by Elle Kennedy
“Allie.” His voice is drowned out by the music.
I take one last look at the party going on in the living room, then spin on my heel and hurry toward the staircase.
The tears well up again, and my throat is so tight I can scarcely breathe. This is why he couldn’t be bothered to show up for opening night? Because he was partying with a bunch of football players?
I burst into his room and race to the dresser, yanking open the top drawer where I’ve been keeping the clothes I brought over from the dorm. I usurped half of Dean’s closet too, and that’s my next stop—pulling clothes off hangers and tossing them in my suitcase.
“Aw baby, don’t do that.” Dean appears in the doorway.
I ignore him and continue packing.
“Allie, please.” He comes up behind me, and I swallow a sob when his strong arms encircle me. For one brief moment, I allow myself to sag against him. To lean into his warm, sturdy chest and feel his stubble scrape my skin as he rubs his cheek over mine. “I’m sorry, baby. I fucked up. I totally forgot your play was tonight.”
I reminded you ten times! I want to shout.
“I promise I’ll be there for tomorrow’s performance.” His hands run up and down my waist, caress my stomach, skim my ass. “You said there’s three shows, right?”
My voice comes out terse. “Yes. But don’t bother coming tomorrow night. I don’t want you there.”
He nuzzles my shoulder with his chin. “Don’t say that. I know you’re pissed, but I’ll make it up to you. I will be there tomorrow.”
“I wanted you there tonight, Dean.” I still can’t bring myself to turn around and look at him. And I don’t know why I’m letting him rub up against me like this. Come to think of it, why is he rubbing against me? I can feel his erection, harder than stone, digging into my ass. How is he turned on right now?
The bizarre response of his body is what prompts me to spin around. Frowning, I carefully study his face, cataloging every detail. He’s not drunk, I realize. His cheeks are flushed, but his eyes are too bright. Which means he’s not stoned either, because his eyes usually get fuzzy after he’s smoked weed. Right now they’re shining. Sparkling with pleasure and happiness that he absolutely should not be feeling, not when I’m standing here in tears.
I inhale slowly. “What are you on?”
He looks confused by the question.
“What are you on, Dean?” I snap “What did you take?”
He blinks, then says, “Oh. Just some molly.”
For fuck’s sake.
Without another word, I shove past him and zip up my suitcase.
“Where are you going?” He sounds hurt.
“Bristol,” I spit out. “I’m not staying here anymore.”
“Why?”
“Why? You blew off my opening night to throw a party and do drugs! You’re hopped up on MDMA, rubbing your dick all over me when I’m fucking crying! And you’re seriously asking me why I’m leaving?”
His eyes cloud over. “I didn’t throw a party. Ollie and Rodriguez called, asked if I wanted to chill, reminisce about Beau. So, what, I’m supposed to say no to that?”
My jaw drops. “Don’t you dare use Beau as an excuse for getting high!”
He flinches, but when he speaks again, his tone is defensive. “Big deal, babe. I took some molly. It’s not like I do it on a regular basis. Last time was more than a year ago.”
“That’s not the point!” I’m struggling to breathe again. There’s no use in arguing with him right now. He can’t hear me, not when he’s on drugs. I exhale, and the air seeps out in a weak puff. “My dad was right. I can’t count on you at all.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve been there for you from the start!” He growls. “My best friend fucking died, Allie. So gee, I’m sorry if I’ve been a tad distracted lately. I’ve had a lot on my mind.”
His sarcasm isn’t appreciated. “Distracted? You haven’t been distracted. You’ve been drunk! And now you’re goddamn high!” Resentment burns a path up my throat and pricks at my eyes. “Guess what, Dean? People die! It wrecks me that Beau is gone. It. Fucking. Wrecks. Me. But you can’t just drink all the pain away.”
His face turns red.
“I get it, the Life of Dean is all sunshine and roses—” It’s my turn to dish out the sarcasm “—but real life isn’t like that. In real life, bad things happen, and you need to deal with them.”
I pick up my suitcase and march to the door. I stop abruptly, spinning toward him again. I’m so mad and hurt I can’t think straight.
“Life isn’t perfect, Dean, and you need to grow the fuck up and accept that. I’ve been trying to help you, but you won’t let me. I’ve spent almost a month watching you drink yourself stupid. Watching you push everyone away, watching you disappoint everyone around you.”
He still doesn’t say a word, and that makes me angrier.
“I went to Coach Ellis on your behalf!” I shout. “I convinced him to give you another shot for when you decide to come back to coach the team.” The tears fall faster, soaking my cheeks. “I sat with Dakota while she cried her eyes out! She thinks you hate her because she didn’t want to wear goddamn boy skates!” I gasp for air. “Well, I’m not holding your hand anymore or cleaning up your messes. I’m done, Dean.”
His breath sucks in. Finally, something I say gets his attention. “You’re not done.”
“Yes, I am.” My hand is quaking so wildly I almost drop the suitcase on my foot. “Do you think you’re the only one who’s lost someone? I watched my mother die of cancer. I literally watched her wither away and die.”
“Allie—”
“You need to find a way to deal with your grief. But I can’t be there anymore to help you. I’m not going to stand by and watch you stick your head in a bottle because you’re too afraid to face the pain. I’m done.”
I storm out of the bedroom, leaving him staring after me in shock.
32
Dean
I’m awakened by a loud, agonized groan. Christ, it sounds like someone is dying, and it takes a minute to comprehend that the tortured noise had come from me. I’m groaning, because my head hurts. No, my eye hurts. Why does my eye hurt?
I sit up and gingerly touch my face. My left eye is swollen shut. And my mouth is drier than the Sahara. Shit. I’m so goddamn thirsty. And weary—just the act of lifting my hand to my face has drained me of energy.
The molly, I realize. Last time I took some, it also left me feeling drained and achy the next morning.
I slide out of bed and discover I fell asleep fully clothed. Staggering to the closet, I open the door and study the mirror behind it. Sweet Jesus. My eye is purple bordering on black, and as I study my reflection, all the events of last night come crashing back.
Missing Allie’s play.
Allie dumping me.
Garrett coming home and yelling at me. What was he yelling about… I strain to remember. Right, about missing Allie’s play. Oh, and because I’d invited half the football team over to the house and they…yup, a few of the linebackers were snorting coke in the kitchen. Fuck. That’s when Garrett pulled me aside and started railing into me. I must have said something he didn’t like, because…well, black eye.
I turn away from the mirror and sink on the edge of the bed, conducting a mental tally of what I’m dealing with right now.
I have a black eye.
I have an angry roommate who gave me the black eye.
I have an ex-girlfriend.
And I made a little girl cry.
I sat with Dakota while she cried her eyes out! She thinks you hate her because she didn’t want to wear goddamn boy skates!
Allie’s angry words blare like a trumpet in my head, making my temples throb and my stomach churn. I barely make it to the bathroom in time, gagging on the bile in my throat before I even reach the toilet. I drape myself over the porcelain bowl and dry heave for what feels like hours. I didn’t eat anything last night, so there’
s nothing to throw up, but my stomach keeps twisting and clenching and I can’t stop heaving.
When the nausea finally settles, I brush my teeth at the sink, then drop to the tiled floor and sit there for a while, thinking about what I’ve done. What I’ve lost.
Allie.
Beau.
Goddamn Beau. Why the fuck did he have to go and die?
The thought is so absurd it triggers a wave of laughter. Loud and uncontrollable, until my eyes are watering and I’m hiccupping.
There’s a knock on the door. “Dean…you in there?”
I cringe at the sound of Garrett’s voice. He doesn’t sound pissed, though. Just tired.
When I open the door, I find a pair of serious gray eyes peering back at me. “You okay?” Garrett says gruffly.
I laugh again. “Not in the slightest.”
Guilt passes through his expression. “I’m sorry about the shiner.” He curses. “But goddamn it, man, you had it coming. You should see the mess those guys left. The house is trashed.”
I drag a weak hand over my scalp. “I’ll clean it. And don’t worry about the shiner. I deserved it. I’m surprised Allie didn’t give me a matching one.”
Just saying her name is brutal. It feels like someone cut my chest open with a skate and is stabbing the blade into my heart, slicing it to ribbons.
I can’t imagine how she’ll ever forgive me. I wasn’t there for her opening night. Hell, I wasn’t there for her even before that. For three weeks I’ve been walking around in a fog, doing my damnedest to try to forget that Beau is dead. Whenever he crossed my thoughts, I’d crack open another beer or roll another joint, because it was the fastest, easiest way to shut down my brain.
Allie’s dad had said he didn’t trust me to take care of her. And he was right. I can’t even take care of myself, apparently.
“Wellsy is pissed at you,” Garrett says.
“I’m pissed at myself.” I groan, still thinking about the sheer magnitude of my screw-up. “I…” My throat hurts. “I miss Maxwell.”
Garrett murmurs, “I know.”
“It wrecks me to think I won’t ever see him again.”
“I know.”
There’s a beat, and then Garrett surprises me by hauling me in for a hug. Not a macho side hug or quick chest bump, but a real hug, with both his arms around me, gripping me tight.
I hug him back. “I’m sorry, man. About the house. The drinking. Just everything.”
“I know,” he says for the third time.
A door creaks open. “Is this a private homoerotic moment? Or can anyone join in?”
I laugh weakly as Logan lumbers toward us. Garrett releases me, and Logan takes his place. His hug is briefer, but no less comforting.
Logan slaps my back and says, “You up for practice today?” His gaze carefully studies my left eye.
“I don’t have much of a choice,” I answer with a sigh. “I’ll just go in and let Coach decide if he wants me on the ice. With this shiner, he’ll probably banish me to the weight room.”
I wish I didn’t have to go, though. All I want to do this morning is drive to Bristol House and see Allie. Throw myself at her feet and beg her to take me back.
“We’ll tell him we were acting out a scene from Fight Club,” Garrett jokes, before his expression goes serious again. “He doesn’t have to know what really went down. The party…the drugs…”
I nod gratefully. “Thanks.”
And other than my eye, there’s really no other sign that anything untoward happened last night. The good thing about my partying—not that anything in my life can be described as good right now—is that I possess the scary ability to bounce back like nothing happened. I drink like a fish? No hangover. I smoke weed? My head is clearer than the blue skies the next day. Today, I’m a bit slower to move, but that’s because of the crushing weight pressing down on my heart.
I pushed away the most important person in my life last night. It floors me, how in three short months, that’s what Allie Hayes has become. She’s everything to me.
Tucker has breakfast waiting for us downstairs. We eat, then book it to the arena, where Garrett swipes his ID at the door and leads the way to the locker room.
The four of us halt the second we enter the room. Coach Jensen and O’Shea are congregated in the corner of the room, chatting with a lanky, bespectacled man who’s wearing a blazer and carrying a briefcase. A few of our teammates are loitering around, but nobody says a word. Hollis nods at us. Fitzy does a double take when he notices my shiner.
“Morning, Coach,” Garrett calls out warily. “What’s going on?”
“Drug testing,” is the terse reply.
My heart drops. Splat. It just hits the floor. The nausea? Well, that rises. Soars up to my throat and clamps it shut.
My gaze shifts to O’Shea. He gazes back, utterly expressionless, but I get the sickening feeling that he’s responsible for this. Random drug testing isn’t a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence—it happens all the time in college sports. But our season is almost over. Hell, our season is in the toilet, with zero chance of going to the playoffs. There’s no reason to spring a spot drug test on us.
My queasiness gets worse and worse as other players file into the room. I can feel O’Shea’s dark eyes boring into me, but my gaze stays glued to my boots. I’m in a state of panic, living out my very own Tell-Tale Heart, except instead of hearing a dead man’s heartbeat under the floorboards, I’m excruciatingly aware of the blood in my veins. The steady flow of it, surging, pulsing, tainted with the molly I took last night.
As my pulse drums in my ears, I draw in a shaky breath, exhale slowly, and make my way over to Coach Jensen.
“Coach…can I speak to you in private?” I mutter, and just like that, he gets the look. The one that tells me he knows exactly what I’m going to say, and that he’d rather slit his own wrists than hear me say it.
“Sure,” he answers after a long, strained beat.
He leads me to his office. We don’t sit. I don’t speak.
He waits, but I can’t bring myself to voice the confession. Christ. I’m so disgusted with myself right now. So fucking ashamed.
Coach sighs. “You’re gonna make me ask you, is that it? Fine, I’ll ask.” He pauses. “What’s going to happen when you piss in that cup, Dean?”
The shame builds inside me until I can practically taste it when I gulp.
“What are the results going to show?” he pushes, his expression unbearably resigned. “Marijuana? Cocaine?”
“MDMA,” I mumble.
He closes his eyes briefly. Then he opens them. “All right. Thanks for letting me know.”
I leave his office feeling like a man on death row.
Two days later, I get kicked off the team.
33
Allie
Three days after I storm out of Dean’s house insisting I’m done, I meet him at the Coffee Hut on campus. Every girl in the room turns to admire him when he walks through the door. I do too, because…God, he looks like the Dean I fell in love with. Green eyes dancing playfully as he orders a coffee at the counter, blond hair smoothed away from his chiseled face, cargo pants clinging to his perfect ass.
All I have to do is look at his face to know he hasn’t been drinking today. Maybe not for a few days, actually. Hannah told me last night that Dean failed a drug test and was kicked off the team. I can’t deny my heart broke when I heard that, because I know how important hockey is to him, but the news hadn’t surprised me, either. You can’t drink excessively and take drugs without facing the consequences. At the rate he was going, the partying was bound to catch up to him.
Surprisingly, he doesn’t seem upset when I raise the subject, which is the first thing we tackle after he slides into the seat across from me. He simply shrugs. “I had it coming.” With a pained expression, he adds, “But I didn’t come here to talk about the team. I wanted to apologize to you.”
I nod. It’s what I figured when I got h
is text invitation, but holy déjà vu because this is the second time in three months I’ve been in this position. Last time it was me and Sean. Sitting in this very coffeehouse, having this very same conversation. But this time, the ache in my heart is a million times worse, because I’m still in love with Dean. Hopelessly, desperately in love with him.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I fucked up.” His long, graceful fingers encircle his coffee cup. “I didn’t handle Beau’s death too well. To be honest, I’m not sure I’m handling it now, but hey, at least I’m sober.”
I nod again.
“I’m sorry I missed your play. And I’m so fucking sorry I put you in the position where you had to make excuses for me. With Coach Ellis and—” his voice cracks “—Dakota. I plan on apologizing to them too and begging their forgiveness. But I wanted to see you first.”
I know he had. He’s been calling and texting for three days, but I hadn’t agreed to meet him until now. My emotions were too raw.
Dean gulps his coffee. When he speaks again, his voice is thick with shame. “Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”
My heart? God, my heart is ravaged right now. It feels like it just weathered a hurricane. Hurricane Dean. I still can’t erase Friday night from my mind. Standing on stage and looking into the crowd and not seeing Dean. Coming home to find him high as a kite.
Can I forgive him, though?
Fuck, of course I can. I don’t hold grudges. Life’s too short for that.
“Of course I can forgive you.” I don’t miss the spark of hope in his eyes, and it kills me to extinguish it. “But this isn’t about forgiveness.”
“What’s it about then?”
“You tell me. Did you ask me here to get back together?”
He nods slowly. His entire face softens. “I love you,” he says hoarsely. “I don’t want to be apart from you.”
Pain spirals inside me. I don’t want to be apart from him either. But…I think I need to be.
“I…can’t be with you,” I whisper.
He makes an anguished sound.
