Chapter 17
Seventeen
Everly
Listen, I’m not delusional. I know when to take a hint. But Beckett’s words have been replaying on a loop in my head ever since leaving my dad’s house yesterday, and I’m starting to wonder if I got it wrong.
Should have stuck to the stands. That’s pretty clear, right?
She’s nothing. Even clearer.
Nope, I got it right.
And he hasn’t called. So there’s that.
But his letters, people. His letters tell a different story.
I’m sitting at my kitchen table with coffee and an actual bagel—with cream cheese, a meal containing a dairy product and a grain, which would make Julia weep with pride—and I’m thinking about languages.
The languages we speak without meaning to. My father’s language of provision. My mother’s language of protection. My language of presence.
Blue-inked letters are spread across the counter, each one a Rosetta Stone on the language of Beckett Benson. My fingers run over the words again.
Interviewers always ask what drives me, and I always say the game. But between you and me, I’m not sure I know how to exist without something to prove.
That came in the third letter, sandwiched between his frustrations over feeling like a pariah on his team. His disappointment that not one of the men he’d played alongside for years came to his defense when someone spread false information about him—the doping scandal, glossed over in vague terms.
Something to prove. His words that night in the mall told me what he was trying to prove.
I needed to be the best. Not good. Not competitive. The best…If I wasn’t the best, all of that was wasted.
I pick up another letter. Letter four.
Everything I’ve ever wanted has had a justification attached—it’s for the team, it’s for my mother, it’s for the name on the back of the jersey. Wanting something just because I want it feels like stealing. Do you ever feel that way?
It’s Beckett in the hall—by the fountain, dusty and covered in cobwebs. All because he stayed to help a teammate in over his head. Not for himself. Not to clear his name. But because he believes everyone deserves a second chance.
And this, from the first letter. The very first:
You once wrote ‘I’ve spent my whole life being what everyone else needed.
I don’t even know what I want for myself.
’ That’s the line that kept me reading, because I swear you wrote it just for me.
I’m not even sure I’m allowed to want anything.
I just need to be grateful for what I have and keep on earning it every day, right? Do you believe that’s how God works?
I don’t know. I do think that God’s bigger than that. That He has a plan. And if that’s the truth, then we don’t have to earn it, because it’s already set, right? I almost said as much that day in the elevator.
“Maybe this is all part of God’s plan. Maybe He thought to Himself today, Hey, this guy needs someone to talk to. Let’s just lock these two in an elevator.”
“You believe in that? That God intervenes like that?”
I think maybe I do believe that. Because I’ve plotted a lot of stories in my life, and every one of them is about the redemption of my characters. But never, not in my wildest dreams, could I have planned Beckett Benson’s redemption story in my life.
So yes, I think maybe there is a larger force at work in our stories, surprising us.
My phone buzzes on the counter, pulling my attention from my deep dive into everything I know about Beckett.
Julia
All right, that’s it. I’m coming in.
I don’t even have time to respond, because moments later, Julia strolls into the kitchen, my spare key dangling on her finger.
She stops in the doorway, her eyes traveling slowly across the contents of the counter.
The letters. A mess of scribbles on the legal pad nearby.
My laptop, open and dark, forgotten beside me.
“Oh…no. This is so much worse than I expected.”
“What?” I say, lifting the bagel as evidence. “I’m eating.”
“Yeah, surrounded by fan mail like you’re mapping out a conspiracy board.” She ventures in farther, eyeing the place as if it’s a crime scene. “What is all this?”
She picks up one of the letters, takes one look, brows lifting high into her bangs.
Her lips form that little O, and she sets it back down.
“Beckett’s letters. This is why you haven’t answered any of my texts today?
Evie, I thought it had been so long since you’d showered that you’d forgotten how to and somehow drowned. I thought you were dead.”
I scoff. “Dramatic.”
“Oh, and the denial love shrine you’ve built on your countertop is…?”
“Research.”
Julia sucks in a breath. Holds it. Eyes closed. Lets it out again. “All right, Evie. I’ll bite. What are you researching?”
I run my fingers over the first letter again, the pen strokes indented on the page. “I think…maybe…he didn’t mean what he said during the interview. I think maybe he was protecting his career. Or even me.”
Julia’s expression softens, a breath exhaling from her nose, and she sits down beside me. “Everly, I know you wanted to believe he’d changed. But…he said the exact same thing he said all those years ago. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
She studies me, something sad in her gaze. She takes my hand. “Sweetie, you don’t want someone who’s going to pick their career over you. You’ve been there, done that. And you deserve better. You are a daughter of the King. Don’t you think you deserve someone who fights for you?”
“I do,” I say, giving her hand a squeeze. “I just think…maybe Beckett doesn’t know that he’s allowed to fight for me.”
Julia gives me a flat look. Oh, honey.
“Just look at this.” I slide the third letter across the counter.
Julia looks at me for a long time. Then she picks up the letter. Reads it through. Sets it down.
“I hate that I understand what you’re saying,” she says.
“I know.”
“I came over here to be the voice of reason.”
“And you’re doing a great job.”
She lets out a breath. “So. What are you going to do?”
I’ve been sitting on that question all day. The heroines in my books don’t wait. They act.
I open up my laptop and start writing.
Julia slides off her chair. “All right, I’m making coffee.”
Last Saturday I was trapped in a building during a blizzard. Some of you saw the coverage. A lot of you have questions.
Here’s what I’ll say: I have three names. The first two are well known. Everly Hart, Coach Hart of the Minnesota Blue Ox’s daughter. Go Blue.
The second is E.J. Hartley. That may come as a surprise to some, but it’s not something I was trying to hide.
And the third…well, we’ll get to her.
I wrote under pen names because I spent a lifetime being told I didn’t belong. That my look didn’t fit the genre. That my story didn’t matter. I was a girl on the other side of the glass. An outsider looking in, wondering if I’d ever be accepted or loved.
It’s funny—it took someone trying to kill me to make me see how much I am loved.
Coach Hart—or as I’ll refer to him here, Dad—shared a hymn with me growing up, and I’ve only just learned what it means.
When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of glory died,
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast
save in the death of Christ, my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them through his blood.
See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.
“Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” A reminder that there is nothing in this life I could do to earn God’s love—that all those things that charm us are meaningless compared to the love God has for us. That I can stop trying to be worth being loved and just be loved.
Which brings me back to person number three. Her name is Sutton Blake. She writes hockey romances because she grew up around the ice. Because she saw what her father loved about the sport—the courage, the determination, the loyalty. And she wanted to tell those stories.
But I’ll tell you a secret. The greatest heroes aren’t the ones we meet on the page. They’re the ones who show up when nobody else will. Who fight for their teammates, no matter the circumstance. The greatest heroes are the ones we meet in the real world.
My name is Everly Hart, E.J. Hartley, and Sutton Blake. I’m Coach Hart’s daughter, and I’m not going anywhere.
Puck’s in your zone, Batman.
I read it three times. My cursor hovers over the button.
Ready or not…here we go. My lying days are over.
I post it to Instagram.
BECKETT
The ice is the only thing that still makes sense.
Six days since the mall. Six days since I stood in a parking lot and made the worst decision of my life while my agent told me it was the best one.
I’m skating laps. Alone. Everyone else cleared out an hour ago. The Zamboni driver has made three pointed passes along the boards in the universal language of Sir, I need to resurface, and you are preventing me from doing my job. I’ve ignored him the way I’ve been ignoring everything for six days.
The media is calling me a hero. Channel 5 ran a segment titled “Blue Line Hero.” WCCO did a three-part feature. My name is attached to words like courage and selfless action, and every time I see the headline, I want to put my fist through the screen.
I do another lap.