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don’t have a softer side,” he said, thinking of that fight last week. With both hands he’d thrown away the last year of his career, because he’d been mad. Because he’d felt insulted.
    “What are you doing right now?” Victor asked.
    “Helping paint Luc Baker’s house. Tara Jean wanted to do it herself and doesn’t have the slightest idea how to hold a paintbrush.”
    “So you decided to help a friend.”
    “Yeah, but—”
    “That’s soft, Billy. And people would love to see that.”
    “Bullshit, Victor.” He groaned. “No news show—”
    “It’s
AM Dallas
, that morning show on …” Billy heard Victor flipping through his notes over the sudden pounding of blood in his ears.
    AM Dallas
. Maddy. That was Maddy’s show.
    “Is Madelyn …”
What the hell was her name? Cornwall?
No, that wasn’t right.
Cornish?
That was it. “Is Madelyn Cornish still on that show?”
    “I don’t know, man, I don’t watch this stuff.”
    “Tara!” Billy yelled and she ducked back into the room. “Is Madelyn Cornish on
AM Dallas
?”
    “Yep,” she said.
    “I’ll take the meeting,” he said to Victor. There was a moment of stunned silence. “Victor? You still there?”
    “Yeah, I’m just … surprised. Hornsby is going to love this.”
    “I don’t care, I’ll still take the meeting.”
    “All right, I’ll set it up and text you the details.”
    Billy hung up and looked back out the window, hischest heaving as if he’d run six miles at a dead sprint. There was a good chance Maddy had some very public, very vindictive and humiliating revenge plan in the works.
    “Billy?” Tara Jean stood in the doorway. She was beautiful, blond and stacked, blue eyes that could eviscerate a man with one glance. But to Billy, she was a poor second to Maddy Baumgarten on her worst day. And he’d seen that day. Caused it.
    “You all right, Billy?”
    Fourteen years ago he’d ruined everything. They were supposed to be a family—that was the promise they’d made to each other, and he’d broken it. Smashed it under heavy, callous heels. Because he hadn’t known how to keep that kind of promise.
    But he’d had some practice now. He thought of Luc and Tara Jean, all the guys on the teams he’d played with. He knew more about what it meant to be someone’s family, the two-way nature of it.
    Despite what had happened, how they’d crashed and burned and failed each other and hurt each other, all these years later, when he thought of family—real family, not his parasitic sisters, not his messed-up parents—he thought of Maddy.
    Of her arms around him at night. Her strength and support.
    “Let’s get back to work,” he said, stepping up to the empty wall and the paint.
    “You know, if something’s bothering you—”
    “Don’t you go all Oprah on me too, Tara.”
    He could feel her watching him, debating whether or not to press the issue, but then she sighed and went back to messing up the trim.
    “Why did you ask about Madelyn Cornish?” she asked.
    “I think I’m going to do her show.”
    Billy smiled when he heard TJ’s paintbrush clatter onto the hardwood floor. She swore, using the edge of her Toronto Cavaliers hockey T-shirt to clean it up.
    “I told you we needed drop cloths,” he said.
    “Billy, you always said those shows were humiliating.”
    “They are.”
    “Then why do it?”
    His past, particularly the part about Maddy, was such ancient history he never talked about it. No one ever asked. A childhood failed marriage wasn’t interesting to the sports journalists, who only cared about his penalty box minutes. And the guys on his team didn’t even know.
    But suddenly her name was on his lips again and it felt so good. It brought the worst of his past back to him, but it also brought the best.
    It wasn’t a mystery that he’d lost part of himself when she left. The part that cared what other people thought of him. The part that wanted to be worth something—namely her.
    And with