Make Me a Match

by Melinda Curtis

  “And when you don’t get that invitation?” Ty leaned forward in his chair.

  “I write another column. And then another one after that. And then another.” She stopped drowning the ice and rapped the skimmer on the water. Small rapid pats that perhaps beat back the pain. “Business associates, friends, even the guards at their security gate, they mention my weekly columns to my parents. For that moment, I’m a buzzword among Mother’s financial report. I’m remembered before my father’s mergers and acquisitions meeting. For a moment I’m as relevant as their company’s stock price.”

  “Why does it matter?” he asked. The force of his words plowed through her, pulled her attention back to him. Just like he’d intended.

  She scrambled up, knocking the bucket backward, dropping the skimmer on the ice. “Haven’t you wanted to matter? To someone?”

  “Every day.” He pushed out of his camp chair, stepped toward her. They weren’t so very different after all. He wanted to matter to someone. Her. “Why do they still matter?”

  “I have to matter.” She thrust her hands into her hair as if that action alone would contain the truth. She watched him, her brown eyes wild, unsteady. “I have to matter to them because then I’ll know I wasn’t a mistake.”

  He crowded into her, sliding his arm around her waist, pulling her against him. Her hands dropped to his chest, fisting against his sweater. “I cannot be a mistake, Ty.”

  Ty set his hand beneath Kelsey’s chin and tipped her face up. “You were never that.”

  And if he hadn’t taken a puck to his head for all the wrong reasons, he would have framed her face with his hands. Captured her mouth beneath his and devoured her in his own way, in his own time. He’d make the longing in her heart match his own. Beat for beat.

  But he had taken the puck.

  Kelsey stepped back, as he’d known she would. “I have a different voice with you. I’m different. With you. Or I was.”

  Maybe she could be again. Maybe he could actually get things right this time, if not for Gideon and Coop, then for her. He hadn’t meant to give up his last secret, but perhaps she could use it more than he could. The matchmaking was a bust. Whatever happened from here, he couldn’t blame it on his past. “You came here for a headline. Let me give you one.”

  Her eyes flashed with need—the need for her parents’ approval. But there was something else there. Reluctance. No matter what had happened between them, what had gone wrong, they had a bond.

  She was better off without any ties to him. She was destined to be an investigative reporter. And his confession would give her another career boost.

  The need in her eyes gave way to confusion, then clarity. Anger edged her tone; defiance stiffened her stance. “I don’t have a headline.”

  “You will now.” He scrubbed his palms over his face, trying not to see something more in her gaze that wasn’t there: longing that matched his own. “I had a different experience in junior league when I left K-Bay. You remember when I left. We shared a few texts, maybe a phone call or two after I first arrived.”

  She gripped the back of the chair and squeezed her eyes closed. The reporter in her wanted his confession no matter how much the woman in his arms didn’t want to hear it.

  “I had a family legacy to defy.” He’d gotten out of K-Bay and cut all contact from home, thinking it was his one chance to make it. “I met a bunch of new guys. They warned me I’d never turn professional without juicing. And the PEDs I injected into my veins, well, those would be my insurance.”

  Her head jerked up; that whiskey color swirled through her eyes and settled into something harder, less welcome.

  “There’s the reporter. Hard to contain her, isn’t it? Ever hungry for the corrupt parts.” Ty bent down, picked up her car fob and stuffed it into his pocket.

  Silence settled around them. Not a calm like watching the world wake inside the first snowfall of the season, but more like that pause before a fireworks launch on the Fourth of July. Anticipation charged the air; promise pulsed through the plywood walls.

  “I was out before I was ever in. I refused the surprise drug test I knew I’d fail.” Coop and Gideon weren’t around to watch his back. No one had told him to store his clean urine. No one had told him to stay away from bars and bad guys when he was on steroids. Not to mention a couple of women whose closest acquaintances included a known bookie and die-hard gamblers. “My coach might have given me a second chance on the drug test. But the rumors had started about me and cheating, and those my coach couldn’t overlook. I couldn’t even say for certain that I wasn’t guilty of agreeing to throw a game or two. Everybody knew I needed the money. Still, steroids, beer and any type of booze I could get into a shot glass tend to muddy one’s mind and distort one’s memories.”

  Kelsey had slapped him that night. She’d wanted to surprise him and found him instead in a bar with his former teammates. She’d called him a drunk like his father. Accused him of infidelity like his father. The only person Ty had cheated on that night had been himself. But Kelsey had yelled. Cursed. Railed.

  Now she held herself still like a deer before a gunshot. The stiff set to her lips blocked her voice. But it was the pale cast to her skin, as if his words punctured so deep inside her it made the rage clutch his own throat. Man, he hated himself.

  “Which brings us back to my accident. After I was released from the team, I went to the bar and provoked several patrons into a pickup game of sorts. I had to prove I wasn’t the cheater everyone believed I was.” He crammed his hands into his pockets, smashed her keys in his fist. “I bargained with fate that night. Bargained with any deity that’d listen. If I stopped the first shot, I was meant to be in the pros. If I stopped the second, I was innocent. If I stopped the third, I wasn’t my father.” Except he was just like him. He’d gambled that night exactly as his old man had. And like his old man, he’d lost. “The first bounced off the ice and shattered my right temple, the second broke two ribs and the third left a hairline fracture on my shin.”

  He hadn’t seen that forlorn expression on her face since her parents had left her alone with the housekeeper on Thanksgiving. That night she’d reached for him. Tonight she reached for the chair.

  “Later I told myself you betrayed me with your articles. But the truth is much more simple than that. I betrayed myself.”

  “Now I know.” Her voice dipped low, part rebuke, part disbelief. “And the matchmaking business?”

  “All about a bet.” Ty crushed a chunk of ice beneath his boot, grinding it beneath his heel. “Winners get jobs in the Lower 48 with one of Coach’s farm teams.”

  “So that’s it.”

  Her steady gaze locked on to him as if she’d sighted him through a bow-and-arrow scope. Now he was the one hunted.

  “Your life is lies and illusions, Ty. You’re a shadow of a man, surviving instead of living, and all inside the ghost of your father.”

  “The matchmaking isn’t about him.” Ty kicked a bucket out of his path, knocking his fishing pole into the hole. He’d knock the hut into the lake if it’d stop her pursuit.

  “It’s always been about your father,” she said. “How come you don’t get a job in the Lower 48 if you win the bet?”

  Ty watched his favorite pole bob in the water. “I never said...”

  She cut him off. “Coach will offer you a job. You don’t intend to take it, out of some type of misplaced penance.”

  He lifted his chin. “That isn’t the point.”

  “No, the point is that you never intended to tell them the truth. You’ll win this bet, send Coop and Gideon on their way and make some excuse as to why you can’t go.”

  She knew him too well. “What’s the problem with that?”

  “Nothing, except you’ve just become the man you swore you’d never be—your father.” She circled the ice h
ole and stepped toward him. “And I don’t think you ever want to be free.”

  “Then, take the headline, Kelsey. Take it and take me down with it.”

  “I’m sure you’d like that. You’d have someone to blame again,” she said. “Wouldn’t want failure to be your fault and have everyone know it.” She thrust out her hand, palm up. “Give me my keys.”

  She held his stare, her expression as set as the frozen lake he stood on. He didn’t move. She didn’t flinch. No parting shots were volleyed. Ty dropped her keys into her palm. She pushed him out of the way and raced outside.

  The wooden door slammed against the frame, bounced open and slammed shut once more. The sound like the thwack of a puck leaving the blade of a stick. Except this time the puck hadn’t leveled him. Kelsey’s words had pummeled him enough.

  She’d wanted him to forgive himself. She wanted him to be free of his past.

  He scrubbed his fingers through his beard and tugged.

  Now she’d given him a choice.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  COOP HAD PREACHED that the guys in K-Bay needed cleaning up. The men had paid for shaves and haircuts and received a new outlook as a bonus. Ty had gone to the barbershop after Kelsey’d left the ice hut, even sat in the chair, but he’d stopped before completely losing his identity. As for his outlook, he planned to pick that up after he’d faced his two best friends and Coach.

  He pushed open the door to the Bar & Grill and stepped inside, stopping to roll his shoulders and shake out his arms. Hoping to dislodge the doubt and focus his courage.

  He went to the end of the bar and claimed one of their usual lunch-hour seats. When he pushed away the jar of bar mix, the one he normally devoured by the handful, his friends exchanged questioning looks.

  “Did Kelsey fall in the ice hole this morning?” Gideon smoothed his red tie down the front of his dress shirt.

  Ty blinked, rubbed his chin. “What?”

  “You look like you did that time when Janie dumped you right before our tournament game and the Muskies scored that buzzer beater on you to take the whole thing.” Coop tossed some bar mix into his mouth and chewed, cocking an eyebrow at him. “Not one of your better days.”

  “Neither is this one.” Ty scratched his cheek. The scrape of his nails against his almost bare skin was going to take some getting used to. Clearly his friends weren’t ready to comment on his changes. But he had something they’d react to. And it was a blow best given direct and swift. “Kelsey left this morning with her story.”

  “Knew you’d control the situation.” Gideon opened his laptop, seemingly unimpressed. “Did she tell you where we should look for different women?”

  “It’s not the story you’re expecting.” Ty rubbed his stomach, his muscles tightening as if readying for the counterpunch he knew was coming. One tap to the goalpost had always set his position on the ice. He’d learned to trust his peripheral vision. Even now, without a goalpost, he knew Coach was readying his shot just outside the crease.

  Coop lowered the glass jar of bar mix. “What story is it?”

  “You told her about the bet.” Gideon peered at him over his laptop screen, his eyes narrowing. No doubt he was already running the angles and equations to keep their bet in good standing with Coach.

  “I gave her the truth.” Ty rolled his shoulders again and touched his face. God help him, his skin felt cold beneath his fingers. Almost clammy. Like the touch of a ghost. You’re living inside the ghost of your father. Not anymore. Not if he could help it. “Now I’m giving it to you three.”

  The volume was lowered on the TV behind Ty. Read and react, boys. Coach was reading, but not yet reacting. Coop wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and looked as if he was going to speak.

  Ty pulled a weathered letter out of his pocket, the one that said he’d violated the drug policy and had been released from the team. He slapped it against the bar between his friends. Cold air drafted around his face, sliding beneath his chin and finger walking a chill across his chest. Coop and Gideon leaned forward to read. Other than several muttered curses, his friends remained silent. Coach picked up a beer stein to dry, but never reached for the paper, never looked.

  Gideon sat back, crossed his arms over his chest. “You never mentioned anything about drug use when you came home to recover from your accident.”

  “Not exactly the sound bite I wanted to lead with.” Ty faced his friends, flexed his fingers. He’d never felt this uncomfortable in his skin. Even when he’d watched his father fish from the bay, he’d never felt as if he’d been wrapped in a thousand barbs.

  “Does Kelsey have a copy of this letter?” Gideon asked.

  “Kelsey,” Ty said and shook his head. Hadn’t he given her enough? Those cold spikes sank into his chest, squeezed around his heart. He hadn’t given her everything—like his heart. “No, but she knows the truth about the failed drug test.”

  “Still, anything she writes is only conjecture without proof.” Gideon tapped his finger on the paper, again seeming to work through a solution in his mind.

  Coop rolled the glass jar between his palms, glanced from Ty to the letter and then back to Ty. “But that isn’t all of it.”

  Ty gripped the bar, stiffening against those barbs coiling into his muscles. He met his best friend’s gaze, readied the next slap shot. The next direct hit. “The accident wasn’t an accident. I challenged some guys at the local bar to take the shots on me.”

  Gideon’s palm flattened on the paper as he said, “You’re telling me you planned on getting pummeled with three pucks at over sixty miles per hour without any gear.”

  Ty grimaced; even his scar pulled tighter against his cheek. “I had to show I wasn’t a cheater. And I’d planned to block those shots.”

  “At the same time?” Coop set the jar on the bar top with a decided smack. Ty refused to let his head drop onto his chest as Coop put two and two together. “You convinced them to shoot at the same time.”

  Gideon frowned and looked over at Coach. “Pour us a round of something from the top shelf.”

  “You never came to us,” Coop accused.

  “I’d ruined our futures and became a possible cheat and criminal in less than seventy-two hours. What was there to talk about?”

  “We would have stopped those shots. Pulled your wasted butt off the ice and brought you home,” Gideon said.

  “I know.” Ty risked a glance at Coach. He was relaxed, his arms loose, his expression passive as he set three whiskey glasses out. He’d be like that every time they lost a game because of their own stupidity. Until they’d gotten into the locker room, and then he’d react.

  Ty looked back at his friends. “I can’t change the past, but I can change the future. Coach, I want to alter the bet. They go to the Lower 48 with four matches.”

  “The bet stands.” For the first time since Ty entered the bar, Coach met his gaze.

  But this wasn’t locker-room Coach. Yes, the anger in Coach’s scowl and the challenge in his unwavering stare were the same. But the force behind Coach’s words punched into Ty like a well-placed uppercut cracking his ribs. And Coach had one more blow.

  “No, Ty Porter, you don’t get to use a newspaper story to cheat your way out of our bet.”

  “But I am a liar and probably a cheat and definitely a former steroid abuser. Those aren’t exactly the best qualities in a matchmaker.” Or best friend. Or partner. Kelsey agreed—she’d taken a bunch of words and a byline over him.

  “Too bad.” Coach poured whiskey into a tumbler, then added several ice cubes. “Nobody cares about your past but you. It’s what you do in the now that matters, just like you said.”

  “When Kelsey runs that story, the old charges and the old rumors are going to surface.” Ty slammed his fist on the bar. First Kelsey and now Coach. Why wasn’
t anyone doing what he expected today? He noticed Gideon’s tie, making sure it was red. Gideon only wore red on Thursdays. Everything in K-Bay was as it should be. “No one wants a morally bankrupt matchmaker.”

  “Then, you best get your matches made before that story hits the front page of the Sunday edition.” Coach pushed into his space, chest to chest. “Or do you intend to let your boys down again?”

  “Coach, enough,” Coop said, his voice a plea and also a warning.

  “The bet stands.” Coach smacked his open palms on the bar. “Any questions?”

  Ty stuffed his frustration back down his tight throat. Yelling at Coach only ever earned another dozen push-ups. And he ached enough already.

  Gideon rubbed the back of his neck and looked around the group, his gaze finally landing on Ty. “You in?”

  And like that, everything inside him settled. Those barbs retracted. He drew his first decent breath since he couldn’t remember when. And his anger stalled like a puck shot without enough momentum.

  Only two words, but likely the most meaningful throughout Ty’s life. They’d first been issued during their fateful dodgeball war against their fifth-grade nemesis. And they’d thrown down the dare at every challenge and every obstacle since then. The night of the accident had been the only time Ty hadn’t looked to his friends for help. Only now did he truly understand his mistake. These were the words that said, “I have your back. You’re family. I forgive you.” Nothing more was ever needed.

  Ty remained still, shifting only his eyes toward Coop.

  Coop repeated Gideon’s words. “You in?”

  “Let’s do this.” And finally he released his grip on the bar.

  “Last I checked, this was a bar, not a therapist’s office.” Coach pointed at each one of them. “Now if you need to hug it out, take it outside so I can get ready for the evening.”

  Coop rose, slapped his palm on Ty’s shoulder and squeezed. “I call dibs on taking the next slap shot on you.”

  Ty straightened, met his friend’s gaze. “Name the time.”