Now or Never

by Victoria Denault

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Victoria Denault

  Cover design by Brian Lemus. Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Forever Yours

  Hachette Book Group

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  First published as an ebook and as a print on demand: January 2019

  Forever Yours is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Forever Yours name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-6315-5 (print on demand edition), 978-1-5387-6316-2 (ebook)

  E3-20181010-DANF

  E3-20181030-DA-NF-ORI

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue: Winnie

  1: Winnie

  2: Winnie

  3: Holden

  4: Holden

  5: Winnie

  6: Winnie

  7: Holden

  8: Winnie

  9: Holden

  10: Winnie

  11: Holden

  12: Winnie

  13: Winnie

  14: Holden

  15: Winnie

  16: Holden

  17: Winnie

  18: Holden

  19: Winnie

  20: Holden

  21: Winnie

  22: Holden

  23: Winnie

  24: Holden

  Epilogue: Winnie

  About the Author

  Also by Victoria Denault

  You Might Also Like…

  Newsletters

  To anyone who has ever struggled with the monumental loss of a parent. You are not alone.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, I want to thank my agent, Kimberly Brower, and my editor, Leah Hultenschmidt. When my own dad passed away in the middle of writing this book, my life became an emotional roller coaster and you both went above and beyond to support me and juggle and manage things so I wasn’t overwhelmed with work on top of everything else. Thank you so much for everything. I will forever be grateful to both of you for not only your professional expertise but your kindness and compassion. Working with you both feels like winning the lottery.

  I want to thank my husband, my family and my friends who have supported me both professionally and personally while I finished this series. I couldn’t have survived 2018, or written a word during it, without your support, love and encouragement.

  Tatiana, Anna Maria and Lori, thank you for always being there for me when I come home. Even when it’s for the saddest reasons, you find a way to make me smile and laugh. Mike H., thanks for always checking up and knowing exactly when to send a bacon meme or a poutine-related message.

  To the superstar crew at Forever Romance, you guys are a true pleasure to work with and I appreciate all you do for my books. A million thanks to Mignon Mykel at Oh So Novel for your killer FB ad work, something I have yet to conquer on my own. To the Hearties authors who share ideas, laughs and support. You guys are my people, and I heart you. DeAnna Zankich, my writing sister from another mister, who is always there for a wine chat when I need it.

  To bloggers and readers, thank you for embracing the Braddock family. This family started in my heart and mind as a lighthearted, goofy group but they grew into something deeper and stronger as their journey moved forward. They are more than hockey and so this series, even with a hockey series name, moved beyond the rink. Thank you for accepting that and sticking with them—and me—as their story continued. I hope you love Winnie’s story.

  Prologue

  Winnie

  Age 16

  My youngest sister is giggling and it makes me smile through the pain. “I wish someone had recorded it,” Dixie says. “I would’ve seriously paid money to have been able to see you knock him out.”

  “Me too,” I reply and grin sheepishly. “I was blind with rage, so it’s a blur.”

  I’m not a violent person. I’ve never punched anyone in my life, nor did I think that I would ever punch someone, let alone do it here. After all, this was my happy place—our family cottage in Maine. I cherish our summers here and nothing really ever stresses or angers me when we’re in this town. But tonight, Holden Hendricks’s mean-spirited teasing and aggressive behavior just made me snap.

  Sadie, my other sister, comes rushing in from the kitchen carrying a tea towel filled with ice. “Can you move your fingers?”

  “Sort of,” I say as I look down at my red, angry, swelling knuckles. I try to stretch my fingers and then make a fist, but I wince.

  “Nothing’s broken,” she whispers as she places the ice on my knuckles. “I don’t think you would be able to move them at all if they were broken.”

  “I can’t believe you punched Holden Hendricks,” Dixie says in awe and I immediately shush her. We’re only a few feet from our parents’ bedroom and I’m sure I can hear my dad snoring peacefully through the partially closed door, but that doesn’t mean Mom isn’t awake, listening with her hawk-like hearing.

  Sadie plops down on the floor in front of us, her blue eyes twinkling with humor, her wide mouth parted in a smile. “You should have seen it, Dix. He was being such a dick and then boom!”

  “Tell me everything!” Dixie begs.

  “He found out Cat’s parents were in Boston this weekend and convinced her to have a get-together,” I tell Dixie, who hadn’t come out with us tonight. She’s only thirteen and has an earlier curfew than Sadie and me. “Cat only agreed because she thought it would just be a handful of us. But then all these people she never met started showing up saying Holden had invited them, and the place was packed, upstairs and downstairs and Cat was freaking out. Her neighbor threatened to call the cops from the noise.”

  Dixie is glued to every word, like it’s the best story she’s ever heard. She tucks her wheat-blond hair behind her ears, leans forward and rubs her hands together. “Get to the punching.”

  Sadie and I both laugh and Sadie picks up the story. “Winnie was helping Cat, trying to get everyone to leave, and that pissed off Hendricks so he told Winnie she was a useless, ugly loser.”

  “He called me Cat’s dumb, fugly sidekick,” I correct Sadie.

  Dixie’s blue eyes get fiery. “And then you punched him?”

  “No, then Jude got in his face and told him he needed to chill out and fuck off,” Sadie says, and Dixie’s eyes get even wider somehow. “And then Holden asked Jude if he wanted to go.”

  “Holden was going to fight our brother?” Dixie gasps and I nod.

  “Yeah. Totally nuts. Jude is like the one decent person in town who doesn’t hate Holden,” I say and frown
. “Anyway, Jude wasn’t gonna fight him, but that seemed to make Holden even angrier and then he grabbed Jude by the shirt and—”

  “And Winnie clocked him!” Sadie says gleefully and I can’t help but smile again. “He went down like a sack of potatoes and there was blood. I think she broke his nose.”

  My heart stops for a second and I feel genuine remorse. When I first met Holden last summer, I thought he was cute. He played on Jude’s summer league hockey team but unlike us, he was a local who lived here year round. He was almost a year younger than Jude but taller and broader. He was quiet, but polite when Jude invited him over for dinner one night. Then they decided to go to the movies with a bunch of other local friends, and Sadie and I tagged along. He became a different person without my parents around. He was loud and obnoxious and teased everyone in a mean, hard way, not a lighthearted one. Then the next time I ended up hanging out with him and a bunch of other people, he started a fistfight with someone. That’s when I decided to avoid him, but in a tiny town like this, it proved impossible. And for some reason, Jude actually liked hanging out with him. Even though I punched him, and he really did deserve it, I hope I didn’t break his nose.

  “Don’t! Stop looking all repentant and crap,” Sadie says, and I swear sometimes she’s eighteen years older than me, not eighteen months younger. She acts the most mature out of all four of us siblings and she’s definitely the most sensible. She looks at Dixie. “Holden deserved it. He’s deserved it all summer long. Her fist was simply karma’s delivery vehicle.”

  I can’t help but smile. I like the idea of being karma’s instrument. Sadie leans forward, lifts the ice and looks at my hand again. “We need to figure out what we’re going to tell Mom and Dad because it’s still going to be swollen in the morning.”

  “I fell?”

  “Dad won’t buy it.” Sadie shakes her head, long sleek blond hair tumbling around her shoulders. I self-consciously lift my hand to my own hair. The humidity this summer in Maine has been off the charts and so the waves that started in my dirty blond hair when I hit puberty have turned to a frizz I’ve yet to find a way to tame.

  “How about you dropped something on it?” Dixie says.

  Suddenly the front door slams and we all jump like terrified mice. Jude storms into the living room. His face is flushed and his eyes electric with anger. We have a sibling pact to be as quiet as possible when coming home so we don’t wake up our parents. We also have a pact to keep each other’s secrets and screwups from our parents at all costs, but clearly our pacts don’t apply tonight—not for Jude. Sadie and Dixie scramble to their feet. I stay frozen in place. “You are a fucking jerk, you know that?” he yells at me.

  “Fuck you!” I yell back.

  “Shut up!” Sadie scream-whispers, which at this point is useless. There is no way our parents aren’t awake by now.

  “You broke his nose! And it took like an hour to stop bleeding,” Jude says, fury making his voice vibrate.

  “He insulted me, and he was trying to fight you!”

  “Yeah, he tries to fight everyone at some point,” Jude says with annoyance. “I was handling it.”

  “He was getting angrier and he cocked his fist and grabbed you!” I argue back.

  “I get into fights all the time in hockey. I don’t need you to defend me,” Jude says and runs a hand through his hair in frustration. I notice the red streaks on it. Holden’s blood. “Plus, he’s my friend.”

  “Boys are so fucking dumb,” Sadie mutters and rolls her eyes.

  And then it happens.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Dad’s voice fills the pine-paneled room. We all jump and turn to look at him. None of us answers his question because we know he heard everything.

  He turns to Jude. “Go to bed.”

  “But it’s not even past my curfew yet.”

  “Tonight it is,” Dad replies sharply. “Bed.”

  Jude glares at me one final time, then storms through the house and stomps up the stairs. Now Dad’s focus is on his daughters. Me, specifically. “Is Jude right? Did you punch Holden?”

  “Yes.”

  He looks more baffled than angry. I don’t know if that’s a good sign. It’s not the reaction I anticipated. He turns to Dixie. “Go to bed, little D.”

  She scurries off. He turns his blue eyes on Sadie. “Did you see this happen?”

  “Yes,” Sadie replies. “And Holden definitely deserved it.”

  Dad raises a salt-and-pepper eyebrow. He sighs and runs his hand through his hair exactly like Jude did moments ago. I’m not sure who picked up the habit from whom. “Go to bed, Sadie.”

  “Dad, honestly, she wasn’t the instigator. And Holden has said really mean stuff to her all summer long.” Sadie should be a lawyer when she gets older. She loves to argue her points.

  “Sadie, if I have to tell you again…”

  “Night,” she grumbles and disappears around the corner.

  He walks over to me and squats down in front of me like Sadie had done earlier. He lifts the ice. The tea towel is soaking now and drips onto his black-and-gray-striped pajama bottoms just above his bent knee. “Follow me. I need to get a better look.”

  I listen to him and quietly go into the bathroom behind him. He flicks on the bright fluorescent light above and blinks as his eyes adjust. He gently takes my hand and examines it. I try to hold in my winces as he pokes and prods. Finally, he looks me in the eyes. “It’s not broken. You’ll have to ice it a lot for the next few days, but that’s fine because you’ll have nothing else to do since you’re grounded.”

  I just nod. He leans against the sink and crosses his arms in front of his wide chest. “You and Sadie left here, laughing and smiling. You were going to Cat’s for a girls’ night. How did that end in you punching that Hendricks kid?”

  “A bunch of people showed up at Cat’s, and it turned into a kind of party,” I explain. His expression says he’s not buying it. I keep talking, explaining the whole thing with a little less detail than we gave Dixie. When I’m done, Dad sighs again.

  “Winona Skye, I am disappointed in you,” he says softly, and that makes my heart hurt me more than my knuckles do. “Violence is never acceptable. Unless you are in danger of being assaulted, then kick him in the nuts or whatever else you have to do.”

  I try not to smile at that, but he’s been telling us girls that advice for a few years now and it’s so awkward it makes me want to laugh. He clearly isn’t in the mood for giggles. “But you never need to get violent to defend your brother. He’s perfectly capable of defending himself. I know you know that.”

  “Dad, Holden Hendricks has been bullying me all summer long,” I say. “He says the worst things to me. He picks on the way I look. He’s just a completely horrible person and I guess I just finally snapped.”

  He seems to think that over for a minute. He frowns and then the gleam in his eye turns sympathetic. “Winnie, your own insecurities are why you let him get to you,” he says and gives me a smile, but I’m instantly upset by his words. The fact that I’m not as confident as my siblings already feels like a fault and when he mentions it, I feel worse about it than normal. “You’re a beautiful, bright, good kid. You don’t give yourself enough credit. You let his words mean something. And you’re also empathetic and kind, and you let him take that from you tonight.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say and I’m suddenly on the verge of tears. I hate letting him down. He pulls me into a hug.

  “To be honest, I might have done the same thing when I was your age if someone was picking on me that much,” he says softly and he squeezes me. “But the thing is, which I only know now because I’m older, kids your age are usually mean or aggressive for a reason. It’s rarely because they want to be that way. It’s usually a reaction, a defense mechanism or coping skill, for something they can’t handle themselves.”

  He lets me go. “Head to bed. I’m going to refill the ice tray so you’ll have some in the morning. You’ll need i
t.”

  “Thanks, Dad. Love you.”

  As I start up the stairs I hear him chuckle. “Love you too, slugger.”

  1

  Winnie

  Someone is awake and walking around the cottage, but I don’t bother to find out who. I just stay in my dad’s rocking chair, holding my now cold cup of coffee, staring out at nothing. There’s nothing about the screened-in porch that protects me from the chilly predawn Maine air but despite that I’m in only a T-shirt and thin pajama pants. The numbness the cold is creating in my limbs matches the numbness I’ve been feeling inside for the last five days. Since my father died.

  “You can’t sleep either, huh?” Sadie says as she steps into the doorway from the living room and immediately wraps her arms around herself. “Holy crap, it’s freezing. You must be a Popsicle.”

  She disappears momentarily and comes back with two hand-knitted throw blankets from the living room. She hands one to me, but I don’t move to take it so she kind of tosses it in the air and it lands across my lap. She sits down in the rocking chair next to mine and wraps herself in the other blanket. We don’t speak for a few moments. We both just rock. I stare out through the screen at the empty street in front of the house and she stares at me.

  “You can talk to me, you know?” Sadie finally says, her voice low but a little shaky. Sadie has been the strongest of all of us since our dad was diagnosed with ALS a little over four years ago. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that she’s a nurse. She deals with illness and death just about every day so she is able to compartmentalize her emotions. I’m twenty-nine, a year and a half older than her, and I’ve never learned to do that.

  “Talking isn’t going to help,” I say in a scarily steady voice. “Nothing will help. It’s over. He’s gone.”

  She doesn’t respond right away. Her features are ravaged with pain, but she swallows it down and pulls her left hand out of her blanket cocoon just long enough to wipe a tear as it starts to fall. Sadie sniffs and takes a deep, slow breath. Then she nods. “This is why we should talk about it. Remember all the wonderful times we had with him.”