“Are you sure you’re good to give Everly a ride home?” I ask Ash.
“For the third time,” he says, “It’s no problem.”
“Thank you.” I’m sweating bullets and it isn’t from the hockey game I just played. Piper is here. She came. She stayed.
I head out of the locker room. Everly and Piper are waiting for me. My sister smiles and lifts her hand. “Nice game, bro.”
“Thank you.” My gaze slides to Piper. “Hey.”
Her dark blue eyes look almost black when she’s angry…and she’s angry.
I turn my attention back to Everly as Ash walks out to meet us. I jut my chin toward him. “Ash is going to give you a ride back to the house. I won’t be long.”
“Okay.” Everly covers a yawn and glances at Piper. “See you tomorrow.”
“Bye.” Piper waves.
When they’re gone, I take a step closer. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Me neither.” She gestures around the hallway where photos of the team line the walls. “This was your small conflict?”
“My job requires late hours some nights. Did you enjoy the game?”
Instead of answering, she asks, “What am I doing here?”
“I wanted to see you, talk about Everly.”
“You played me, and you dragged your sister in the middle of it.”
“That’s not…” I trail off and my brows pull together in confusion. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention. I wanted to talk to you before the team heads out on our next road games and I thought you might like to sit next to someone you knew. That’s all.”
Some of the fight leaves her, but I can tell she’s still mad.
“Let me take you to dinner. Anywhere you want. It’s the least I can do. I don’t want to think about you being pissed at me the entire time I’m gone.”
She cocks a brow as if to say, what about the last four years?
“Please? I really do want to chat about Ev.”
“Just drinks. I ate half of the concession stand.”
One side of my mouth pulls up in a grin. “Drinks are perfect.”
We walk a few blocks from the arena to a quieter bar. I order a beer and she gets wine. It’s surreal being out with her like this, even if she is keeping a foot of distance between us at all times. We were only kids when we dated so we never went out to bars or restaurants and drank together. Hell, even if we had been old enough, I was stupid broke.
She turns the wineglass by the stem slowly, keeping her gaze forward. Angling my body in her direction, I study her. Her hair is longer, but the same shade of dark brown, and so thick I want to run my fingers through it. She still looks so much like the girl I fell in love with all those years ago, I have to remind myself that this one isn’t mine even though my fingers burn to touch her.
She catches me staring at her. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re cataloging all the ways I’m different since the last time you saw me.”
“The opposite actually. You look exactly the same. It’s like no time has passed.”
“Except it has. I’m not the same girl I was then.”
“I get that. I’m not the same guy either. I’m really sorry about the way things ended, Piper. I only wanted the best for you. Even if it wasn’t me.”
Her eyes fall closed and her body trembles. “Why is your sister living with you, Tyler?”
Right to it, I guess. “She showed up on my doorstep a month ago. She was having a hard time in Iowa, got suspended from school a couple of times until they told her not to bother coming back, and she came to me wanting a place to start over. She begged me not to send her back.”
Piper’s face softens. “Suspended for what?”
“Threatening another student.” I wince. “She had an issue with a girl in her class. The girl was bullying Everly, and Ev told her she was going to cut off all her pretty hair with a knife.”
A laugh escapes Piper’s lips. It starts quiet and builds. She covers her mouth with a hand. “Oh my gosh. Did she?”
“No.” I crack a small smile. “And I know Everly, or I’m starting to again. It had to have been bad for her to get to that point. Plus, the knife she had on her was like a million years old. It’s this old pocket knife that belonged to our grandfather. I don’t think she could have hurt the girl if she’d tried. But the school had a zero-tolerance policy with weapons, and it wasn’t like it was the first time she’d gotten in trouble.”
“Wow.”
I nod.
“What about your mom? What did she say about Everly moving here?”
“Not a lot. She’s fed up, basically washed her hands of it all. She thinks Everly needs time away to get a new perspective.”
“So, you became her guardian.”
“More or less. She’s eighteen now, but she still needs someone to look out for her. I’m not much, but I can at least give her a safe place and make sure she graduates high school.”
Piper blows out a breath. “I want to hate you.”
The admission doesn’t surprise me, but still knocks the air from my lungs. “I figured as much.”
“I want to hate you,” she says again. “But I think what you’re doing for your sister is really great.”
A rough laugh slips from my lips. “I don’t know if she’s any better off with me. I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“But you’re trying. You haven’t given up on her.”
The praise makes me uncomfortable because it took me too long to realize I was acting like her annoyed big brother instead of the parent-figure she needed. “No. Everly is great. She’s smart and tough. She hasn’t had the easiest life and I basically abandoned her when I left to play hockey. This is the least I can do.”
Piper falls quiet. The tension lingers between us, and I don’t know how to dissolve it.
“Thank you for telling me. I like Everly. She reminds me a little of myself at that age after everything happened with you and then my dad.”
My jaw tightens. It was shitty timing that Piper’s dad had a stroke a few months after we broke up. It gutted me to know she was hurting, and I couldn’t be there for her. It was the one time I reached out in all these years.
“I was sorry to hear about your dad.”
“Thank you. I got the flowers you sent. It was kind of you.” She takes a sip of wine before continuing. “I will look out for her the best I can. I only have her in one class, though. Has she been in any other trouble aside from the backdrop debacle?”
“Isn’t that enough?” I shake my head. “No, she’s mostly been staying out of trouble, but she’s constantly pushing boundaries, and I hate her boyfriend.”
“She’s been here a month and already has a boyfriend? I haven’t seen her with anyone at school.”
“He’s older—twenty, has no idea what he wants out of life, but he and his buddies are moving to New York soon because ‘that’s where things are really happening.’” I say the words with all the disdain I feel. “He’s an absolute punk. I can’t wait until he’s gone.”
Piper’s mouth curves into a smile. “You sound like a worried father.”
“I am worried. I’m gone a lot and I have no idea what I’m doing. This is her last chance, I know that. It’s a lot of pressure.”
“She’s lucky to have you.”
“Thank you for saying that.” I let my knee brush against her thigh. “I didn’t ask you to dinner only to talk about Everly or bitch about her boyfriend.”
“No?” she asks, sarcasm dripping from the word. She finishes her wine and pushes the glass away from her. “Why did you ask me?”
“Because I’ve missed you every day for four years and because now that I’ve seen you again, I can’t imagine another day going by where I can’t.”
Her eyes widen in surprise, but she shields her expression almost as quickly. I don’t know when she did it, but I notice the cash on the bar as she moves to stand. “I should go. It’s getting late.”
With every inch she puts between us, I can feel her slipping away from me forever.
“Piper, wait.” I run after her, catching her as she pushes out the front door of the bar.
I wrap my fingers around her upper arm, and she stops suddenly, jerking her arm away.
Tears swirl in her dark eyes. “No. You don’t get to say things like that to me. You and I have been over for a very long time. I moved on. I have a boyfriend. I’m happy.”
I shove my hands in my pockets and swallow the lump in my throat. “I figured you’d want nothing to do with me, but I still had to tell you. I messed up, Pipes.”
“It’s a little late to be figuring that out.”
“I’ve known it for years, but I still wasn’t in a position to be the guy you deserve. I’m still not.”
“Then why tell me now?”
“Because you’re here.” I stop myself from reaching out and touching her again, but God, I want to feel her. “I didn’t think I believed in fate, but then you walked into that principal’s office and my heart stopped.”
She pulls her keys from her purse and a steely determination settles over her. “I will keep an eye on your sister because I like her and I want her to succeed, but you and I will never be more than acquaintances.”
“Got it.” My throat burns on the words.
She hesitates, maybe waiting for me to object but she already stomped on my heart enough for one night, so I keep my mouth shut.
And then she leaves me standing on the sidewalk.
I go back inside to pay for my drink and then head home. Everly is already in bed, but I find Ash in the living room playing video games.
He takes one look at me and hands me the second controller. “Wanna talk about it?”
“Not a lot to say. She still hates me.”
“You got some set of balls on you. I told you she was going to be pissed that you tricked her into watching you play.”
“I didn’t want to trick her,” I say, but I’m not sure that’s one hundred percent true. In my defense, I knew if I told her I had a game and couldn’t meet until late, she would have blown me off. And as brutal as it was, I needed to talk to her, to tell her I miss her, and yeah, fill her in on things with Everly. It gives me a little peace to know that Piper is there at school with her.
“Did you say what you needed to say?” Ash asks.
“I guess.” I sit back and sink into the couch cushion. “I thought I’d feel better.”
“And you don’t?”
“Not even a little bit. She told me we will never be more than acquaintances. She’s seeing someone. All but told me to fuck right the hell off.”
“Sorry, man.”
I close my eyes and picture her face. “That can’t be it for us. I refuse to accept it.”
“Then don’t. The idiot she’s dating won’t last.”
My eyes fly open. “You know him?”
He gives me a sheepish smile. “I, uh, might have scoped her out online.”
I shake my head. “Stop creeping on my girl.”
“I’m not creeping. I just had to see for myself.”
“And?”
“You’re right. She’s hot. Like way too hot for you.”
Laughter builds in my chest and a little of the tension from the night fades.
“You never looked her up in all these years?”
“No, never.” I deleted my account years ago after the first time she posted a smiling picture on her page with another guy. I knew I’d never survive following her and watching her move on. And for the most part it worked, I survived. I just haven’t exactly moved on. Now, I don’t have any accounts that aren’t managed by someone else.
I let out a breath that puffs out my cheeks. “What do I do now?”
“I don’t know,” Ash says. “I guess the same thing you’ve been doing…wait for your moment.”
