Breakout Play

by Rebel Hart

  And I had.

  He’d listened, and he’d offered the exact same advice as Eugene: it was time to take accountability, accept the things I could not change, and move forward.

  All I had to decide was if moving forward included William Hughes.

  It was an easy decision. I wanted him in my life. But I had no idea how to accomplish that after everything I’d said and done and couldn’t take back. He had every reason to be angry with me. Even hate me.

  I sighed warily as I dragged the four garbage bags to the front doors to be put out for the early morning garbage pick up. Once I had them ready to go, I turned back to make for the locker rooms so I could get my bag and jacket and head home for the night.

  Doyle was walking across the lobby, grinning at me.

  Now is not the time, Doyle, I thought sourly, hoping he would pass me by or head for the concession to lock it up.

  He didn’t. He kept walking straight toward me.

  “Hey, Kimmy,” he called, picking up his pace to half jog toward me. “I couldn’t help but notice you seemed a little low today. Is everything okay?”

  Like you actually care.

  “Everything is fine,” I said.

  “Oh. Good. You sure? We could go grab a drink or something if you need someone to talk to.” He elbowed me in the ribs gently. “I’m a really good listener, you know. And I’m good at other things too that I’m sure would make you feel better.”

  He winked.

  Barf.

  I resisted the urge to tell him to piss off. “Look, Doyle. Although I appreciate your considerate and repulsive offer, I’m good. Thanks.”

  “What?”

  “Take a hint, dude. I’m not interested. I will never be interested. You and me are not going to be a thing. Ever. You’re a jerk. You’ve always been a jerk. I saw how you treated your ex. You’re rude and manipulative, and I don’t want anything to do with someone like you. It’s a miracle I’ve been able to stomach working with you for so long.”

  His shell-shocked expression was almost laughable.

  Then it deteriorated and gave way to anger. “The fuck did you say to me?”

  I was not going to be intimidated by the likes of Doyle effing Digby. I planted my hands on my hips, took as menacing a step forward as I could muster, and jabbed a finger up into his face. “I said no. How hard is that for you to understand? It’s two fucking letters, Doyle. No.”

  He swatted my hand out of his face. “Look, you stuck-up little bitch, where do you get off talking to me like that? You’re nothing. You hear me? Nothing! You’re just some small town girl who peaked in high school.”

  He smirked down at me like he thought his words would hurt my feelings.

  It had the opposite effect.

  I covered my mouth with one hand and laughed at him.

  He didn’t like that. “What the hell is so funny?”

  I shook my head at him. “Oh my God, Doyle. You’re hopeless. And you’re picking a fight you can’t win. Do you seriously think any of that means shit to me?”

  He glared hotly at me. “You’re a stuck-up—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving him away dismissively. “I heard you the first time. You want to know what you are? Hmm? Do you, Doyle?”

  He backed away when I advanced on him. My temper burned. My pulse thundered in my ears. This was the release I needed. Doyle was a bad guy. He had been for as long as I’d known him. I thought about the last time I saw him with his girlfriend and how he’d gotten in her face and said things to her under his breath that made her cry. I thought about how he’d scared her into staying with him. I thought about how he’d controlled every move she made.

  And then I let my anger out on him.

  “You’re a bully, Doyle. That’s it. And you think I peaked in high school? Don’t make me laugh. At least I graduated high school. At least I’m not a bitter waste of space who preys on young girls with low self-esteem at a fucking ice rink all day. At least I have the common sense to know when a person doesn’t want anything to do with me and I don’t shamelessly throw myself at them and make unwanted advances like a complete asshole every other day.”

  “Hey, watch what you’re—”

  “What? Did I strike a nerve, Doyle? Don’t like people giving you a dose of your own medicine? Do you want me to stop?”

  “Yes,” he spat, backing up as I took another step forward.

  Coward, I thought. When it came right down to it he was all talk. He couldn’t stand up for himself. He picked on people who he knew wouldn’t stand up for themselves.

  Well. That wasn’t me. Never had been. Never would be. I never should have let him walk all over me like he had these past years. I should have set him straight the first time he put a toe out of line.

  I might have been able to save some girls from him had I not held my tongue.

  “You’re vile,” I growled at him. “You’re ugly on the inside and the outside and you know the only way you can get a girl to be with you is if you make her feel like she has nowhere else to go. Well guess what, Doyle? There is always someplace to go. And anywhere is better than with you.”

  He stared at me.

  I started laughing.

  He looked around, probably searching out routes of escape should I snap and claw his eyeballs out with my fingernails.

  “You know what?” I said, speaking more to the inanimate ice rink than to him. “I’m done with this. I quit.”

  I turned on my heel and started marching for the doors.

  “Hold on a second!” Doyle called after me.

  I kept walking.

  “You can’t just quit!”

  I flipped him the middle finger over my shoulder. “Watch me, Doyle.”

  I pushed through the front doors. The cold night air hit me like a wall. I sucked it into my lungs and stood at the top of the stairs. I reveled in the sharpness of the moment. I’d never felt so present before. So clear. So in control.

  This is what power feels like.

  I tilted my head back to the starry night sky and closed my eyes.

  Action. Decisiveness. Follow through.

  Why had it taken me such a long time to take such a simple step? My days for these past years had been consumed with dread—dread over going in to work, dread over seeing Doyle’s face, dread over running into someone out in public I knew but hadn’t seen in a long time and having to smile and nod and say, Yes, I am still at the rink. Yes. I’m still coaching. No, I don’t play anymore. Bad knee, remember? Dread for having to pretend it was okay when they apologized for forgetting about my injury. Dread over admitting I had moved home to stay with my folks because I couldn’t afford my rent and didn’t want to ask my roommates to also become my caregivers. Dread over still being single. Dread over waking up and feeling like I had no control over my own destiny.

  I opened my eyes.

  And then I saw it.

  There was a shiny silver car parked in the rink lot. Standing beside that car was a tall broad shouldered young man in jeans, a Henley, and a dark brown leather jacket.

  William nodded up at me. “Hey, Kimwick.”

  “Hey,” I breathed.

  “Got a minute to talk?”

  38

  William

  I watched Kim come down the stairs. She looked good. But then again, she always looked good.

  She was wearing her usual black fleece sweater that all the staff at the rink wore. Her jeans were dark wash, her white sneakers a little scuffed, and she crammed her hands into her pockets as she strode across the lane of the parking lot separating us.

  She stopped at the bumper of my car and I rested my arm on the hood.

  “How’ve you been?” I asked. The words felt lame as soon as I gave voice to them. They weren’t what I wanted to say. Not really. Although I did care how she was.

  Kim shrugged. “I’m okay. You?”

  “Same.”

  She chewed her lip. I watched her.

  Then I shoo
k my head. “No. That’s not true. I’m not okay.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  I sighed and looked around as I scratched at the back of my head. She flinched as a cold wind picked up, forcing her to tuck her chin into the collar of her sweater.

  “Why don’t we get in the car so we can talk out of the cold?” I suggested.

  She nodded and moved to the passenger door. We both got in the car at the same time and pulled the doors closed. I turned on the heat.

  “I’m sorry, Kim.”

  “For what?” she asked, glancing over at me.

  “For being an insensitive ass. You’re right. It was thoughtless and insensitive of me to ask you to drop everything here and follow me on the road. I didn’t think it through properly. I was thinking about myself. It was selfish. I didn’t think about how hard it would be for you to be on the road with me. And that wasn’t fair. And I’m so, so sorry. I wish I could take it back.”

  She studied me calmly. At least she wasn’t screaming at me again. Or crying. I didn’t think my heart could handle any more tears.

  “So why did you ask me then?” she asked softly. There was no hard edge to her voice. The question sounded sincere. Kim tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear that had come loose from her hair tie.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I asked.

  “If it was I wouldn’t ask.”

  Fair.

  “I asked because I want you with me, Kim. I want you with me all the time. Not seeing you just for these last two days has been shit. And truthfully? I think it would be good for you to get out of your comfort zone. I’m sorry if you think I’m overstepping but it’s true.”

  She nodded along with what I was saying, which surprised me. Then her attention was stolen by movement up at the top of the rink stairs. She watched her coworker, Doyle Digby, lumber down the steps with his phone in his hands. He was scowling at his screen and looked generally put out as he began crossing the parking lot.

  “Looks like someone had a rough day,” I said.

  Kim flashed me a smile. “You have no idea.”

  Doyle kept walking. His shoulders slumped and he slid his phone in the pocket of his jeans. Then he looked up and saw us watching him from inside my car. He seemed to notice me first, and his eyes went wide with surprise, and probably a little fear considering how our interaction had gone the last time we saw each other.

  Then his gaze slid to Kim.

  He visibly bristled.

  I frowned. “Uh, what’s his deal?”

  Kim rolled her passenger window down and stuck her head outside. “Keep walking, Doyle.”

  Doyle hung his head and did as he was told. He skirted wide around the car and I twisted around in my seat to watch him walk to a beat-up old pickup truck on the other side of the lot. Then I looked at Kim. “What was that all about?”

  “Nothing,” she said. There was a smile playing in the corners of her mouth.

  I left it alone and watched Doyle drive away in my rear view mirror. As he pulled out of the lot and onto the main street in front of the rink, Kim shifted in her seat so she could face me more directly.

  “I shouldn’t have flipped out on you on Saturday night.”

  I hadn’t expected that.

  “It wasn’t fair of me to do that to you,” she said. “I listened to the wrong parts of what you were saying and got tunnel vision. I filled in the blanks for myself and came to my own conclusions. I realized after talking to some people with more perspective than me that I overreacted and put words in your mouth. And I’m sorry.”

  In no realm did I expect to come into this conversation receiving an apology from her. I thought I’d be begging her to forgive me and understand where I was coming from. At this stage of the game it was going a lot smoother than I’d ever dreamed it might.

  “So what does this mean, then?” I asked.

  “Well,” Kim said, looking back up at the rink. “I may or may not have just screamed at Doyle that I quit my job.”

  “Really?”

  She smiled. “Really.”

  “And?”

  “And,” she said slowly, trailing off. When she collected her thoughts she was grinning from ear to ear. “And… I think you might be right. Comfort zones are dangerous and I’ve been in mine since I was sixteen. I needed a push. And you gave me that. I know I can count on you to keep pushing me.”

  A sigh of relief rushed out of me. I reached out and cupped her cheek. “Always.”

  She smiled into my palm and closed her eyes. “Does this mean you forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  Her eyes fluttered open. “I need to hear you say it.”

  I licked my lips. “I forgive you. Do you forgive me?”

  She nodded.

  Neither of us waited another second before we crashed together for the neediest kiss I’d ever had. For a moment I thought Kim might crawl right over the console and into my lap. But she didn’t. She went to her knees and leaned over the divider between us so she could hold my face in both her hands as she kissed me. She tasted like strawberries and smelled like roses.

  “I promise I won’t ever yell at you like that again,” she whispered.

  “Really?” I teased. “I find that extremely unlikely. You run too hot to keep your cool all the time, Kimwick. Besides. What was it you said about it not being any fun without a little fear? You keep me on my toes. I like that.”

  She giggled and shook her head at me. “Oh. I can keep you on your toes if that’s what you want.”

  I tugged at the crotch of my pants. “This parking lot is very well lit.”

  “It is,” she purred.

  “I think we should get out of it.”

  “And go where?”

  “My place?”

  She bit her bottom lip and stared into my eyes. “You’re the one behind the wheel. I’ll go where you go. Car. Plane. Boat. Whatever. We’re in this together now.”

  “I think that’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever said.”

  She laughed in earnest this time. “Sounds like I need to step up my dirty talk.”

  I put the car in drive. “You don’t need to work on anything.”

  “Debatable,” she said. “I could work on my temper. And my sensitivity about my knee. And my attachment issues. And insecurity. And—”

  “Woman,” I said, looking levelly at her, “I’m not with you because I want or expect you to change anything. Unless you want to, of course.”

  She flashed me a devilish smile. “I like how appeasing you are now that I struck the fear of God into you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What have I gotten myself into?”

  “You’ll find out. Now drive.”

  “So bossy.”

  “You like it.”

  She wasn’t wrong. But I wasn’t biased. I liked everything about her, temper and quirks included. She was the girl for me. Plain and simple. Some part of me felt like I’d always known that; she was the girl who’d come into my room late at night when we were teenagers after she heard me crying in the weeks after my father died.

  I recalled one of those nights in the beginning. My father hadn’t been buried for a full week yet. I didn’t cry at the funeral or the days following. It didn’t hit me until day five when I was lying in bed alone staring at my bedroom ceiling. That’s when I realized I’d never see him again, and he’d never see my success… or failure. He’d never yell at me again. Never strike me out of anger and drink. Never wake me up at four in the morning to offer a drunken, slurred apology. Never go into the kitchen before school to find a guilt breakfast made by him consisting of runny eggs and burnt toast.

  I fell apart that night and couldn’t pull myself back together.

  Kim had knocked on the door and let herself in. She asked what she could do. I was too broken to have any words for her. So she’d crawled up onto my bed and rested her head on my shoulder and told me it was okay to cry, and that she wouldn’t tell anyone, an
d that she would stay as long as I needed her.

  She’d kept her word.

  And she was still here.

  “What are you thinking about, William?” Kim cocked her head to the side.

  I hadn’t realized I’d zoned out. “I was thinking about you.”

  She laughed breathlessly. “Stop trying to butter me up. You already got me back. Drive already.”

  I shook my head. “No. I mean I was thinking about you back then.”

  “Back when?”

  “When we were kids. When my dad died.”

  “Oh… why were you thinking about that?”

  There wasn’t the usual heaviness in my chest that I felt when I thought about my father and his grisly death. I turned to the girl in my passenger seat. My girl. “Do you remember that night that you came into my room to comfort me?”

  She nodded. “You were crying.”

  “Yeah. And you told me you’d always be there for me. No matter what. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about that for so long… I don’t know why I always thought it was just your parents and Keith who saved me. You saved me too, Kim.”

  Her eyes were glassy. “I just wanted you to feel like you still had a home.”

  I reached across the seat and ran my fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her face so I could truly see her. “You’re my home, Kim.”

  Her cheeks flushed.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” I said.

  Somehow she turned an even brighter shade of pink. “I love you too, Hughes.”

  My heart roared triumphantly in my chest. My cheeks hurt from smiling. Kim giggled, and then we were crushed up against each other for more kisses as the car engine purred and the neon lights of the ice rink lit up the dashboard.

  39

  Kimberly

  William pinned me up against the elevator wall with his knee wedged between my thighs. I stared up at him, daring him to take what he wanted, not caring about the security cameras or the potential of someone else getting on the elevator with us.