by Maya Hughes
It wasn’t until his arms wrapped around my back and we stood there for a second that I realized what I was doing. I jerked back and untangled my arms from around him. The back of my neck felt like someone was holding a heating lamp up to it.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, glancing down at my sneakers. The cold sweat that had broken out all over my body made me shiver.
I flipped through the sheets of the small stack of neatly stapled papers and checked over the first few pages. The references were always the piece I hated doing the most, and he’d plunked it down in my lap, looking like it had been done perfectly.
He peered over at me and opened his mouth like he wanted to say something. The butterflies were back, but they’d brought some friends. There was a stampede going on in my stomach from one look from Declan.
“No worries. I figured if you had a heart attack during the semester, then I’d have to do all this by myself, and I’d rather we shoulder the burden together.”
I rolled my eyes and got my stuff from my room. We sat on the terrible sunken couch with my phone on the table, computer balanced on my lap. He emailed me a soft copy of the work he’d done, and we got down to it.
After a couple minutes my phone vibrated as notifications rolled in. They were texts. If something serious had happened, my mom would call. I ignored it and kept going through the paper.
Like a puppy, Declan was easily distracted. His gaze darted to the phone every time a message came in, and exactly like a puppy who gnawed on your favorite pair of shoes, he didn’t know how to not touch things that weren’t his. He picked up my phone.
“You know, you really should lock this. Got a hot date tonight?”
“Give me my phone.” I grabbed for it, but he unlocked it and held it up high, scrolling through the messages.
“What’s with the secrets? What do you have on here?” He stood up when I tried to swipe the phone from him.
“None of your business. I wouldn’t go through your phone.” Just when I thought he was okay, he had to pull something like this. I glanced at his legs. Maybe I could trip him, but with my luck he’d fall into the edge of the coffee table and die, and then I’d have to chop his body up and hide it all around campus.
“Here, go ahead.” He tugged his phone out of his pocket and threw it at me. I caught it out of reflex.
“I don’t want to go through your phone. Plus, it’s locked.”
“Wow, are these your parents?” He held the phone up and replayed their bungee jumping video.
“Yes, they are. Now give it back to me. And take your phone.” I thrust it at him, but he took two steps back, scrolling through my parents’ adventure thread.
“My password is 1-9-3-2.”
For a split second I was tempted to unlock it, but the possible dick pics and who knows what else that was probably on there dissuaded me, and I held it by the corner. Irritation bubbled up and threatened to overflow.
“Looks like your parents are pretty freaking cool daredevils, Books.” He handed my phone back to me, and I chucked his at him. He caught it against his hard-planed chest. “What happened to you?”
“Yeah, really easy to be a daredevil and start living your life again when you know you’re going to die,” I snapped. My eyes got wide with horror at what I’d just said. I sank back down onto the couch.
That little pill of bitterness had blindsided me. Tapping my phone against my hand, I tried not to let those old emotions boil over. But it was one of those days where it seemed like everything was hanging on by a thread.
“What do you mean, dying?” He gingerly sat on the couch next to me. Letting out a deep breath, I raked my hands through my hair. I hadn’t meant to blurt that out. All this time they had, they could have been living.
“He’s sick. He’s got ALS. After finally going back to work a couple years ago, in the spring he tripped a few times and then a few more. He used to hike mountains all the time. He was steady on his feet. Once he ended up in the ER needing stitches. That’s when they found out.”
There was a pause as my morbid life bomb detonated all over my apartment.
“That’s why you moved back.”
I peered over at him with a sad smile. The look on his face almost made me laugh.
“I’m sorry, Makenna. I shouldn’t have said what I said about you leaving Stanford.” He rested his hand on my knee and squeezed it.
“Sometimes life wants to kick you in the teeth when you’re already down. This was their bucket list trip. They’d planned it before. Years ago, but then things happened, and they were both out of it for a…while. The doctors have him on some meds, so he’s pretty much a hundred percent, but things can progress quickly. They wanted to do all this stuff while they still could.”
“When will they finish the trip?”
“Just before Thanksgiving. We’ll get to have that together, and then he goes to the doctor and who knows.” I shrugged.
“Is that why you’re pre-med?”
I jerked back and stared at him. “How did you know I was pre-med?”
“No one takes the course load you have unless they are. I might seem like a big buffoon sometimes, but I can be pretty observant.” He nudged my shoulder with his.
“It’s part of the reason.” Not wanting to go down this path with him, I shook my head and picked up my computer off the couch. “Enough chitchat. Stop trying to distract me. Let’s get down to business.” I gave him a weak smile and pulled the paper back up.
He let out a sigh and grabbed some of the papers off the table.
“Yeah, let’s do this.”
I didn’t like the warm fuzzies I got sitting beside Declan and how easy it would be to unload everything on him. I didn’t like it at all because I wasn’t supposed to feel this way about him. I wasn’t supposed to want his arms wrapped around me and holding me close. I wasn’t.
Well maybe a little…
13
Declan
The phone call came, and Heath and I dropped everything and headed into downtown Philly. Being spread out all over the country meant opportunities to see the other guys came few and far between, especially since Heath and I were the only ones who hadn’t made it to the pros yet.
Ford and Colm left junior year and Emmett even earlier, during sophomore year. We were shocked he ended up in college at all; he’d been so secretive about what the hell he was doing after high school graduation. Well, other than his plans to marry Avery, but we all knew how that panned out. Everyone had their hang ups. Times when life was like, “haha you thought things were going to go your way.”
Emmett had been traded, this time to LA, where he was enjoying his enforcer status full tilt. It was surreal watching the guys on TV out there with the rest of their teams living the dream we’d all talked about in high school. They’d done it. Heath and I were pulling up the rear and needed to nail this down. My Archer issues had gone on long enough. I was going to end this.
Walking into the stadium that dwarfed ours on campus, I got a chill down my back—and not from the Baltic temperatures inside. Getting out on the ice with Heath and Emmett would take some of the edge off not being a part of the team for now, but it wouldn’t be for much longer.
In only a few months it would be me walking down this tunnel to the locker room with tens of thousands of fans in the stands. My heart hammered as we stared at the empty stands around us. This was the first time I’d been here when it was empty. Something caught my eye in the sea of seats, and it was a slamming gut punch as the vision of Archer looming over me from up there dissolved like a horror movie villain.
“Would you two hurry up? I don’t have all day.”
We whipped around at the booming voice before breaking out into a smile.
“I’ve been training with Heath, so we’ll see who’s slow out there.” I dropped my bag and gave Em a hug, clapping him on the back.
“Damn, I feel bad for you. I’m surprised you can still feel your legs. I made the mistake of a
sking him to help me work out after senior year. I couldn’t walk for a week after the first session.” Em laughed, and Heath shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s not my fault you two can’t keep up. I mean, I make sure to only go at eighty percent when I’m working out with other people.”
I totally believed it. Heath was a laid-back dude everywhere except on the ice, he was an unrelenting beast out there. If it were possible to stack a team with eight Heaths’ you’d never even know what an opposing team scoring on you felt like. And it wasn’t just the skill, it was his endurance. He could go for what seemed like hours without stopping.
Em guided us back into the locker room, and we got changed before stepping out onto the one place where everything made sense. Our playground. Our training ground. The ice was our refuge.
“I can’t believe you’re a King again.” I pulled back my stick and released, sending the puck flying. The freezing air of the rink glided across my face as my blades sliced through the ice. Massive overhead lights lit up the whole area. A perk of being a star pro player.
“I thought once a King, always a King.” Emmett skated toward me, showering me in a spray of ice as he changed directions.
“Fucker!” I shouted after him and gave chase, digging in and pushing ahead. Heath was in his own world, basking in the impressive pros stadium as he whipped around the rink, going faster and faster with a stick in one hand and trading the puck back between his skates and the stick.
I caught up to Emmett and managed to get the puck away from him by slamming him up against the boards.
“Have you played against the Dynamic Duo yet?”
“Of course.” He grunted, pushing off the boards and going for the puck. “I played against them a few weeks ago. I went out to dinner with them and Liv. She and Grant are graduating from high school in a few weeks.” He skated backward, taunting me.
“Damn, seriously? Little Olive Oil and Grant are going to be in college.” Grant was Ford’s little brother. He and Liv had gone to Rittenhouse Prep together before Colm moved Liv up to Boston to go to boarding school while he went to college and then went pro.
“Not so much Olive Oil anymore. Colm would murder me if he heard me say this, but she’s actually a little hottie now.”
I scrunched up my face at that. It was hard to imagine the little beanpole eighth grader as anything but that.
“I’ll take your word for it.” Heath whipped past us, giving me the distraction I needed. I slid my stick between Em’s legs and grabbed the puck, racing toward my goal. Emmett’s skates sliced across the ice in pursuit, and I made a sharp turn to throw him off, but he wasn’t fooled and kept coming.
Changing tactics, I turned and threw my shoulder into him, smashing him against the glass. He pushed off the glass and darted after me as I dug deep and sank the puck into the back of the net.
“Looks like the college senior beat out the pro player.” I pumped my hands overhead and simulated the roar of the crowd.
“Tell that to my bank account.” Emmett grinned, resting his head on top of his hands on the stick.
“Like that wasn’t always the case. No other high school senior I knew could drop thirty grand on an engagement ring,” Heath called out from the edge of the rink. My chuckle died in my throat once I realized what Heath had said. Heath came to a stutter stop beside me as we waited for Emmett’s reaction.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to freak out. That was years ago. Dodged a fucking bullet, right? You tried to warn me.” The hard look in his eyes couldn’t hide the hurt there. Emmett whipped around and skated to the bench.
I punched Heath in the shoulder, and he winced, rubbing the spot.
“Relax,” he said, shooting me a look. Avery was a no-go when it came to any of us. I’d been the only one at the party where they broke up—no, that wasn’t even the right word. Imploded seemed more fitting, but that didn’t mean everyone else hadn’t heard in excruciating detail how things went down.
The gut punch of finding out your girlfriend of three years was cheating on you when you had an engagement ring in your pocket was seriously fucked. I’d never heard someone make a sound like he did that night, and I’d been hit by a puck in the nuts with no cup. He’d shattered his front door when he bolted, and everyone else in the party stood there in stunned silence.
We’d learned not to talk about her. Ever. If we did, he’d walk away. Mid-conversation, mid–car ride, it didn’t matter. Heath—it was always Heath and his loose lips—brought her up when we were driving back from Boston to see Colm and Ford play for in their first pro game, and Emmett almost jumped out of the moving car. He pulled on the handle as we approached a stoplight and left, finding his own way home.
It seemed that after nearly four years the wound still hadn’t fully healed. Who knew if it ever would. Memories of high school came back, and knowing Makenna now, some of her old annoying behavior changed in my mind. She wasn’t the stuck-up rich girl who always had to be right. Like Colm, whose parents were killed in a car crash during our senior year of high school, having money didn’t insulate you from the kinds of things some people didn’t recover from.
All the money in the world hadn’t kept her dad from getting sick, Colm’s parents from dying, or Emmett’s almost proposal from blowing up in his face. Growing up, I’d always thought the non-scholarship kids had it all, but I knew now that wasn’t true.
Archer walking out on us was probably the best thing that ever happened now that I saw what a colossal asshole he was. Sure, I’d messed up sophomore year trying to work a job to help Mom with some extra money and not passed a class or two, but it paled in comparison to how things could have shaken out.
We pushed ourselves out there until someone blew a whistle letting us know our time on the ice was over. Of course Heath was only just getting warmed up, but my legs were wobbly after the big push with those two. And it had never felt better. Being out there brought back all those feelings from high school. The invincibility. The promise. It had all been so much easier back then.
“I don’t know why you guys are even still here.” Emmett popped his head up from unlacing his skates when we stepped into the box.
“My mom is really hung up on me graduating. She never got to, and she’d really like me to get my degree before I start playing.” I shrugged and worked on my skates.
“You can come back later and play. There are seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds from Slovenia and stuff gliding right into those spots you two aren’t filling.”
Heath bent to get his skates off. “I’m working on my botany degree. Can’t come back later. It would mean leaving my work behind.”
“They’re plants, Heath. I’m pretty sure plants will still be around in a few years.”
“I like college. I have the rest of my life to play hockey, but this is a special time. Gotta soak that shit up.” We both stared at him, but he gathered up his stuff and left the box. He didn’t miss a step walking past us with our mouths hanging open. At this point he was used to everyone gawking at him when he dropped some weird-ass Heath wisdom on us.
Emmett and I burst out laughing as we followed behind him. I gave the ice one last look before turning to catch up with the guys. It would be me out there skating soon, under the lights with the roar of the crowd pushing me harder than ever before.
“Some things never change, huh?”
“I live with him; imagine how that is. You have no idea how many situations he walks into blindly and dodges every bullet like he’s got a superpower or something. He turns around like, oh, was that building on fire? Shrugs. It makes me want to punch him in the face and stand up and clap all the time.”
“I can imagine. I’ll try to come to one of your games. I think I’m back in the city sometime in November.”
“That would be awesome. Have a young upstart show you how it’s done.”
Emmett rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“How’s LA?” I called out as he grabbed a towel.
“It’s LA. Sunny. Warm. Hot women. Got an apartment. My dad’s out there sometimes.” He grimaced and pushed open the locker room door.
“Really? You see him?” Their relationship had always been distant at best. They didn’t even come to his graduation. It was part of the reason he got away with murder back in high school. Boatloads of money, a family name, and absentee parents were more than enough to get most people in a lot of trouble. But he’d kept things in line. The craziest thing he did was practically have Avery move in with him when she wasn’t watching her little sister.
He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t even see him when we lived in the same house together. You think he would deign to drive across town to see me? Hell no. I only found out because my mother’s assistant forwarded over their final divorce papers. Like I needed that shit. The only time I see him is when I have to deal with something with my trust we can’t do through the mail or assistants.”
“That sucks, man.”
“It is what it is.” He shrugged and grabbed a towel. I slid one off the tall stack of bleach white towels, and we headed into the shower. We each stepped into the frosted glass enclosed shower stalls. Talk about luxury surroundings.
We showered up and grabbed a cab to get some food.
A few people came up to say ‘hi’ and get a picture with Emmett or ask us about the upcoming season.
“You two have no idea what it’s like once you’re playing in the pros, man. You think this is fun? Wait until you are recognized everywhere, not just in your hometown.” He stretched his arms over the top of the booth, soaking up all the attention.
“You only say that because you’re a man whore.” Heath laughed and took a sip of his beer.
“Man whore would imply I sleep around. I don’t cheat. Not when I’m dating someone.”
