Chapter 7
seven
. . .
“Do you want me to come in with you?” Finn asks as he pulls up behind the sedan now parked in my driveway.
“No.” The word comes out sharper than I intend. “This is something I have to handle alone.”
Finn’s eyes search mine. “Kitten—”
“Please.” I reach for the door handle. “Just…give me some time.”
He hurries around to help me out of the truck, his hands gentle on my arms as I test my weight on the injured ankle. It holds, though it sends a spike of pain up my leg.
“I’ll call you later,” he says, pressing a soft kiss to my temple. “Ice, pain killer, rest. Promise me.”
“I promise.” I watch his truck disappear down the street before limping up my front walk. The door isn’t locked—of course it isn’t. My mother has never believed in boundaries.
She stands in my living room like she owns it, still wearing her black coat. Her eyes rake over me, taking in my disheveled appearance and the way I’m favoring my left foot.
“Sit,” she commands, pointing to my couch.
I lower myself onto the cushions, propping my ankle on the coffee table. The silence stretches between us like a taut wire.
“How long?” Her voice comes out frozen and barbed.
“How long what, Mom?”
“Don’t play games with me, Ivy. How long have you been involved with that hockey player?”
Heat floods my cheeks. “His name is Finn, and we’ve only been—”
“I don’t care what his name is.” She moves closer, looming over me. “I care that you’ve been lying to me. Sneaking around. Jeopardizing everything we’ve worked for.”
“I haven’t jeopardized anything.”
“Haven’t you?” Her voice rises. “Look at yourself. Injured because you were playing around instead of training seriously. Distracted, unfocused, skating like an amateur.” She gestures toward my ankle. “This is exactly what happened four years ago.”
The comparison hits like a slap. “This is nothing like four years ago.”
“Isn’t it? You got distracted then too, and where did that get you? Face-first into the ice at Nationals.”
I press my lips together, because I could say I’m blasting off to Saturn to meet and marry an alien hockey player, and she wouldn’t hear me.
“Ivy, you cannot afford distractions. Not now. Not ever.” She paces across my small living room, her heels clicking against the hardwood as she leaves the rug. “Someone has to protect you from yourself.” She pulls out her phone. “I’m calling other training facilities. We’re moving your sessions.”
“What?” I struggle to my feet, my ankle screaming in protest. “You can’t do that.”
“I can and I will.” She lifts her device to her ear, though it’s barely six o’clock in the morning.
“The qualifier is in two weeks, Mom. I can’t change facilities now.”
“Then you should have thought of that before you decided to play house with a hockey player.”
“I’m not playing house.” My voice shakes with anger as all kinds of things inside me snap and start to rearrange themselves. “I’m trying to have a life.”
“Your life.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder. “Is skating.”
“No, Mom. Your life was skating. Mine is supposed to be more than that.”
Her face goes white, and she actually lowers her phone “How dare you—?”
“How dare I what? Want something for myself? Want to feel normal for five minutes?” I take a step toward her, ignoring the pain shooting through my ankle. “I’ve given you everything. My childhood, my teenage years, every relationship I’ve ever tried to have. But I won’t give you this.”
“This—this—what? This fling with some boy who doesn’t understand what you’re capable of?”
“He does understand.” My voice cracks. “He believes in me. He thinks I’m good enough just as I am, not because I might win a medal someday.”
“Believing won’t get you to the Olympics. Believing doesn’t win a gold medal.”
“Neither will your constant criticism.” The words tumble out before I can stop them. “Do you know what it’s like to never be good enough? To have every mistake magnified, every success minimized? I’m tired, Mom. I’m so tired of trying to earn love that comes with conditions.”
“Love?” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “This isn’t about love, Ivy. This is about greatness. About not wasting the gift you were born with.”
“What if I don’t want to be great? What if I just want to be happy?”
The question hangs in the air between us. My mother stares at me like I’ve grown a second head, her expression morphing from shock to anger to defiance to a horrible sense of disbelief-slash-acceptance.
She picks up her purse, her movements sharp and angry. “When you’re ready to be serious about your career, call me. Until then, don’t bother.”
She’s halfway to the door when she turns back. “And Ivy? When he breaks your heart—and he will—don’t come crying to me.”
By midnight, I’ve made six dozen cupcakes and I’m no closer to answers than when I started. I’m frosting the last batch of lemon meringue treats with perfect spirals that remind me of what I hope I look like when I do a flawless sit spin when the back door opens.
“Who’s there?” My father’s voice carries through the kitchen, followed by the sound of Mae’s distinctive wheezing before she adds, “We have weapons. Show yourself.”
I roll my eyes as I stretch my neck and look over my shoulder. Mae’s weapon is probably one of the umbrellas we keep beside the front entrance.
“It’s me,” I call, returning to the cupcake in my hands.
They appear on either side of me, both wearing concerned expressions. Dad’s hair is sticking up like he rolled out of bed, and Mae’s wearing a fuzzy purple robe over what looks like leopard print pajamas.
Of course—the security system probably sent them a warning. I forgot about that.
“Henry called me when he got a call from the security company,” Mae says, settling into a chair at the prep table. I’d been using it until about an hour ago. “I told him I’d come as back-up.”
“Yes, you’re the bad cop.” I shoot her a grin and avoid my father’s eyes completely as I return to the piping bag.
“What are you doing here?” Dad asks.
“I just couldn’t sleep.”
“Uh-huh.” Dad picks up one of the finished cupcakes and examines it.
“These are perfect. Too perfect. You only bake like this when something’s eating at you.
” His eyes land on the side of my face, and I have about four seconds before I’ll give in and look at him.
His presence is warm and comforting, and my chest collapses in on itself.
“Want to talk about it?”
The simple question breaks something loose inside me. The piping bag slips from my hands as tears start flowing down my face. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whisper.
Dad wraps his arms around me, and I lean into his familiar warmth. “Your mother came by earlier,” he says quietly.
I’m sure she did. She only talks to Dad when she wants him to convince me of something she wants.
“She’s furious with me.” I grip him in a tight hug. “And I’m not even sure I care, but at the same time, I totally do.”
“Your mother is not angry,” Dad says.
“Oh, she is.”
“She’s scared,” Mae says. “Scared you’re going to make different choices than she did.”
I pull back to look at her. “What do you mean?”
Mae takes a bite of cupcake, chewing thoughtfully. “Did I ever tell you about my derby days?”
I nod, because the entire town of Briarwood has heard about Mae’s derby days.
“I was good. Really good,” she says as if I’d said no. “I had sponsors sniffing around, talking about professional leagues.” She licks frosting off her fingers. “But I was also in love. Head-over-heels, stupid-in-love with a boy named Jimmy Kowalski.”
“Mae,” Dad says. “We know all of this. Poor Jimmy got the shaft and you went on to win three National Championships.” He shoots a look at me. “Now is not the time.”
“Yes, I chose the derby.” Mae picks up another cupcake. “And he didn’t get the shaft. I thought he would wait for me, thought Jimmy would understand that my sport came first.” She meets my eyes, and I see something there that I’ve never seen on Mae’s face before.
Pain. Regret—and not from eating two double-dark chocolate cupcakes after midnight. “Spoiler alert: He didn’t wait. He married my best friend six months later.”
The pain in her voice is still raw after all these years.
“Yes, I won three national championships,” she continues. “I had my picture in magazines, saw my name in record books. But you know what I think about when I’m lying in bed at night? Not the trophies. I think about Jimmy, and what might have been if I’d been brave enough to choose love.”
I think about Finn’s face when he watched me skate, the pride in his eyes, the way he encouraged me even when I stumbled. Then I think about my mother’s constant criticism, her threats to move my training, her complete dismissal of my happiness.
“I’m scared,” I admit. “Scared of failing again, but also scared of succeeding for all the wrong reasons.”
Mae reaches across the table and takes my hand. “Sugar, the only wrong reason is doing it for someone else’s dreams instead of your own.”
I look around the kitchen, at the dozens of cupcakes I’ve created in my emotional chaos, at the two people who love me without conditions. For the first time in hours, days, weeks, months, heck, probably years—I can breathe.
“I need to figure out what I actually want,” I say.
“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all night.” Mae polishes off her second cupcake and reaches for a third. “Now, what were you planning to do with all these cupcakes?”