I hear the quiet close of the door as my mom leaves. I hear it again as Lauren, my dad’s next girlfriend, leaves a few years later. I hear the aloof way he tells me that he and his next girlfriend are no longer together.
My life is going to mirror his. It already does. I’ll be fifty-five and waiting for my current girlfriend to leave me like the others. Shame and frustration wrap around my chest, squeezing like a band.
“Hartley, it was a decade ago. I’m sure she’s over it.”
Fury rises in her gaze, and I can see her pulse going in her neck. “You sure about that?”
I shrug, brushing it off. Please. Please, can we fucking move on from this conversation? “I would fucking hope she’s over it by now.” The words tumble out of my mouth, fueled by this crushing, cold feeling inside my chest. “How pathetic is that to be moping around a decade later over some guy who didn’t even care about you? I doubt she even thinks about me anymore, and if she does, she doesn’t have enough going on in her life.”
I hear the words, but I can’t stop them. Shame has me by the throat, choking me. Hazel looks like she’s been slapped, blinking at me with hurt and shock before she lets out a quiet laugh.
“I don’t know why I said yes to this. This is exactly who I thought you were.”
My stomach sinks.
“I don’t know why I thought—” She breaks off, shaking her head as she shuffles away, heading for the entrance to the rink. “We’re done.”
CHAPTER 14
RORY
I hear the end of her sentence a million ways.
I don’t know why I thought I could spend time with you.
I don’t know why I thought our agreement would ever work.
I don’t know why I thought you were different.
It hits me: Hazel’s reaction isn’t just about her friend. It’s about what Connor did to her.
I said it didn’t matter. That she should be over it by now. I called her pathetic. How fucking thoughtless could I be? No wonder she’s done with me.
My dad wouldn’t budge. Rick Miller always lets them walk away. He wanted to go after my mom—I still remember his crushed expression when she left—but he didn’t.
“Hartley,” I call, skating after her. She ignores me as I approach. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.”
She reaches for the boards, loses her balance, and I’m right there holding her up.
“Don’t touch me,” she hisses. “I’m mad at you.”
“I know.” I wait for her to find her balance before I pull back. “You have every right to be mad.”
Her jaw is so tight and her eyes flash with all the bad emotions I never, ever want to see there. She folds her arms over her chest, still glaring at me.
I rake a hand through my hair, pulse going a mile a minute. “I hate that I hurt your friend, so I brushed it off to make myself feel better. I think I thought—” I heave in a breath, watching her face for any reaction, any clue. “I thought that if I made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal, I wouldn’t feel like this.”
“Like what.”
“Like a fucking asshole.” I search her eyes. “I don’t want to hurt people like that. That’s what my dad does. I’m sorry I hurt your friend. I was young and stupid, but that’s no excuse.” She watches me, and I memorize the gray threads in her irises, rimmed in thick, dark lashes. People maneuver around us, but we ignore them.
Understanding, sadness, and pain ebb and flow in her eyes. Hazel’s throat works again and her eyebrows pull together before she looks away. “He cheated on me the whole time,” she says quietly, staring at the ice.
Streicher told me this already and yet I’m still tensing with protective fury. How dare he fucking hurt her?
“I worked ahead in school so we could go to university together.” Her gaze flicks up to mine before looking back down at the ice. “I found out at the end of the first year of university. Everyone knew but me.”
Rage pounds through me, gathering power. McKinnon is so fucking stupid, and if it’s possible, I hate him even more. My hands make fists so I don’t reach for her. No wonder she doesn’t take shit from anyone.
She plays with her fingernails. “He said—” She cuts herself off, tapping her top lip with her tongue.
My hands are on her shoulders, and I dip down to meet her eyes. “What did he say?”
She shakes her head.
“Please tell me,” I beg.
She shakes her head again. “I just want to forget it.”
My teeth clench and that self-hatred pinches my chest again. She doesn’t trust me enough to tell me. She thinks I’m like McKinnon.
So maybe I need to fix those things. Maybe, if I want this to be real with Hartley, I need to show her I’m nothing like him or my dad.
“I hate him for what he did to you.” Does she know how fast my heart is beating, how tight my chest feels right now? “I don’t just hate him for being an asshole; I hate him because he took you for granted. He lied to you and he was careless with you. I don’t want to be anything like him.”
I can see every shade of blue and gray in her eyes, and I let the mesmerizing colors anchor me, distract me from the looming realization that I’ve never done this before—this big, sincere apology.
Rick Miller doesn’t apologize. It’s not a skill he deemed necessary to teach me, and I can’t even remember the last time I did it. Last year, when I felt the unsettling urge to make things right with Streicher, we fought it out on the ice.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, this time just to hear myself, to know it’s real.
I’m not like him.
“Okay.” She looks away.
“Okay?” I lean down to catch her gaze. “You forgive me? We’re okay?”
She gives me a tiny nod. She doesn’t trust me fully, not yet, but the anger is gone from her eyes.
I rub a hand over my hair, letting my pulse return to normal, and give her a tentative look. “Let’s keep skating.”
She chews her bottom lip. She’s about to say no, but I can’t leave us on this note. “You’re not a quitter,” I tell her, mouth tipping up. “And think about how pissed he’ll be when he learns that I taught you.”
She grins like a little devil. “Okay.”
“Congratulations, baby,” I tell her as we start skating around the rink again, and her mouth twitches with amusement and irritation. “We just had our first fight.”
“Don’t call me baby,” she says, but I can see her smiling.
CHAPTER 15
RORY
We’re stepping off the ice half an hour later when a guy in hockey equipment stops in front of me.
“You’re Rory Miller.”
My smile is easy and friendly. “Hey, man.”
He points at the ice with a confused look. “Were you skating out there?”
“I was teaching my girlfriend.” I loop my arm around Hazel’s shoulders.
It’s getting easier and easier to say those words. My girlfriend.
“We play pickup out here once a week.” He gestures at the ice, where a handful of guys are skating around, talking and warming up. “Do you want to join us?”
I give him an apologetic smile. “Thanks, man, but I’ve gotta get her home.”