Chapter 9 #2
“It is.” She paused, chewing on her lip. “Especially when he retired at sixty, thinking he’d made it, giving himself and Mom more time for hobbies, travel, beach walks, freaking endless happy hours, you know…all the cliché stuff that actually sounded good.”
I looked at her profile. “A plan worth retiring for.”
“Not anymore.” She shook her head. “Now it’s grocery stocker, shuttle driver...those jobs.”
“What’s his background?”
“He did operations management for big retailers, but that market is tough to get back in after four years away.”
“And you’re the one figuring it out.”
She shrugged. “Sam’s leaving for residency. They’ve been out of work for a while, so putting together a résumé…they wouldn’t know how. So yes, it falls on me.” Her voice wobbled to hint at the weight she was carrying—it was a sign of her strength. Hell, she was still upright.
It hit me low in the chest. Losing your retirement wasn’t only numbers; it was time, dignity, and years you told yourself you’d finally exhale. I’d seen athletes spin out when careers ended, but this was a different kind of collapse, and Mel was the net trying to catch the whole damn fall.
Silence settled between us, my gaze drifted to the window.
“If you need anything, say the word,” I said. “No one trains you for the start-over-from-scratch part.”
She didn’t say anything, but she glanced at me and gave me the faintest nod. That offer had found somewhere to land.
We landed in Alberta around noon. The sky had that northern clarity—bright and scattered with white cotton across a blue sheet. The sun carried a silver cast, the air hit colder and leaner than Sacramento, and even the traffic seemed to cut through it with clipped precision.
We hit the ice for light skates and stretches before the game.
That night, the Oilers claimed their home advantage and edged us out in a tight clash. The locker room afterward was hushed with frustration. I went through the postgame motions as the loss stuck to me like damp gear.
By Saturday afternoon, I’d run game films several times but nothing stuck. My head was full of stats, and I still had no strategy for tonight’s play.
I threw on a light jacket over my T-shirt and stepped outside. Taking a minute, I let the lean air fill my lungs.
The automatic hotel door closed behind me and reopened. I instinctively turned and caught Mel stepping out. She stopped when she saw me. Her hair was pulled half-back with a barrette, falling loosely around her shoulders. A slight hesitation passed before she joined me.
“You’re escaping,” she said, with a half grin.
I smiled. “That obvious?”
“Only obvious to a fellow fugitive.”
We ended up walking a few blocks to the riverfront, where the city gave way to sky and water. This calm was hard to find during the playoffs, and here I was, experiencing it with a beautiful woman. I wasn’t planning to miss a second of it.
Alberta had that postcard look with snow still clinging to the distant ridgelines, the air scented with pine and sunshine.
We discussed everything we saw.
“That house is a mix between charming and falling apart,” Mel said, pointing at a crooked porch on a side street.
“So, basically me,” I replied.
She laughed, and that sound spiked something in my chest, stretching the upcoming game into a distant blur. She wasn’t the woman who’d cried into my jacket and vanished into duty; she was the one who’d made me laugh out loud during that skating lesson. Her playful self was back.
“This park resembles so much of the one near the Tahoe West arena,” she said as we crossed toward a café.
“Do you go there often?”
“I used to, on weekends. I should probably start again.”
“What made you stop?”
She shrugged, eyes on the sidewalk. “Life. Schedule. You miss one weekend, then two, and suddenly it’s been a year.”
“Same here. I haven’t been to a park in ages for all the same reasons.”
“It’s a good spot for a walk or run. And the ice cream truck shows up to help you recover all your calories.”
I laughed. “Ah, so you’ve got a sweet tooth.”
We stopped at a café and grabbed lemonade sweetened with local honey. When I handed her the cup, our fingers brushed, hers cool from the walk, soft, and somehow explosive. A fuse lit.
We found a bench and sat for a while, sipping in silence while people-watching, but the calm was only surface level.
The fuse was now burning hot between us.
Every so often, our gazes met and held. When her eyes tracked the clouds, mine tracked her.
The flush of pink on her lips from the lemonade’s kiss yanked at something deep.
Each moment I had my hand on her had chipped away at my restraint. I wanted to kiss her on this very bench.
We stayed there longer than we needed to, letting the silence stretch. When her knee brushed mine, neither of us moved. I told myself it was the comfort of her warmth that kept us thigh to thigh. But the truth was, I was tracking every inch of space between us.
Eventually, we stood, discarded the cups in a trash can nearby, and started back toward the hotel.
The streets were quieter now, our steps matching without effort.
My pulse had that dangerous rhythm—steady enough to keep my head clear, fast enough to make me reckless.
Her sleeve brushed my arm once, twice, and I wondered if she noticed.
I had to look straight ahead so I wouldn’t stare at her mouth. Was she keeping her eyes forward for the same reason? Or was I imagining the small pauses in her stride, or the way her fingers curled as if she was thinking about reaching for my hand?
By the time the hotel came into view, the fuse between us felt shorter. I told myself to calm the impulse before we walked in, but the question kept circling: Was she doing the same?
We stopped outside her room. She leaned back against the door and gazed up at me.
I reached for her hand, and she let me take it, cool skin, racing pulse.
A jolt shot through me. I stepped in closer; her fresh scent assaulted my nostrils.
The word blossom appeared out of nowhere in my mind, soft, floral. I wasn’t going to forget it.
I bent my head, kissed her softly on the lips, and paused. Waiting for her eyes to answer yes. And they did. Without a word, I took her hand and guided her two doors down to my room.
As soon as the door closed, I kissed her again.
Her lips were as I imagined, cool, and tart with lemonade. I deepened the kiss to warm them; she parted her mouth in response as her hands rested on my chest. Then she leaned back against the door, holding onto me to stay upright as if the moment knocked her off-center. It had done the same to me.
Our breath filled the quiet of the room—soft, uneven, hot. I wanted to shrug my jacket off.
Then voices burst down the hallway. I drew back.
She looked at me, half startled, half hazy with something that might’ve been panic, or maybe I was just seeing my own.
“I should go,” she said softly. Then she slipped out and closed the door behind her, leaving me with a lingering sense of unfinished business.
Later that night, we won the game.
Kissing Mel as a pregame ritual might be the missing play in my entire damn strategy book. That was the lingering thought as the shuttle headed to the Tahoe West quarters on Sunday. When I got into both the charter and the shuttle, someone had already been sitting by Mel.
We hadn’t spoken since last night’s kiss, not with the game and all that it entailed, and I didn’t know what that kiss meant yet. Only that it felt inevitable, and whatever shifted after my lips touched hers hadn’t shifted back.
The pull I’d been trying to ignore hadn’t let go, and that no to the boyfriend question got something in me itching to explore more. The thing was, I didn’t know how she felt about that.
My thoughts cut short as I caught sight of Cassy bouncing on the curb when the bus pulled in at the HQ.
I followed the queue off the bus, peeking at Mel exiting ahead.
“Uncle Sean!” Cassy squealed and bounced over as soon as I got off the bus.
She launched at me and I caught her, adjusting for the full-body hug. “Sweet!” I said, lifting her up. “You’re here.”
“We came!” she beamed. “I wanted to see your ice place.”
I chuckled. “You mean where I work.”
Abby walked up with a sheepish smile. “She’s been asking since we moved. We figured why not surprise you?”
“I love surprises. You took a cab?”
Abby nodded. She’d texted earlier about dinner, and I’d answered with the usual ‘on the road’ and hadn’t given it much thought. But this was better than dinner. Them showing up unannounced, when I hadn’t realized how much I needed Cassy’s bubbling joy.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mel walking away, suitcase rolling behind her. She glanced back briefly at me with a beaming Cassy in my arms and Abby standing beside me, then she turned back and quickened her pace.
“Are you glad I came? Can I see the ice?” Cassy fired away, tilting her head and blocking my view with the perfect five-year-old timing of someone who hadn’t realized she’d just saved her uncle from spiraling.
I pulled myself back to the moment. “I love that you came, Sweet. And yes, let’s go see the ice.”
She slid down and grabbed my hand, tugging me forward. Abby trailed behind with my bag. But my thoughts didn’t come along with me. They were with Mel.
I couldn’t shake the way she looked: that glance back, her quick exit.
They shouldn’t have meant anything; we were all tired and burnt out.
But even off-duty, the coach part of me worried that the sudden sprint was actually a full-blown escape from something…
or someone. Suspiciously, me. We weren’t only coworkers anymore; we’d crossed that line, and we sure as hell couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened.