Knights Like These (Off the Ice #3)

Chapter One

Spring Roll Confessional

Sydney

Lauren is giving me the look.

I know the look. I’ve been on the receiving end since we were twelve, the time I told her I was going to cut my own bangs. The look says I love you but you’re about to do something incredibly stupid, and I’m going to sit here and watch because you won’t listen to me anyway.

“Stop,” I say.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You’re thinking it.”

“I’m thinking a lot of things.” She picks up her wine glass and tucks her legs underneath her on the couch.

Lauren’s apartment is small and warm and smells like the Thai food we ordered an hour ago.

Containers are spread across her coffee table—pad Thai, spring rolls, the green curry I always get but never finish.

“I’m just trying to understand the timeline. ”

“There’s no timeline. He called, asked if I could come help with the twins for a while, and I said yes.”

“You said yes….to moving to New York.”

“Temporarily.”

“To live in Archer Lockwood’s house.”

“He has a guest room.”

“To being a live-in—what, exactly? Nanny? Roommate? What are we calling this?”

“I’m helping out a friend. His ex-wife just moved out, he’s got two three-year-olds and an NHL schedule, and he needs someone.” I shove a spring roll in my mouth so I’ll stop talking.

Lauren watches me chew. She has that face—her corporate mask, the one she wears when a client pitches a terrible campaign, and she has to decide how honest to be. She usually goes with very.

“Syd.”

“What?”

“You quit your job.”

“I was going to quit anyway.”

“You ended things with Matt.” She ticks these off on her fingers.

“Matt and I were over.”

“You let your lease go.”

“The apartment was depressing.” I wave one hand.

“And now you’re flying across the country tomorrow morning to move in with a man you’ve been in love with since we were fifteen.” She says it the way she says everything—direct, calm, like she’s reading ingredients off a cereal box. “And you want me to believe this is about babysitting.”

I release a slow exhale. “We’re not doing this.”

“We’re absolutely doing this.”

“Lauren.”

“Sydney.” She gives me a pointed look.

“I am not in love with Archer. I have never been in love with Archer. He is my oldest friend, he needs help, and I am currently—” I gesture at the suitcase by the door, the duffel bag I’m praying will zip, the storage unit key sitting on Lauren’s counter because everything I own is now in a ten-by-ten concrete box off Highway 169.

“I’m not exactly drowning in options here. ”

I eat another spring roll while Lauren processes this.

“How’s he doing?” she asks, softer now. “With the divorce.”

“He says he’s fine.”

“Do you believe him?”

“It’s Archer. He’d say he was fine even if he was on fire.”

She almost smiles at that. We both know him—Lauren not as well as I do; nobody knows him as well as I do—but she’s watched us be friends for half our lives.

She was there freshman year when Coach Davis made the hockey team take ballet, and fifteen-year-old Archer Lockwood walked into the studio looking like he’d rather be literally anywhere else on earth.

I remember him at the barre. I don’t mean to remember this right now, but my brain does it anyway—puts him right there in the mirror, too tall for his body, scowling at his own feet while I tried to teach him a tendu.

He was terrible. Truly, impressively awful.

But he kept showing up every Tuesday and Thursday, and by the third week he wasn’t scowling anymore.

By the fourth week, he waited for me after class and said, “Same time Thursday?” like it was a question, like I might say no.

I never said no.

Fifteen years. I’ve never said no to Archer Lockwood. Not once. And that’s probably the part that should worry me, if I were the type of person who examined her own patterns, which I’m not, because I’m busy eating Thai food and pretending everything is normal.

“What about Matt?” Lauren asks, and I knew this was coming. I’ve been waiting for it since I sat down.

“What about him?”

“Have you talked to him?”

“No. We broke up two months ago. There’s nothing to talk about.”

“You were together for a year and a half.”

“And now we’re not.”

Lauren pulls the pad thai toward her and twists noodles around her fork, watching me the way she does when she’s choosing her next words carefully. Lauren is the only person I know who uses silence like a weapon. I brace myself for impact. “He was a good guy,” she says.

“He was a great guy.”

“So what happened?”

“I told you what happened. He wanted to move in together, and I wasn’t ready.”

“You’d been dating for a year and a half.”

“So?”

She lifts one eyebrow. “So at what point would you have been ready?”

I don’t answer because I don’t have one.

Matt was a high school history teacher who loved to read, cooked me dinner, and never once raised his voice. He was patient, kind, and steady, and he loved me in this quiet, consistent way that should have been enough. It should have been more than enough.

Three months ago, he sat on the edge of my bed and said, “I feel like there’s a part of you I can never reach.” I sat there with nothing to say because he wasn’t wrong, but I couldn’t explain it either. Not to him. Not even to myself.

I just said I was sorry. And he left. And I felt nothing, which is worse than feeling sad because at least sadness would have made sense.

“He and I just didn’t work out,” I say. “It happens.”

Lauren nods slowly. She doesn’t believe me. I can see it in the way her jaw tightens and her eyes linger on my face a beat too long. But she lets it go—for now—and reaches for her wine.

“Okay,” she says. “So you’re flying to New York tomorrow.”

“Yep.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I feel like a good friend.”

Lauren pulls her legs up and wraps her arms around her knees. “Can I bring up the elephant in the room?”

“There’s no elephant.”

“You slept with him, Syd.” Her voice is even.

“That was a million years ago. It didn’t mean anything.”

“Right. Which is why you’re gripping your wine glass hard enough to shatter it.”

I look down. I am gripping the glass harder than necessary. I loosen my hand and set it on the table.

“It was one time,” I say. “We never did it again, we never talked about it again, and it has absolutely no bearing on me going to help him with his kids for heaven’s sake.”

Lauren lifts an eyebrow. “Okay, but what if he’s—I don’t know. He’s newly divorced. What if he’s looking for a rebound? What if he’s lonely and you’re right there and—”

My stomach jumps. “Archer isn’t like that.”

“All men are like that.”

“Archer is not all men. He’s—” I stop myself before I say something that proves Lauren’s point. “He asked me to help with the twins. That’s the beginning and end of it.”

She looks at me for a painfully long time. “Syd, I have a lot of friends. I wouldn’t do any of that for a single one of them.”

I don’t have a comeback for that. I reach for the green curry instead.

“I’m just saying,” Lauren continues, “most people send a casserole. Maybe offer to take the kids for a weekend. They don’t dismantle their entire life and move across the country.”

“My life was already dismantled. The timing just worked out.”

“The timing.” She says it flat, like she’s repeating evidence back to a witness. “Your life falls apart at the exact moment he needs you, and you don’t think that’s worth examining?”

We look at each other. She’s not wrong. I know how it seems—the way I let everything go without a fight, the way Matt, the job, and the apartment all fell away like they were never really holding me here in the first place.

But I’m not going to say that out loud. I get how it looks. Suspicious, at best.

That’s fine. She doesn’t have to believe me. I believe me, and that’s what matters.

“Can I say one thing?” she asks.

“Can I stop you?” I lift one brow.

“No.”

“Then go ahead.”

She pours us each a little more wine—probably to soften the blow—then sets the bottle down, and looks at me.

“I’ve known you since we were twelve. I’ve watched you date guys who were perfectly fine and leave every single one of them.

I’ve seen you build a career you don’t care about and quit it without flinching.

I’m watching you torpedo your life in real time, and I just…

” She takes a breath. Lets it out slowly.

“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” she says.

I wave her off. “I’m not going to get hurt. It’s Archer. He’s my best friend.”

“Okay, Syd,” she replies finally.

And we leave it there, the way we always do—her not believing me, me not convincing her, both of us pretending that’s the same as agreeing.

I finish my wine. “I should probably get some sleep. My flight’s at seven.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I’m driving you. End of discussion.” She stands and starts clearing the containers. “And Syd?”

“Yeah?”

She pauses in the kitchen doorway. “Call me when you get there. And I mean actually call. Not a text that says ‘landed, I’m fine’ with a thumbs-up emoji. An actual phone call where you use words and tell me the truth.”

“I always tell you the truth.”

She gives me the look one more time—the love-you-but-you’re-full-of-crap look she’s been giving me since we were twelve.

“Sure you do,” she says, disappearing into the kitchen.

In Lauren’s spare room, I brush my teeth, wash my face, and get into bed. My suitcase is already by the front door, packed with two weeks’ worth of clothes, maybe three. Everything I need for however long “a while” turns out to be.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand.

Archer: Flight still at 7?

Me: Yep. Landing around 11 your time.

Archer: I’ll pick you up.

Me: You don’t have to. I can grab an Uber.

Archer: I’m picking you up, Syd.

I stare at the screen. Three dots appear, disappear, and then appear again.

Archer: The kids have been asking about you all week.

I read that text four times. The kids have been asking about you. Not I’ve been thinking about you. Not I’m glad you’re coming. The kids.

Which is fine. Obviously. Because this is about the kids. That’s why I’m going.

Me: Tell them Auntie Syd is coming and she’s bringing presents.

Archer: You don’t have to bring presents.

Me: I’m bringing presents. Don’t argue with me.

Archer: Wouldn’t dream of it.

I put the phone face-down on the nightstand and stare at the ceiling.

Everyone always thought we’d end up together. My mom, my dad, Lauren, our teachers, every mutual friend we’ve ever had. For years, it was the running joke—when are you two just going to admit it?—and I’d laugh and roll my eyes, insisting it’s not like that, until people stopped asking.

They stopped asking around the time he got engaged to Bree.

I turn onto my side. Lauren’s spare room is dark and quiet, and the sheets smell like her fabric softener. I’m thirty years old, sleeping in my best friend’s guest bed because I don’t have an apartment, a job, a boyfriend, or a plan.

What I do have is a 7 AM flight to a man I’ve known since I was fourteen.

And maybe there was a time—a long time ago—when I was young enough to believe that wanting something badly enough could make it happen.

Back then, I let myself believe we’d end up the way everyone expected.

But I learned to let that go. I had to. You can’t spend your whole life waiting for someone who isn’t coming, and Archer was never coming.

He loved me the way he loved me—as a best friend, and I told myself that was enough.

I got so good at convincing myself of that, I almost believed it.

Almost.