Chapter Sixteen
I adjusted the gold scarf around my neck and waved to Mom down the stands. She was holding an entire row of seats. April gave me a smile and patted the chair on the other side of her. Coffee in hand, I started toward them. Today was the semifinals round of playoffs for Gus.
The tingles in my fingers weren’t from the chilled temperature of the World Arena, but from knowing I’d see Josh. Every day for the last two weeks, he’d asked me out, and for the last two weeks, I’d avoided answering. He’d borrowed cups of sugar, found “lost” mail, and tapped out Morse code on our shared bedroom wall. I saw him in class, at practice, and ran into him at home, but I was never, ever alone with him. Being alone with Josh always led to me being naked. Not allowed. Besides, he’d held true to his threat and hadn’t kissed me in fourteen very long days.
What the hell was holding me back? Just the fear of the risk, of letting him all the way in and getting destroyed when I’d barely put myself back together.
Walking into class yesterday, I’d slid into my seat at the same time a leggy brunette perched on his desk. I kept my eyes on my notebook, pressing the date deeply into the paper as her giggle nauseated me. “Josh, I can’t wait to see you play tomorrow night. I bet you’ll score a goal just for me, huh?”
Vomit. This would be it. The moment I realized he’d finally grown tired of waiting for me to get my act together.
“I’m hoping to score a lot of goals, Scarlet.” Double vomit.
Her giggle was even more obnoxious than the first one. “Of course.” What the hell was she? Part hyena?
“And there’s only one girl I’m thinking about.” Why did he have to use that tone of voice? The one without flirting or chauvinistic shimmer? Why did he have to use the low, seriously sexy one he reserved for me, the one I couldn’t ignore . . . at her?
His hand reached across the aisle and captured mine. My gaze flew toward his, and I found him staring. My smile must have told Scarlet everything she needed to know, because she hopped right off his desk.
“Sorry, Ember! I didn’t realize . . . well, yeah!” She bounced back to her seat.
He didn’t drop my gaze. “I meant every word.”
“I know.” And I did.
“Gus is starting tomorrow.”
“Yeah, you’ve done amazing things with him.”
“He’s an amazing kid,” he countered. “December, about tomorrow—”
“Don’t.” My fingers cut into my palms around the pen. “Don’t ask again, not yet. There’s something in me that can’t tell you no, so just don’t.”
He kissed my hand, a quick brush of his lips against my palm, and dropped his hold.
I wanted him with a desperation that threatened to overwhelm my common sense, and I never allowed that to happen.
“Ember!” April’s voice snapped me back to the present.
I slid past Mom and took the seat next to April. We were two rows behind Gus’s bench, but the ice was empty. The boys had already warmed up and were in the locker room getting their pep talk. The arena was about halfway full, not bad for a pee-wee hockey tournament. If they won this game, it was on to the league championships.
“You didn’t bring me coffee,” my sister pouted.
“I didn’t realize you were coming.” I offered her mine, but she shook her head.
“It will give me an excuse to sneak out during second period and find a Starbucks.” She laughed and went back to playing on her iPhone.
I sipped my mocha and smiled at Mom, who returned it. Her skin was flushed, her eyes bright with excitement. She’d been looking forward to this game all week. Sitting with her on those wooden chairs felt like nothing had changed, almost like she had never left.
Her eyes drifted past me, and a wider smile graced her thin face. “Gwen! I saved you a seat!” She waved up to Mrs. Barton, and I cringed.
Riley’s mom slid past me, patting my shoulder. “So good to see you, Ember!” She gave me a little wink. “I brought you a present. Maybe you two could have a little talk?”
Oh no.
She did not.
April kept her head pointed at her phone, but slid her eyes my way with raised eyebrows. Her gaze landed above my head briefly, and her indrawn breath told me he was here. “You okay?” she mouthed at me.
I swallowed and tried to find a little bit of that grace Mom preached so heavily about within me. Be the better person, my ass.
“Hey, babe.”
Riley’s voice drenched me in familiarity. I didn’t bother looking up. Besides, the ice was fascinating, right? “Don’t call me that.”
He sat next to me. “Sorry, old habits and everything.”
“Right, and everything.”
“Ember, can we at least be civil?” He angled toward me.
“I’d tell you to f*ck right off, if I were Ember, but I’m allowed to say those things, seeing as I’m all grief-stricken and whatnot,” April answered from next to me, still engrossed in her phone.
Mom shot her a death glare.
I checked my watch. They’d take the ice any second now, and I’d be stuck next to Riley for hours in crappy, uncomfortable silence if I didn’t swallow my pride and make nice. The high road sucked. “We can be perfectly civil, Riley.”
He reached across the cup holder and held onto my hand. “I’ve missed you.”
I yanked my hand away from his. “I said civil, Riley. Don’t touch me.”
“Can you at least look at me?”
I turned, expecting my heart to break all over again, but oddly enough, it only twinged like a splinter. “Happy?” Not that he didn’t look good, because he did. Abercrombie perfect as usual, but there was something in those blue eyes that wasn’t normally there. Remorse?
“Not really, honestly. Not since you left.”
The announcer spared my speechlessness. “Your Colorado Tigers!” Cheers erupted around us as the boys skated out, raising their arms to the roof like they were already NHL stars. I jumped to my feet, calling out Gus’s name and clapping. He’d worked so hard to get here. I couldn’t be more proud of him.
The boys skated around the goal and back to stand in a straight line. Jagger walked onto the ice and into the box, followed by the head coach, and then my breath caught. Josh came out onto the ice and turned into the box. His black suit draped over the powerful angles of his body, complete with black shirt and gold tie. I had the most ludicrous vision of winding that tie over my hand and pulling him toward me.
His eyes skirted over the crowd before they locked onto me. I met his private smile with one of my own. One thing I craved almost as much as Josh himself was the peace, the serenity I felt when I was around him. Everything else melted away. Seeing him brought to mind all those horrible analogies in romance novels, like water in a drought, sunshine in winter, color in a world of gray. Yes, yes, yes. He was all of that and more.
Josh eclipsed Riley, and the twinge at seeing Riley again after these six weeks was no more. Could I really be over it?
“Is he . . . What’s going on with you now?” Riley asked, his voice dropping just like his face.
I nodded. “Yeah, I think he is.”
Josh’s eyes moved to the right, over Riley, and his smile faltered. He gave me a head nod, like he finally had something figured out, and turned his back on me. Shit. He thought I was here with Riley.
I didn’t have time to dwell on it when the puck dropped.
The first period went by in a blink, and the Bears were up on us two to nothing. Gus skated his heart out, but man, the other team was good.
The kids headed back to the locker room, and the coaches filed out after them. Josh glanced up at me, but his eyes held none of their usual warmth.
“Hungry?” Riley asked.
My stomach answered for me. “Sure.”
“You kids have fun.” His mom winked at us.
Once we were at the top of the stairs, entering the rotunda, I had to ask. “Your mom has no clue why we broke up, huh?”
Riley shook his head and ran his hand through his hair in a gesture I knew all too well. “No. I told her we’d grown apart, and you needed to move down here for your family. She’s secretly plotting with your mom to get us together.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I haven’t told Mom, either, otherwise she’d know this was never going to happen.”
Riley stopped in front of the snack bar and ordered me a slice of cheese pizza and a root beer. That’s what being with someone for three years did; he knew the mundane details about me. “Never?”
I stared up at him for a long moment, absorbing the light in his eyes, the way his hair lay, the familiar worried purse of his mouth. A feeling of peace came over me, and I managed to let it all go. “Never, Riley.”
“But we have a plan, and it’s a great plan. You in teaching, me in law. Everything is mapped out so perfectly.” He took our pizza from the cashier and handed me the soda. “How can that all just be . . . over?”
We chose a spot to the side, sitting at a tall table tucked away in an alcove. “It just is, Ry.”
“But I love you. I’m not just saying that. I’ve known since our junior year that you were my perfect partner. I know we can work past this if we fight for it.”
I chewed my pizza slowly, turning over the phrasing in my head before I swallowed. “That’s just it. I don’t have any more fight in me. Too much has happened to go back, and the things you’ve done make it impossible to go forward.” I sighed, letting the last of my pain over Riley go with my words. “I want to be angry. I want to scream, and kick, and tell you what an a*shole you are for what you did, but the truth is I’m not mad anymore. I just don’t have the energy for it.” There was no bluff, no lie. Out of everything that had happened the last six weeks, he was something I was actually over. Saying it aloud only drove it home.
“Is it this thing with Josh Walker? Is that why you won’t give me a second chance?” I knew from the strain on his face what this was costing him. Riley didn’t lose. It wasn’t in his nature.
“No. Yes. I don’t know, I guess.” I laughed, feeling free for the first time since December. “I can’t be with you because I can never trust another word that comes out of your mouth, not after what you did to me. Maybe if you had loved Kayla . . .” That thought spun around my brain, blurring it. “Did you? Love her?”
“No. She was just . . . there. Convenient.”
I concentrated on the drops of condensation that formed on the outside of my root beer. “I thought that would make it better,” I shook my head. “But it doesn’t. It just means you traded what we spent years building for sex. Just sex. I can’t be in a relationship with someone who values sex over love, especially when I offered you both.”
Silence stretched between us. It wasn’t awkward as much as it was final.
“I can’t give up on you, Ember. I’ve never pictured my life without you.” He reached across the table for my hand, but I pulled it back into my lap.
“It’s time to start. You’re going to do amazing things with your life; I know that much about you. But I won’t be a part of any of it.”
He picked up our empty plates and tossed them into the trash can behind the table before turning back around for me. “I’d gone through this a hundred times. I pictured you hitting me, cursing at me, crying, and every time, I convinced you how much I loved you and won you back.” He lifted his arms out, palms up. “What I did to you was selfish, and wrong, and . . . f*cking awful. I can’t make up for it.”
Part of me wanted to feel moved by his honesty, but instead, there was only a lingering sadness in my heart for what we had lost, and what he hadn’t given up on yet. A*shole or not, I’d loved Riley for three years, and it wasn’t easy to see him hurt, even if he’d been the one to destroy us. I walked into his open arms and tucked my head against his shoulder, where it had always fit. “You can’t make up for it, Riley. Not now, not ever.”
His arms closed against me, enveloping me in the smell of his familiar cologne, and the embrace I’d always thought would hold me for the rest of my life. “Can we be friends?”
“I don’t know. Not now, it’s too much.”
He pulled my face back gently, looking into my eyes like it was the last time he’d see me. “I’m going to miss you so damn much.”
“I know the feeling.” I gave a half smile and dropped my eyes, ready to step away when I looked over his shoulder.
Josh stood in the middle of the walkway like he had paused midstride. His look of surprise quickly fell as he shook his head at me. His jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed, and he turned on his heel, disappearing back into crowd.
“Josh,” I whispered, pulling away from Riley at a dead run. I slammed into the crowd, unable to get past the hungry spectators milling about, like I was fighting against the tide. I know what that embrace had looked like, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. I had to make him see, to understand.
I only wanted him.
Like my emergency brake had been thrown, I jarred to a dead stop while people pushed past all around me. Oh shit. I wanted Josh. Not just as a distraction, but as mine. I’d fought so long and hard against it because I knew what kind of guy he was, the kind that slept with every girl in the near vicinity. But that wasn’t who he was with me.
He’d been so good to me. Over and over again I’d been a raging, slightly psychotic whack-job, and he’d stuck by me. Except for now, when he was walking away.
The loudspeaker barked the announcement of the next period, and I knew I’d have to catch him after the game. I backtracked to our section and headed down the stairs. The boys were already on the ice, ready to rock it.
Riley stood so I could slide past him into my seat. “He’s not good for you,” he whispered after we both sat.
“You don’t know anything about him, and you don’t get a say. Besides, you weren’t good for me, either.” I could remain peaceful with Riley as long as he didn’t attack Josh. My line was drawn there.
“Please be careful. The guy still has a reputation up in Boulder, and he left three years ago.”
“Reputations aren’t exactly all they’re cracked up to be. Yours was pretty stellar, remember?”
He sighed, and I knew the conversation was over.
At the second period, the score tied up.
The boys played hard that last period, but when it came down to the wire, they were beaten three to two. There would be no league championships for them this year.
By the time we got to the locker room to pick up Gus, Josh was gone.
Guess he got tired of waiting.