Page 71 of Playing Her Game

I close my eyes and sigh. She knows about Rez. How could she not? His video from that night outside the hospital was still trending. Thankfully, I am an old hat at hiding my face from the camera, so I’m still that woman.

She has decided I was not only throwing my future away, but it was apparent I was not well mentally. Not once has she asked about my physical health, not once…

She didn’t ask if I was happy. Didn’t care what happened or what I wanted now. Just went straight to the plan—the one that existed long before him.

Lenzin fell for Hildy. So now I’m a problem.

That’s how she put it. Not that things changed. Not that two people found lives they actually wanted. A problem. A future derailed by feeling. She said security matters more than what we want. As if love is optional, but a good contract is forever.

I haven’t told her about the children growing inside of her, ones who will be so loved, because that wouldn’t bother her one bit.

She called me irresponsible, and it hurt, but I swore to wear it like a badge of honor when I saw her.

I opened my eyes as the plane pushes back from the gate, the terminal sliding past the window. Anger has cooled now and left something heavier, determination.

The plane turns toward the runway. Buildings fall away; the wing trembles as engines power up. My stomach lifts with acceleration—for one second there’s only thrust, pressing me back into the seat.

Then Rez comes back.

Six days didn’t give me a plan or a promise, but they showed me what it feels like to want someone without justifying it first or trying to figure out how it benefits my entire lineage. To share a bed because I want him there—not because it works for the deal. To talk futures that might not match and still want to talk anyway. To be wanted without being part of a plan.

I didn’t expect that, I didn’t plan it. I expected attraction. Sex. An escape. I knew how to handle that—how to enjoy without rearranging my life.

But Rez didn’t stay in the lines.

It was the ordinary things as much as the physical ones. How he listened. How conversations wandered somewhere real. The ease between us when neither was trying to put on a show.

And now, as we lifts off the ground, as I am leaving, the place deemed the Windy City, but never have I ever felt so warm.

I know better than to romanticize this. I had a teenage whirlwind once. I remember how new sex made everything else seem small. Believing the feelings in one moment would be enough.

Then real life came.

Responsibility reshaped everything. The consequences of sex got real. I learned how little control I had over my own body or over the future imagined for it.

I lost the baby and learned carrying a child might never be simple for me; even if I want children someday, wanting might not be enough.

I won’t pretend that didn’t change me. It taught me desire and consequences live in the same breath, and that I had to make responsible choices to protect myself and my body and my mind. I can’t assume this … fucking feeling, this pain in my chest, lasts just because I feel it now. In fact, I know it doesn’t.

Matthais and Rez are two completely different people.

Rez is a hockey player with a career ahead of him. His life is demanding, public, shaped by obligations I barely understand. Mine waits across an ocean with its own expectations. Attraction won’t erase that. Six days is just a blink in a lifetime.

No, I won’t let my mother’s anger define what those six days meant, and I will continue gaining strength from the worn memories of that little girl, heartbroken and bleeding

Deep down, I can admit this might end without calling it a mistake. That I will hope Rez keeps his promise and still prepare for the chance he won’t. If he doesn’t, it will hurt, but I will survive.

Settling back, I watch the clouds pass by the window.

Ilook away from the flight attendant at the sound of a soft tap against the divider.

As I lower it, the young woman giggles, “I was in the ladies when you stopped, and I need a drink, stat.”

When her face comes into view, we both drop our jaws.

Bernie, a woman I met at Lenzin and Hildy’s, appears. “You weren’t really going to drink your way across the Atlantic alone, were you?”

“Oh, thank God,” I say. “A distraction.”