8. Everly
Eight
Everly
Hearthstone Home & Living is open. Gate fully up, power having died before shutdown reached this end.
Flashlight beams sweep staged rooms like spotlights at an empty theater—a farmhouse kitchen that doesn’t cook, a mid-century living room never lived in, a bedroom display with a queen bed and approximately nine decorative pillows that have never been slept on.
“Most depressing Airbnb I’ve ever seen,” Beckett says.
“Great location. No heat. No power. Occasional criminals. Four stars.”
Beckett wanders to the bedroom display. A fake window overlooks a rolling vineyard. “At least the bed looks comfy.”
I scoff. Apparently he’s never been inside a store like this before. Go ahead, champ. Give it a try.
He hops up onto bed and…thump.
“It’s fake!” He yanks back the blankets in disbelief, as though just realizing that this whole store is a facade and not, in fact, a cozy bed and breakfast in the countryside. Thank you, Captain Obvious. It’s fake.
“Mattresses are expensive. Heavy-duty cardboard—real cheap.” I rap two knuckles on the bed nearest me.
“Well, that’s just…fantastic. I suppose it’s too much to hope that the couches are real.”
“I think you’re in luck.”
There’s a whole arsenal of comfy seating to choose from.
Two love seats. A few armchairs, a fluffy sectional, and one full-size couch.
Beckett gives one of the love seats a quick test—bounces twice, shakes his head.
Tries the armchair—too narrow. Then a sleeper sofa that unfolds into a full mattress. “Dibs.”
“What are we, twelve?” I say, rolling my eyes.
“You can have the pull-out, Benson. I’ll take the sectional.
” I set the bakery bag on a coffee table and drop my bags on my sofa.
“But for the record, I’ve got dibs on the flannel bed set.
” I gesture toward another one of the bedroom displays.
“You can take that hideous paisley set.”
“Wow, thanks.” He says it with a straight face—all except that little tug at the corner of his lips. “You’re a real saint.”
“I do what I can.”
We set up the flashlights on the coffee table, pointed at the ceiling, and get to work setting up our beds for the night.
I scrounge together a collection of Christmas bedding from the clearance section, snag a few pillows, a throw blanket, and the flannel sheets off the back wall.
By the time I’m done nesting, I’ve got a bed suitable for a Hallmark movie marathon.
I pick out a few doughnuts and nestle in.
“Well, don’t you look cozy,” Beckett says, arms piled high with a green-and-white quilted comforter and other assorted bedding. He tosses it all down on the pull-out and gets to work setting up his own camp.
We settle in. Nestled five feet apart, wrapped in fleece blankets, eating the last doughnuts by flashlight while a blizzard tries to eat the building.
“So,” I say, “you ready to tell me why you were locked in a closet by your teammate?”
“Cole Thompson. And not especially.” His eyes zero in on the doughnut he’s working on, the dim glow of the flashlight painting deep shadows across his face—his jaw, stubble, the line of his nose. It’s clearly been broken at least once. It only adds to his appeal.
Wait—did I say that? Oh no.
I wait, let the silence do the work for me.
He lets out a sigh. “I think he might be in trouble. I was trying to help.”
Of course, the thriller author in me perks up at the word trouble. “What do you mean?”
Beckett picks at the doughnut, pulling it apart without eating it. “I noticed it a few months back—he’s been acting different. Nervous. Tired. I saw him earlier this week talking to these guys.” His eyes connect with mine across the coffee table. “They didn’t look friendly.”
A shiver trickles down my neck, though from the freezing temperatures of the mall or the look on Beckett’s face, I’m not sure.
“I spotted him again today, during the event, in the old arena office. He looked scared out of his skin.” He lets out a sigh, wrapping the crumbled ruins of his doughnut in a napkin and setting it aside.
“I don’t know what he’s gotten himself mixed up in, but I know he needs help.
” He pauses, then meets my gaze. “I think he’s the one who framed me for doping six months ago. ”
My breath hitches. “What?”
The doping scandal is not fresh information. I’ve got newspaper clippings about it tacked all over my research board. But the framing, that’s new.
His jaw tightens, his gaze tracing the lines of the ceiling. “Six months ago, we had a routine drug test. Standard, expected. I didn’t have any reason to worry about the results…except when my test came back, it had traces of steroids in it.”
“You think Cole messed with your test?”
Beckett’s gaze finally finds mine. “I think Cole’s the only person on the team who knew about my history.”
I go still, my heart racing, waiting for him to go on. What history?
He pulls in a deep breath, drags a hand over the back of his neck. “When I was nineteen, I used steroids for four months of my freshman hockey season. Cole Thompson was on the team. He was there when I got caught and suspended for half a season.”
The confession drops like a stone into water, jarring against the quiet.
He goes on. “I did counseling, came back clean, and spent the next eleven years staying that way. Until the drug test.”
“The team doesn’t know about the past?”
Beckett shakes his head, glancing at his hands. “No. The coaches know. Management knows. But nobody else.”
“Except Cole.”
“Except Cole.”
“So…when your test came back positive—”
“The organization saw a pattern instead of a setup.” Beckett props one leg up on the bed, leaning on his elbow against the arm of the sleeper sofa. “So now I’m on probation. My contract renewal depends on my having a clean season. And eleven years of keeping a clean slate, gone.”
He picks at the edge of his comforter, running his hands along the lining.
“Why’d you do it?” I ask. It’s not an accusation, just a question. I shouldn’t care, but I do. I have to know.
Beckett closes his eyes. “Because I needed to be the best. Not good. Not competitive. The best. Undeniable.” He stops. Restarts. “I needed to be worth the investment.”
“Whose investment?”
“Everyone’s. My mom worked double shifts or nights as a nurse, picked up extra shifts at a treatment center on weekends.
Coach gave me hundreds of hours of free ice time.
Scouts, coaches—everyone who looked at the skinny kid with a dead dad and decided he was worth betting on.
” His voice has dropped. Quiet, rough. “If I wasn’t the best, all of that was wasted. ”
The blizzard howls.
My head is still trying to wrap around this information, but I puzzle out the real question in all of this. “Why would Cole frame you?”
Beckett shrugs. “I don’t know—whatever the reason, I think it’s got him in over his head. I saw him during the evacuation, when everything was shutting down. He looked like he was running from someone. I tried to stop him, offered to help him. And…he shoved me in a closet.”
“Why would you offer to help him after he framed you?”
Beckett sits up, his brows pinching slightly. “Because I believe everyone deserves a second chance.”
Those words ping in my ears. It’s the same thing I said back in the elevator. Something flares inside me—heat and guilt, like a glowing ember.
His gaze finds mine, those icy-blue eyes piercing in the dark. “I’m sorry, Everly. For all that stuff in the past.”
My breath stills. My head swims. Of all the things he could have said tonight, those words were the absolute last I expected.
“I…” I forgive you. That’s what I should say. Because he said it himself, everyone deserves a second chance. My words. The ones I said in the dark elevator and he held on to. Instead…“We were just kids. You didn’t know.”
It’s a cop-out. I know it. And I know he knows it.
He looks away, drags a hand through his hair. That’s not what he wanted to hear.
Suddenly, the silence between us is so loud it’s deafening. I almost can’t hear myself when the words slip from my lips. “Why did you do it? What did I ever do to you?”
And there it is—the real question that stands like a wall between us. Why? Why did it always have to be a competition between us? A fight for the right to be seen?
Beckett hangs his head, a heavy breath deflating from his chest. “You didn’t do anything.”
“Then why? You were such a jerk to me. Why did you tell me that my dad liked you better? Why tell me to stick to the stands? Why make me feel like I didn’t belong at my dad’s own rink?” He opened a door that should have stayed shut, and now I can’t seem to close it.
He drags a hand over the back of his neck, avoiding my gaze. “You were throwing off my game.”
I blink. My heart thunders in my ears.
Beckett’s head snaps up, his jaw tight as he goes on.
“I had three scouts there the day you showed up. It was one of the biggest days of my life, and you were there. And every time I saw you, all I could think about was the last time we spoke—how you yelled at me. Told me it was my fault your parents were splitting up. And what I said to you that day. I was fourteen, thinking I was going to blow my shot.”
“So you decided to humiliate me and spray ice in my face.”
Beckett swallows, glances away, and he looks a little like I’ve slapped him. “Yeah.”
Okay, I’m a little undone by his admission—I mean, when he says it in that tone of voice, right?
It’s like he poured cold water all over my hard-wrought steam.
Don’t worry, I still have a little left in the bucket, although my voice is softer.
“You made me feel like I wasn’t as important to my dad as hockey.
And that I should just accept that. You made me feel like I didn’t belong in my dad’s life. ”