Chapter 11 #2
“I brought chips,” Rory announces, lifting her jersey—sans bedazzling—and pulls a bag from her hoodie pocket. “But I’m not sharing.”
“Nobody wants your gross chips, Wednesday.” Lilah rolls her gorgeous blue eyes, and Rory retaliates by knocking her Oreos out of her hands.
Okay, they are officially nothing like any WAGs I’ve known throughout the years.
“Wednesday?” I ask through a laugh.
Rory groans. “Ugh, yes. That’s me. Lucas claims I’m a real-life Wednesday Addams, hence the nickname.”
At first listen, she sounds annoyed, but the smile at the corners of her lips gives her away. She doesn’t hate it, she loves it—and she loves him too. I’ve seen that look before, on myself back in college when I was so damn smitten with Callum I couldn’t stop grinning even just thinking about him.
“So, tell us about you, Chloe. We don’t know anything.”
“Other than you left a few years ago,” Vanessa adds, earning a glower from the three other girls.
“Careful, you’re almost starting to sound like the evil stepsister again,” Rory says.
Vanessa shrugs. “Sorry. It’s the truth, though.” She sits forward, looking over at me. “I’m not trying to be mean, I promise. I’m just being honest—that’s quite literally all we know about you. It took days just to learn your name.”
“Have none of you ever heard of Google? I had that shit uncovered by the next day, before the guys got home from checking on Keller.”
They go back and forth about what they found on Google as if I’m not sitting right there.
“Is it true that you’ve been married since you were twenty-one?” Auden asks.
“Uh, yeah. That’s true.”
Her eyes widen. “Wow. I… Well, no offense, but I just can’t imagine getting married so young. That had to take guts.”
She has no idea.
“You guys must have really been in love, huh?”
Yes.
I close my eyes against the single word. We were in love. So damn much that we didn’t care how reckless it was to hinge our entire futures on a college relationship. We just wanted to be together.
Look how well that panned out for us.
A hand lands on my shoulder, and I open my eyes to find Auden staring at me with a sad smile.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened, but if it makes you react like that, whatever it is, it can’t be good.”
But that’s where she’s wrong—it was good. So good. It didn’t matter, though. I still didn’t feel like it was enough. I didn’t feel like I was enough.
“So, I heard you were in London. Isn’t it lovely there?” she says, changing the subject, and I’m grateful for it.
“I loved it. I take it you’ve been?”
“Oh, she’s been,” Lilah answers for her. “She has two hotels over there.”
“Had,” Auden corrects. “I had two hotels.”
“They were your creations. They still count as yours,” Rory says, crunching on another chip. She looks like she’s barely paying attention to any of us, but I get the sense she’s as immersed in this conversation as anyone else.
“Hotels?”
“Yes,” Auden answers. “Have you heard of The Sinclair?”
My brows rise. “Um, yes. It was out of my budget when I lived there, but”—I whistle lowly—“it’s gorgeous. The paper I worked for during my internship had an event there. I couldn’t stop staring at the details on the ceiling. Truly a work of art.”
She smiles, almost bashfully. “Well, I can’t take credit for that—it was all a wonderful local artist—but I can say I was responsible for the rest of it.”
“Like…as in the hotel itself?”
She nods, then holds her hand out. “Auden Sinclair, as in Sinclair Hotels.”
“Holy shit.” My eyes widen as I take her hand and shake it, but Auden just laughs it off. “I mean, sorry. It’s just…wow. I can’t believe it. I don’t think I’ve ever met an owner of a hotel chain before. Especially not hotels like that.”
“Well, I’m not the owner anymore. I sold the company a few years ago and now run a new one with Lilah over there.” She points to the woman in question. “We design and build luxury homes, so not too far off from hotels, but on a much smaller scale.”
I resist the urge to ask just how much she sold it for, but I can only imagine it wasn’t cheap.
Auden likely has more money in her bank account than I’ll see in a lifetime, and I’m in awe being in such company…
and trying to sort out why she’s sitting down here to the left of the penalty box and not up in the suites.
Then, suddenly, the music switches mid-song, the lights brighten, and the crowd roars to life. Everyone—including us—jumps out of their seats.
“All right, Serpents fans!” A disembodied voice fills the arena, the music cranking up behind it, but not so loud as to drown it out. “Are you ready to see your hometown team extinguish Calgary?”
Everyone cheers, and Auden sticks her fingers in her mouth to let out a loud whistle. Lilah, Rory, and Vanessa go just as wild.
“Then let’s give a big, warm welcome to your Seattle Serpents!”
He draws out Seattle Serpents in the most dramatic fashion, and it does exactly what he set out for it to do—it gets me excited.
The goalie takes the ice first, and Lilah screams so loudly next to me that I have to cover my ears.
She doesn’t look the least bit apologetic about it either.
All her attention is on the ice, along with the other girls, and I swing mine back there just in time to see Callum jump onto it.
Though my heart is already in my throat, it tries to climb up higher, but I swallow it down.
Yes, watching him on TV is nice, but it’s nothing compared to being here in person.
His brows are pulled in tight as he pumps his legs and zooms across the ice.
He barrels right into the boards, the same as he’s done every game since…
well, for as long as I can remember. Then he zooms a lap around the back of the net, riding the blue line until he hits the wall again.
I smile, because for a second, it’s like no time has passed at all. I watch as his eyes scan the arena, going seat by seat, and I know exactly who he’s looking for—me.
One of his teammates—number eighteen—bumps his shoulder against him, and he snaps out of his search.
He grabs a puck with his stick, then carries it toward the net, pulling his arm back and putting all his weight behind the shot.
The vulcanized rubber disc flies, and the goalie snatches it out of the air.
“That’s my man!” Lilah yells, hands cupped around her mouth. She looks over at me. “Sorry, Chloe.”
I chuckle. “Don’t be. It’s his job.”
And he does it well. I watch him stop several more pucks from other players before switching spots with the other goalie, moving toward the wall, and dropping down to stretch. Several women throughout the arena cheer, but nobody is louder than his girlfriend, and the other girls laugh at her.
I’m too busy being back to watching Callum, who is scanning the seats once more.
This time, I hold my breath, begging for him to find me.
I’m rewarded just moments later when his ocher stare meets mine.
Instantly, his face transforms. His brows relax, and I swear his shoulders drop at least two inches. I lift my hand and wave.
He grins, even though I’m sure I look awkward, then mouths, Hi, Clover.
And I know in this moment that we’re not done. Yes, the last three years have changed us in so many ways, but they’ve defined us. We’re still us. We’re still Callum and Chloe.
“Okay, that is so weird.”
I look over at Auden, who is watching me instead of her fiancé.
“Sorry, it’s just…I’ve heard Keller deny love and all things feelings for years now. But that right there? That was love, like soulmates type of shit, and there is no denying that.”
I don’t respond because I don’t know how to.
Warmups last ten more minutes, and before he leaves the ice, Callum gives me another smile.
I spend the rest of the game with the same expression on my face, and it’s not just him that has me grinning—it’s the girls.
They’re fun, and I can’t remember the last time I felt so welcome so quickly.
We chat about my travels, and they tell me about meeting the guys.
We spend just as much time gabbing as we do watching the game.
“That call was horseshit, and you know it, ref!” Rory yells during the third period when the officials make a bad call against the Serpents, sending Lawson to the penalty box.
He stands in the sin bin, then points our way while yelling something at the ref. I can only assume he’s agreeing with his girlfriend, and I have no doubt a clip of the whole exchange will end up on social media later.
“Do these guys not have vision insurance or something? What the hell was that? His stick wasn’t even close to that other guy’s skate. He toe-picked himself.”
Nobody disagrees with her, but we’re too focused on the teams gearing up for another faceoff with their best guy on the dot in the box.
The Serpents are tied 4–4 with Calgary with just ten minutes to go.
Needless to say, this is a huge penalty kill the guys need to pull off, and since it’s been a back-and-forth nail-biter all night, it’s a tall ask.
“Come on, guys,” Auden says, taking a sip of the white wine she’s been sipping on all night. “You got this. You got this. You got—fuck!” she yells when they lose the faceoff.
“It’s okay,” Lilah tells her, grabbing her hand and squeezing it. “They got this. They—what the hell! That was a blatant hook!”
She’s not the only one complaining, but the protests of the unpaid officials go nowhere, and they remain 5 on 4.
The entire arena sits on the edge of their seats as they battle their hearts out and block shot after shot, Callum taking the brunt of most of them.
I wince when one hits him right in the inner leg, dangerously close to his knee, and he drops down.
“Oh shit. He’s hurt,” Auden says, as if I can’t see it myself.
Get up, get up, get up, I silently chant as he struggles to regain his legs. Come on, Callum. Get up. Please. For me.