“Why?”

“Because my doctor is a fan of yours.” He had a framed jersey in his office.

He cocked an eyebrow.

“Your picture will be all over the internet before you leave,” I explained. “Then everyone will ask what you were doing at a doctor’s appointment with me, and the next thing I know everyone will say I’m pregnant with your baby.”

Kulti huffed. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

He was right. I could remember at least a few times over the years that some tabloid or magazine reported that he’d impregnated someone he’d been seen with. They speculated on a new relationship every time he stood next to a woman.

Then there had been his divorce.

It’d been bad. Bad. People had put a timeline on his marriage from the moment pictures had been released, which at the time, I thought had been one of the worst days of my life. My first love—this asshole who now called me Taco now—had married some tall, skinny, beautiful bitch.

All right maybe she wasn’t a bitch, but back then you couldn’t have paid me money to think otherwise.

Exactly one year after his huge spectacle of a wedding, his divorce papers to the Swedish horror-flick actress were filed. Rumors of them cheating on each other, of him starting and ending relationships before things were finalized, talk of an insane pre-nuptial agreement, flooded tabloids and entertainment channels alike. The real kicker had been that the team he’d been playing for that year hadn’t even qualified for the finals. People had ripped Kulti apart. I mean, ripped his ass open.

While I’d initially forced myself not to follow his career, not to look him up on websites, or even pay attention when his name was brought up, it’d been impossible to ignore all the drama, despite how much I wanted to.

Then he’d come back the next season and won a championship.

I hadn’t watched or paid attention to the European League that year, or the two following. By that point, I was too focused on myself and my career. Reiner Kulti had become someone who had nothing to do with me.

“That’s the price of fame, huh?” I asked, feeling a stab of pain right through my chest. It really shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. It was weird how even now, when I was fully aware there would never be anything between us, my body still had a severe possessive streak in it. He’d gotten married to someone, and pledged his life to another person.

Bah. I didn’t have time for this crap.

Kulti’s cheek ticked like he was remembering everything he’d been through too. It wasn’t like he was a talkative forthcoming person to begin with, but when he answered with one word, I figured it was still a touchy subject for him. “Yes,” was the only thing he said.

All right. I cleared my throat and sang under my breath, “Tough shit, frankfurter.”

There was a pause before he let out a snicker. “Sal, I don’t know how you haven’t gotten elbowed in the face yet.”

I opened my mouth and pressed the tip of my tongue behind my upper teeth for a second. “One, at least I tell you things to your face and not behind your back. And two, I have gotten elbowed in the face. Multiple times.” I pointed at a scar right smack on my cheekbone, then the underside of my chin and lastly right above my eyebrow. “So, suck on that, pretzel face.”

To be fair, he was fast, but I also wasn’t expecting it.

The couch cushion hit me right in the face.

* * *

“Sal, I haven’t you see here in forever,” the receptionist on the other side of the window said as I handed her a clipboard with my paperwork, driver’s license and medical card.