, keeping her close to me.
"I'm not upset or mad at you," She quietly says. I didn't think that because usually, she is a reasonable person and that I know of, I haven't done anything to make her mad. "What's wrong then, sweetheart?" I question her.
"Sometimes, I just get frustrated by my mood swings. Every once in a while when I'm ovulating, I get mood swings. It's not all the time, it hasn't happened since I met you." She explains.
I've never heard of that happening to anyone, but it sounds like it sucks.
"So why have you been pushing me away?" I softly question her. She doesn't say anything for a minute but just takes a deep breath.
"I don't know. I was just mad. Not necessarily at you, but just in general," She explains and I nod at her.
"Is there anything you can do to help it?" I ask her while playing with some of her hair. "No," She whispers.
I don't really know anything about how to help her, which sucks.
"I know you don't want to talk about this so we can talk about something else. Have you got your device things for your diabetes?" I question her and she huffs again.
"Don't even get me started," She angrily says.