Chapter 15
Fifteen
Everly
I so want this to be over.
And for a second, I thought it was—me in Beckett’s arms. A look in his eyes that suggested—shoot, maybe I just wrote it in, but you saw it. He wanted to kiss me, right?
And then…something. I don’t know. Or maybe I wish I didn’t know.
But now there are footsteps echoing out of the darkness, running full speed toward us.
Beckett the Hero steps in front of me, taking up his stick again.
But it’s not one of the thugs who emerges from the shadowy mall.
It’s Cole Thompson. Sprinting like his life depends on it and leaping over the sideboard. He’s on the ice, and he’s not slowing down. His face is set with an expression I’ve never seen him wear before—not fear, not guilt. Determination. Grit. And he’s not running at us.
Every nerve in my body alerts as I turn back and see what he’s seeing.
So much for Beckett’s slap-shot ending. Bad guy numero four is getting up. He’s crawling toward the gun, reaching it.
I don’t even have time to react. I suck in a breath, close my eyes, brace for the shot.
Cole hits him at full speed, and they both go down—a collision of bodies that sends them spinning across the ice, fists flying.
I’ve been to a lot of hockey games. I’ve seen brawls up close.
This is every drop-gloves moment I’ve ever watched from the bench.
Cole takes hold of the man’s collar, landing a hard blow across his jaw.
It’s reciprocated with a shot to his stomach.
They roll. The ice doesn’t pick sides—it just makes everything harder. Every scramble for position sends them spiraling. Cole takes another hit, absorbs it, doesn’t stop. There’s no technique here. Probably just muscle memory. Years of taking hits and doling out punches. He can take it.
They hit the boards, and Cole’s head snaps against the fiberglass, goes down.
My hand reaches for Beckett on instinct, but he’s already on the move, running their direction as best he can.
There’s blood on the ice, and I don’t know whose it is.
And then Cole is on top of the guy, arm pressed to his opponent’s throat. “Stay down!” he growls. Shaking. Everything shaking. But holding.
Holy redemption arc, Batman.
Beckett lands next to him and helps restrain the man.
Then, from everywhere at once, that blessed sound, like the triumphant arrival of the cavalry—sirens.
Not one. Multiple. Red and blue lights pulse through the arena’s high windows, strobing through spray, turning the flooded rink into something surreal. Something cinematic. Something nobody would believe if I wrote it.
Someone spotted the smoke, or the busted front door, in the growing light. However it happened, all that matters is, rescue is here.
The doors burst open, first responders flooding in and heading every direction.
Firefighters first, heading straight for the office with the good sense to take the long way around rather than our brilliant little shortcut. Next, the police. Then the EMTs, with their blankets and questions and the gentle, practiced concern of people whose job is putting humans back together.
The bad guys are collected. One by one. Zip-tied, limping, bruised.
The guy from the service corridor is going home today with a little extra treat—a nice new set of rose-colored eyeballs, curtesy of the bear spray.
And then there’s the fourth. Cole and Beckett hold him in place, Cole with his arm pinned against the guy’s neck, looking very much like he’s willing himself not to move until someone official says he can.
Someone official says he can.
Cole stands, steps back slowly, hands raised as the police rush in to do their job.
He waits for guy number four to be hauled to his feet before he says, “My name is Cole Thompson.” His voice is steady.
Not shaking anymore. “I play for the Minnesota Blue Ox. I need to make a statement about an illegal sports betting operation, and I need to start with a confession.”
Voluntary. Unprompted. The words he’s been running from for six months, delivered on a flooded ice rink to a police officer who was expecting an arson call and is getting the sports scandal of the decade.
I should be a journalist.
And then he’s being escorted off the ice, following bad guy number four. But he’s not limping. He’s no longer the sunken shell of a man we found last night. He stops beside Beckett, his head held high.
“Thank you,” Cole says. “For staying. For helping me. I didn’t deserve it.”
“No, you didn’t,” Beckett says with a nod.
“But neither did I. Every good thing in my life was given to me. That’s not what matters.
What matters is how it shapes you. You’ll get through this.
You will.” He smacks a hand on Cole’s shoulder.
“Just…next time you find yourself in over your head, maybe don’t lock the guy trying to help you in a closet. ”
Cole laughs. “I’ll try.”
Beckett gives his shoulder another pat for good measure and steps back.
Cole nods and turns back to the door. The police escort him off the ice, and the sunrise has broken through the snowy windows.
It pours through the hall as he steps into the light and disappears.
Later, I’ll learn he was arrested that morning—charged, fined, and suspended from the team pending the league investigation. He cooperated fully. That mattered.
And that’s when I crash. I recognize it for what it is this time, the adrenaline working its way out of my system—a full out rush, shuddering through my bones and leaving me weak.
My knees buckle.
“Whoa, take it easy,” someone says. An EMT. She grabs my arm, leading me off the ice. Out the emergency exit and into the morning. It’s a surprisingly warm March day, despite the piles of snow surrounding us. Or maybe it’s just the sun. Oh, how I love the sun.
She leads me to one of the ambulances and settles me onto the tailgate.
A moment later, she wraps an emergency blanket around my shoulders—the scratchy, silver kind that makes me look like a baked potato at the world’s most dramatic cookout.
She checks my eyes, my breathing, asks questions I answer on autopilot while the rest of my brain processes the fact that it is over.
Twelve hours, four thugs, two hockey players, one Zamboni, and a fire.
I’m not thinking about the kissing, thank you. Because Beckett hasn’t come to check on me, has he?
My glasses are cracked. Sometime in the last thirty minutes, they took a hit I didn’t register, the left lens splitting diagonally and bisecting my vision the same way the crack in the photograph bisects Coach, Beckett’s dad, and Beckett.
The same way tonight bisected everything into before and after.
I finally spot Beckett. He’s standing a little ways away, tinfoil blanket around his own shoulders, hair plastered to his head.
He’s bruised and battered. And he stands across the parking lot, looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read.
Somewhere between the picture in the hall and our little tumble on the ice, something changed between us.
Again. In those three seconds, laughing in the water, looking into each other’s eyes, I almost believed he’d forgiven me.
But here’s the thing:
We were in the dark, abandoned and afraid.
And now it’s day. The sun has risen. The danger is over. And Beckett hasn’t moved from that spot on the pavement.
I know this scene. I’ve written it. The protagonist completes the mission.
Saves the building, the evidence, the photograph.
The job is done, and the man on the bench has her letter in his pocket and his walls rebuilt, and she cannot force him to hear what she needs to say, and the dignified thing—the brave thing—is to accept the distance and step into the new day.
The heroine walks away. The readers cry. The sequel handles the reconciliation.
Except there is no sequel. This is real life.
I stand up. Take a step.
“Everly.”
My heart stops.
“Can we talk?”
I turn back. Beckett’s walked over to me. The morning sun catches his eyes, reflecting off those flecks of gold hidden in the blue. His brows are pinched, jaw tight. He’s as uncertain as I am. I bet if I reached out, set my hand on his heart, it’d be racing too.
I open my mouth.
“Beckett Benson?”
The voice comes from behind me. Loud. Professional. Projected with the specific volume of a person accustomed to being heard in chaos.
I turn.
A woman. Blonde. Heavy wool coat. Microphone. Behind her, a cameraman already filming. Behind him, another crew. And another. The parking lot is filling with satellite-topped vans—every news outlet in the Twin Cities.
Of course the media is here. A fire in an abandoned mall, four arrests, a professional hockey player, a gambling investigation—this is the kind of story news directors dream about.
“Mr. Benson? Karen Lindstrom, WCCO News. We’re getting reports of a hostage situation involving the Blue Ox—”
From the left: “Mr. Benson, Channel Five—were you trapped overnight—”
Another: “Can you comment on the arrests—”
Microphones converging from multiple directions, descending on both of us.
Camera lights switching on—bright, harsh, merciless.
Capturing the foil blanket. The cracked glasses.
The soaked hair. The deer-in-the-headlights blank stare of a woman who’s been awake twenty-four hours and running for her life for half of them, a.k.a. me.
I look at Beckett across the microphones, across the invasion of the public into the private.
And right then, he changes. Retreats behind his own blue line to safety, the defenseman, ready to defend his privacy.
I look at him and silently try to say This isn’t over. The media can have the facts. They can’t have this.
But he looks away and steps up to the microphones. And I recognize the man there.
It’s Jake, from my story. The hero I don’t know.
Can we talk?
Yes.
Except I’m not sure if it’s too late.
Or…if there will be a later.