8. Almost
Chapter eight
Almost
Luke
T he parking lot’s nearly empty when Emma appears at my truck.
I’ve been loading equipment for ten minutes, using the manual labor to burn off whatever the hell happened at the station. The dad’s question is still echoing, how long have you been together . The worst part isn’t the embarrassment. It’s how badly I wanted to answer honestly.
Since she was seventeen and talked me through a panic attack. Since she told me I wasn’t broken and I believed her. Since Christmas, when she said “he’s not you” and I chose to be noble instead of happy.
“Heavy items in the center,” Emma says, reaching for a bin of pucks. “Don’t worry, I remember.”
“You listened to something I said. Alert the media.”
She almost smiles. But there’s something muted about her tonight. The usual sharpness is there, just... dimmer. Like someone turned the brightness down a few notches.
I’ve noticed it every few days. Noticed it after the station rotation earlier. The shift from playful to something quieter that I can’t read.
We load the last of the equipment in silence. The kind that used to be comfortable between us, back when I was just her brother’s friend and she was just a kid with strong opinions about hockey. Before everything got tangled .
“Good event today,” I offer, because one of us has to speak and it might as well be meaningless.
Though this meaningless comment is the reason we’re finally playing like a team.
Emma leans against the bed of my truck. “It was. Lily was something.”
“She was. Reminded me of—”
“If you say me, I’m going to throw a puck at your head.”
“I was going to say Sloane, actually.” I wasn’t . “Same refusal to accept that some things take time.”
Emma’s quiet for a beat. Then: “Do some things take time? Or do some people just use time as an excuse not to act?”
And just like that, we’re not talking about Lily anymore.
I don’t get to respond because her phone vibrates from her jacket pocket loud enough to rumble the ground we’re standing on. She glances at the screen and her expression changes. The dimming I noticed earlier dropping another shade.
She shoves the phone back in her pocket.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Fine. It’s nothing.”
It’s not nothing. I’ve spent three months (let’s be honest, it’s been years) learning the vocabulary of Emma’s face, and “fine” has never once meant fine.
“Em.”
“It’s nothing , Luke.” The edge in her voice is a door closing.
“Fine. Got it.”
But I can’t shake it. The shift. The way she looked at her phone like it was a grenade she’d been expecting. So I file it away for later. Add it to the growing list of things about Emma I've refused to push on.
Like Drew. Why she really transferred to BC. Why she still acts like she wants me when I've given her every reason to hate me.
“My mom texted today,” I speak instead, because apparently, I’ve decided to deflect with my problems today. Or maybe it's my turn to open a door to honesty. “She wants me to come that way for Thanksgiving. Said she and Dakota have some ‘exciting news’ to share with me.”
Her jaw sets. Protective. Of me .
“Exciting news?” she repeats. “Let me guess. Engaged?”
“Probably. She sent the same text last summer about Novo. That one lasted through August.”
“Are you going? ”
“To watch my mom play house with a twenty-nine-year-old while my dad spends the day at the bottom of a bottle?” The bitterness tastes familiar. Comfortable, even, which is its own kind of sad. “No. I’ll stay here. Film review. Prep for the BC game after the break.”
“Luke.” She turns to face me fully, and whatever was dimming her earlier is gone now, replaced by something fierce. Something that looks like it might fight anyone who tries to make me spend a holiday alone. “Come to Mom’s.”
“Emma—”
“She asked about you last week. Said how happy she is that you’re back. And you know if you’re not there, Grayson will spend the whole day texting you.” She takes a breath. “You shouldn’t be alone on Thanksgiving. Not when you have a family that actually wants you at the table.”
A family .
“I’m not exactly in the mood to—”
“What? Eat turkey? Have a conversation? Be part of the family that adopted you when yours fell apart?” Her voice softens, and this is the Emma that unravels me.
Not the one with the chapstick and the photos and the strategic hip adjustments.
The one who sees the broken parts and doesn’t flinch.
“You’ve come every year since college. Every one except last year when you made the same excuse about meeting your mom’s boyfriend.
That’s not what this is really about. It’s about us, isn’t it? ”
Us. Like it’s a real thing. Like it’s something that exists outside of charged parking lots and late-night kitchens and a season that has an expiration date.
“You’re everywhere,” I hear myself say, and it comes out unplanned.
The confession I’ve been swallowing for weeks.
“On the ice. In film I review at midnight. In the way I coach every drill wondering if you’ll challenge it.
I noticed you changed your pre-game playlist. I noticed the wrist strain you tried to hide after the Crescent Valley game.
I noticed you’ve been taping your stick differently since Ridgemont. ”
Her lips part. Drop.
“I notice everything, Emma. Every shift. Every time you bite your lip during film review. And I can’t sit at your mother’s table pretending I don’t. Pretending my hands don’t shake when I adjust your stance. Pretending…”
“Pretending what?”
The last of the November light is going. Orange fading to blue. Her face half in shadow, half in gold .
“Pretending…”
My hand comes up. I don’t decide to do it. My fingers find the line of her jaw, feather-light, barely a touch. I feel her breath catch. Feel the warmth of her skin. Feel the exact moment where I should pull away and don’t.
Not immediately.
I let myself have two seconds. Two seconds of her jaw beneath my fingertips, her eyes wide and dark and wanting, the distance between us measured in inches and rules and a best friend who’d never forgive me.
Pretending I don’t want you the same way you want me.
Then I drop my hand. Slowly.
“Come to Thanksgiving,” she whispers.
A repeated invitation. And all at once the thought of not having her around has me agreeing.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
This is such a bad idea.
More time with the girl I can’t get far enough away from.
But she’s right. This is my family.
Not the woman who birthed me. Not the father who doesn’t even bother to call anymore.
Jeanette. Grayson. Emma .
“Tell your mom I’ll bring the sweet potatoes.”
Something bigger than a smile breaks across her face and it makes whatever trouble my agreement brings meaningless.
“She’ll want you to use her recipe.”
“I know what your mom wants, Em. I’ve been doing this for seven years, remember?”
She pushes off the truck. Takes a step back. The space between us feels like a physical thing, something tangible and weighted, full of everything we didn’t say and the one thing I did.
I notice everything.
She’s halfway to her car when she turns.
“Luke?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever’s coming… Thanksgiving, the BC game, all of it?” She holds my gaze across thirty feet of cool dirt. “I’m glad you’re here. Not as my coach. As you. ”
Just me . Like she knew what I needed to hear. That I needed to know I was wanted .
Because I'm not the only one who notices everything.