I sat in the locker room before the game, cracking my knuckles, my mind blank and empty. I was way early for the game. I needed to get into my stuff before anyone could see my injuries. Coach poked his head in the door and spotted me.
“I thought you were here. You missed dinner,” he said.
I hadn’t wanted to go back to the house after school today, seeing as Lily and her mom were going to the airport. I couldn’t bring myself to watch her leave for the campus visit. She was going to go there and love it. She was going to accept the offer and make plans to move, and soon, I’d never see her again. I felt frantic when I thought about it, and I couldn’t afford that right now. If I’d been home, I was pretty sure I would have snuck out to let the air out of her mom’s tires so they couldn’t make their flight. It was safer to stay at school.
“Hungry? I’ve got dinner covered.” Coach smiled at me from the locker room entrance. “You can’t play on an empty stomach.”
Right. I hadn’t eaten. It was weird how things with Lily had made everything else pale in importance.
“I didn’t know you cooked, Coach,” I observed as I followed him to his office.
He let out a bark of laughter. “I don’t, but my ordering skills are top-notch.”
Two boxes of takeout pizza sat on his desk, and the smell made my stomach growl.
“Is this the dinner of champions?”
“You’re young and fit, it doesn’t matter what you eat, only that you do,” he replied with a grin.
I sat across from him, and he put on the TV that was mounted on his wall and brought up the latest footage we had of our opponents.
“Come on, let’s study the competition one more time while we eat,” he suggested.
I grabbed the pizzas.
We ate, and I watched the game. It was nice. I wondered if this was what normal kids did with their fathers. I’d never had anything even close to it.
Coach checked his phone now and then and finally smiled at a message he got.
“They’re at the airport and checking in,” he reported.
I nodded, my belly clenching at the update from Lily. She hadn’t messaged me. I had a long way to go to get back into her good graces, it seemed, and it was all I could think about.
“Aren’t you worried she’ll want to really go there? It’s so far away,” I remarked after a moment.
Eric sighed, and I knew it was something he’d wrestled with a lot.
“If she wants to go, I can’t stop her. I won’t stop her. I love her, and I just want her to be happy.”
“Even if that means only seeing her during the holidays?” I hoped my desperation didn’t sound too obvious. It certainly felt fucking obvious.
“Even then. When you love something, let it go, or whatever the adage is.”
My instincts rebelled against the very thought of that. I loved Lily, or was as close to love as someone like me could be, and I was more and more against the idea of letting her go. If you loved someone, surely you held on to them through thick and thin. That made a lot more sense to me.
“Are you nervous about tonight?” Coach asked me.
I shrugged, the game less on my mind than Lily was. “It’ll be fine. I might not end up going to HHU, who knows?”
“What the hell? Of course you’re going to HHU,” Coach said dismissively.
“Maybe I was thinking of somewhere with a warmer climate,” I muttered and took a long drink from my water bottle.
“A warmer climate for hockey? HHU is perfect for you, Cade, and we both know it.”
“It’s not so crazy to want to see the country, is it?” I offered after a moment, smiling at him to break the rising tension. I could hardly say to him that since his daughter was moving across the country, and I had to be with her, and making her stay was apparently unloving, that it looked like I was just going to need to go after her, wherever she went.
“That’s what vacation is for,” Coach deadpanned. “Here, at HHU, I’ve got you, Cayden. Together, we can get you into the NHL. You move schools, you’ll work with coaches who have different favorites, who aren’t your fan, for whatever reason, and you risk getting sidelined.”
“I know,” I muttered, shoving another piece of pizza in my mouth so I didn’t have to speak.
“You should stay here, work hard, work smart, and get drafted. Then you can do whatever you want with your career. But get there first.”
“I know,” I repeated, unable to say anything else.
The whole truth was that going to HHU, going pro and all the riches and celebrity that came with it, had lost its shine now that Lily wouldn’t be there. It felt like she was leaving me behind, and suddenly, nothing else seemed to matter.
The game tonight was all anyone had been talking about for a week. Everyone knew there would be scouts there, and every single player on the team wanted a shot at catching their eye. For all the locals, it was a dream to play for the Hellions. Getting to stay in their beautiful small town of Hade Harbor and go to an internationally recognized university was a dream come true for most students. Just not Lily, apparently.
We shot onto the ice before the game and started to warm up. My muscles burned as I pushed myself, forcing blood through my tired body. Ever since that night on the cliff top, I had barely slept. Now, it was finally time to get into HHU, the goal I’d come to Hade Harbor with, and I was distracted. The cause of my distraction was sitting on a plane, moving farther and farther away from me with every moment.
When the first buzzer went off, I quickly saw that this wouldn’t be an easy game. The defensemen made for me, quickly blocking me off. I was clearly the target to watch in this game, and usually that would only fire me up, but my distraction pulled my attention away. Not only that, but every time one of the hefty defensemen slammed me into the boards on my wounded side, all the air left my lungs. Josh was also playing, which was yet another distraction. The fucker hadn’t dared look me in the eye since the cliff top.
We played well, but it was a fair fight, and I wasn’t at my best. By the end of the first period, we were down two.
The first intermission flew past, and we were into the second play. I was banged into the boards more often than I could count and was flagging. There was too much riding on the game. The pressure was getting to me, and I was choking. Or maybe it wasn’t just the pressure but the thought of losing the little redhead who held my battered heart in her small hands. The pain in my side was also getting worse. Gratefully, I skated off for a shift change at my turn and lowered myself to the bench. Josh followed and had no choice but to sit next to me. We hadn’t spoken at all about that night at Black Lake trailer park.
“The way I see it, I can run interference on their left defenseman. He’s a big bastard. They won’t expect that, and it’ll give you a window to break through,” Josh suddenly said to me.
I turned to him, surprised by his words.
He was nodding, studying the game. “It’ll work, and as soon as we even the score, we can change the tide.”
“What, you want to win that badly? You know the scouts are here to see me. I’d have thought that losing tonight would suit you fine.”
A muscle clenched in Josh’s jaw, and he shook his head. “That’s not me. It’s not who I want to be, anyway…and I’m no good at apologies, and I sure as hell didn’t owe you one when I started all that shit, but I owe you one now, and this is it. If you want it, that is.”
He turned to me and met my eyes for the first time since that night at Uncle Jack’s.
A new respect for the guy grew in me. Sure, I was still mad as hell, but Lily wanted it to stop, and the fucker was basically apologizing.
“I want it. Let’s do it,” I replied finally.
He grinned. He looked like a kid when he smiled.
“Come on, then. Seems like there’s someone in the audience who came here to see you win, not lose.”
“You’re wrong. She’s not here.”
Josh gave me a grim grin. “Isn’t she?”
Something dangerously hopeful shifted in my chest. I twisted around, but I couldn’t see from where I was sitting. My leg bounced, my skate cutting into the ice as I waited impatiently to get back out there.
When our shift came, we shot onto the ice. I turned and looked behind the coach’s bench. Brilliant red hair met my gaze, sending my heart thumping hard.
She’s here. She’s come. She isn’t in California. My thoughts jumped around like live wires in my head.
She’d just arrived and was in the act of taking her jacket off, standing and easy to make out. She stilled when her eyes connected with mine. Even from a distance, I could feel the moment she sensed my gaze on her. Suddenly, she dumped her jacket off her shoulders and twisted around. She was wearing a Hellion jersey.
It only took a second for the number on her jersey to register with me.
It was my number.
My girl had on my number, and she didn’t come here to see me lose.
I was Cayden West, and there was no way in hell I was losing with my girl watching.
No fucking way.
