Chapter 22
Miller
“Well,” Ren starts, turning on her heel. “It’s not as bad as I thought.”
“It’s not?” I ask, a little skeptical, if I’m being honest.
“I mean—don’t get me wrong.” She tips forward, folding her arms across her chest. “It is still a sprawling monstrosity, and it should definitely belong to some Bay Street douchebag—but it’s not so bad.”
She smiles at me from across my living room, in front of the sprawling windows and the setting sun illuminating my multi-million-dollar view of the Toronto skyline.
If I believed in fate or that sort of thing, I might think twenty-three-year-old me bought this place for twenty-seven-year-old me. So he could stand here right now, four years down the line, looking at her while the sunset over the lake paints her colours he’s never seen before.
Kind of wish he’d done me a favour, though, and warned me that the smartest woman he’d ever meet would end up being the most beautiful and she’d end up tapping softly on his shoulders with those hands so he could wake up and be something other than a shell.
He’d get to watch her grow back into herself, but he’d never, not in a million years, be someone she’d look at as anything more than a friend.
He didn’t though, and I’m stuck here. Stupid me and brilliant, beautiful her.
I run a hand along the back of my neck and offer her a shrug. “Instead, it belongs to me—some dumb douchebag jock.”
She frowns, bottom lip bowing into something that’s almost a pout.
“You’re not dumb, and you’re certainly not a douchebag.
Unfortunately, I can’t do anything to counteract the statement about your athletic prowess.
Just your bad luck, I guess,” she teases, scrunching her nose, before she pads across the floor to flop down on the couch.
Her head rests against the back, and she looks up at me, upside down.
“If you lived here, where did Matt live?”
Still beautiful, even backwards.
Fuck my life.
“Uh—” I tear my eyes away, focusing on the red hue inching across the floor. “Nice, respectable house tucked away with a yard. It’s where we’d play catch.”
“Oh. Do you still . . .” she trails off, and when I chance another glance at her, her lips move back and forth, thoughtful. “Who owns the house now?”
“Me.” I swallow, and even though he’s in this nice open space in my chest now, the shards of glass, left over from a picture of a life he could have had with a partner and children and people to leave shit to other than me, carve up the back of my throat.
“He didn’t—he wasn’t, like, married or anything.
And he, uh, had a will because he was way better at that stuff than me .
. . He left everything to me and his parents. ”
Her cheeks go soft. “And the house is yours? A place where you two had so many good memories? I think that’s nice.”
“Yeah. I don’t—I haven’t gone there. I pay a cleaning service to go in every two weeks, so I know it’s . . . nice. The way he left it. How he’d want it.” That memory doesn’t hurt, for some reason. It almost makes me smile. “Mess and clutter drove him nuts.”
“Oh no.” Ren brings her palms to her cheeks. “He’d have hated me.”
“No,” I say quietly. “He wouldn’t have.”
She rolls her eyes, finally lifting her head off the back of the couch, patting the cushion beside her. “Is that where you wanted to go to play catch?”
Nodding, I brave the few steps across the living room floor to drop down beside her, careful that my thigh doesn’t brush hers. Or god forbid, one of her fucking knees.
“We should talk about our lists, actually.” Ren swings her feet up, crossing her legs.
“Why?” I ask, worried she somehow wants to scrap hers and change it from five to four and she’ll leave my life way sooner than she planned.
“Oh, it’s nothing bad.” She shakes her head, offering me an encouraging smile. “We’ve just been really focused on mine . . . I know most of mine were activities and some of yours were more . . . ongoing. But you have three things left, and I only have one.”
“I don’t mind,” I answer in a rush. “It’s . . . helped me, to help you.”
Something flashes behind her eyes, but she gives a tiny jerk of her head, leaning forward. “But that’s not what we talked about.”
“I guess not.”
She lifts up three fingers. “We’ve got catch,” she starts before she puts on an exaggerated whisper, “Dating.” And she holds up the last finger, voice softening. “And your cottage.”
“You’ve got one left, too. Dating.” I almost choke on the word. “If you’re, uh, swapping out school.”
She deflates, and I break my no-touching rule, placing a hand on either shoulder to force her back up. “Ren. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. They’re just . . . lists.”
She starts to nod, but then her eyes light up—crystalline, again, when she asks, “What if we went?”
I do choke this time. “What?”
“Oh, not—not like that! I don’t like, have a crush on you or anything.” She lets out a weird sort of maniacal laugh I’ve never heard her make before, and she sets her shoulders in a straight line. “On a practice date. That way we could do something on your list at the same time.”
She keeps going before I can say anything.
“Unless you wanted to go on an actual date? In which case, never mind, it was a stupid idea, anyway, I just thought—”
“No,” I interrupt. “I don’t want to go on a real date. We can . . . go on a practice date.”
She blinks, nodding, and her mouth pops open when another idea lights up her face. “We could do it at the unveiling!”
“The what?”
She frowns. “The unveiling? We’re getting a new collection, and when we do we . . . unveil them for our philanthropic partners. It’ll be like the gala, except Graham will make a speech about the importance of our donors so we can preserve history, not one about educating young minds.”
“I don’t keep track of those sorts of things. My publicist takes care of that.” I hold up my phone uselessly. Yas does keep track of that sort of thing—we have a shared calendar—but I don’t remember the last time I checked it.
“Then she’ll love my idea.” Ren lifts her chin when she smiles. “A practice date, and people can take photos of us to their hearts’ content. It’ll really sell the whole thing. Seal the deal for your trade prospects.”
Deal’s already sealed, sort of.
I exhale, scrubbing my face. “When, uh, is that?”
“The last weekend of July.”
“Before the, uh, trade deadline. Good timing.” I nod, but dread eats at the back of my throat. “Olson, uh, he called me into his office when I got home this week.”
“Oh?” Her bottom lip extends into a pout.
I’m probably imagining it, but something like sadness might darken her eyes from aquamarine to sapphire.
“Yeah, plan worked, I guess. He said he’d work to trade me, if I still needed to go before the deadline. Right after the All-Star break.”
“Oh!” she says again, and I don’t think I’m imagining it this time, but it’s a bit hard to tell with all the blinking she’s doing.
“I knew I deserved the credit for you being named hottest player of the week!” She shoves at my shoulder, but her words wobble, and she puts on a face that seems fake until she cocks her head. “What’s the All-Star break?”
“Yeah, uh, it’s a mandatory break during the All-Star Game. Happens every year. Get about four days off before the second half of the season.”
“Are you playing?”
“Nah. I’m . . . not going to go.” I jerk my chin.
She narrows her eyes. “I don’t know how it works, but were you . . . invited?”
“Obviously.” I cut her a look before I scratch absentmindedly at my chin. “I’m just . . . not really interested in going without Matty.”
I didn’t think I’d ever be interested in anything without him, but here I am.
I’m interested in you, I think. Please don’t make me go.
“Oh. I’m sorry, Miller.” Her hand finds mine, and her thumb traces along his initial. “What are you going to do instead? Four days off probably seems like a lot when you’re used to one.”
“Yeah, uh, it is.” I watch her finger trace patterns along my skin and try to keep my eyes from closing. “I thought—I’m sure you’re busy, but, uh, maybe that’s when I’d . . . try to go up to the cottage.” The words spill out before I can stop them.
But she grabs my singular hand with both of hers. “Sure. I can take a few days off.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” She nods. “Really.”
“Cool, uh, it’s—”
She interrupts, voice all wilted and worried. “The unveiling isn’t until after that, though.”
“That’s okay. They, uh, don’t have to be in order,” I tell her. “We can play catch on my next day off when I’m home, and we can go to the cottage, and then we can—”
“Go on a practice date?” She smiles again, giving my hand an excited shake. “I mean, I don’t want to brag, but that was kind of genius of me, don’t you think? I can’t think of a better way to end this than to do the last thing on our lists together.”
“Yeah, yeah. Totally.” I nod, forcing a grin.
I should be used to things ending. There was nothing I could do to keep my mom or Matty around.
Ren keeps talking—beautiful and brilliant and bright, even without the sunset painting her in all those new colours.
But I can’t focus on a single thing she says, because I can’t think of anything fucking worse than having to say goodbye to Ren Jacobs.