Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Hatch
For a moment, I wondered if I’d gone too far.
Summer had been honest about her relationship with Carter.
I understood all too well how you could get caught up in circumstances beyond your control.
How a rush of feeling, positive or negative, could override your common sense.
She had given hints about her childhood—poverty, neglect, hopelessness, all things she had overcome.
Meeting someone rich and successful might look like she’d made it out of the trap of her past.
But there was more. With Summer, I was learning there usually was.
“You’re not from California, are you?”
For a moment, I thought she’d make a joke and repel my intrusiveness. But instead she gave a small, relenting sigh. “No, I’m not.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“Mississippi. A town that’s barely a town, more like a dot in the woods. Thunder Creek, it’s called. I ran away when I was fifteen. Then again when I was sixteen. That second time, I managed to stay away, and I sort of reinvented myself.”
Not what I expected at all. “In what way?”
“With a crash course in Yankee. Figured out how to dress and talk and act like someone who wasn’t from the backwoods of nowhere.
I toned myself down. Not immediately, of course.
Those first couple of years, I lived on the streets in Jacksonville—that was as far as I could get before I ran out of money.
I did odd jobs, gardening, dishwashing, all under the table stuff.
Once I turned eighteen, I was able to get better jobs with longer hours, and once I had a place to live and some money set aside, I started on the road to me. ”
A lightbulb went off. “Shelby Mae is your real name.”
“My legal name. I wanted to change it, but you’ve got to do it in the county where the records are and there was no way I was goin’ back there.”
There was more to that, but I wouldn’t push. Yet. Summer—or Shelby Mae—was running away from more than a mismatched fiancé.
“Were you always a hockey fan?”
“That came later. At night I’d work in this sports bar where the owner was obsessed with hockey.
No one in that bar wanted to watch it but he insisted, and I became completely invested.
Soon I was giving anyone who would listen my opinion on the games, the tactics, the players, the trades. My boss called me ‘Shelby Slap Shot.’
“Then his son made a pass at me, and wouldn’t take no for an answer, so that was the end of that.
I figured I needed to make my way in a bigger sports town anyway.
I had this idea I could work concessions at Wrigley Field or sell beers at the Rebels Arena, and that would be a way to connect to that world. Silly dreams, right?”
“We all have to start somewhere.” Every word out of her mouth had me on the edge of my seat. I had a million questions, but I figured it was best to let her say her piece in her own time.
“During the day in Jacksonville, I’d hide away in the conference rooms at the public library and listen to tapes to try to fix my accent.”
Ack-zennt. I was picking up on it more.
“Just trying to smooth out my vowels, go more neutral. Not because I was ashamed, but I thought it might make me sound more cultured. Make it easier for me to get a job in Chicago. I thought everyone in the Midwest hates all us Southerners, that I’d be labeled a hick before I’d even gotten a greeting off.
I’d saved enough to move to Chicago. I worked as a barista for a while, in a cupcake shop, even a stationery store.
In every place, I learned something. Fancy coffee, fancy pastries, fancy paper.
The people who could afford those things, who came in every day, I’d watch them, how they acted, how they behaved.
And I filed it all away as part of Project Summer. ”
Project Summer. What she must have overcome to get here.
“And how did you get onto the Rebels front office?”
“I started temping with an agency. I had to fake some credentials. My GED, a college diploma. I still had Shelby Mae Landry as my legal name but every new job I’d start, I introduced myself as Summer.
That’s who I wanted to be, and no one questioned it, because I think we’re all reinventing ourselves in every new situation.
I listened to how people spoke, mirrored them during conversations, and soon enough I felt like I was fitting in.
Then I saw an ad for the Rebels, a junior administration position for one of the executives in Hockey Operations.
I just knew that job was going to be mine! ”
Her eyes sparkled, showing me the Summer she had been hiding for as long as I knew her. Or maybe this was the version I’d refused to see because I was too butthurt to pay attention. Something panged in my chest, sorrow for time wasted and opportunities lost.
“When I interviewed, they asked me all the usual questions and one of the execs ended with the classic: ‘give me an example of a problem you’ve overcome and how you handled it.’ I made sure to keep it short and impactful, but I also slipped in some hockey knowledge, like how Dex O’Malley’s plus-minus was looking particularly stellar this season, and good thing that’s not a problem we need to overcome. ”
“Sneaky.”
“It was! But I had them grinning away. They were going to remember me when they looked back through the candidates because no one else in an admin position would have sprinkled her answers with hockey stats. I thought it was so clever. And I got the job! Two years later, Ryder’s assistant went on maternity leave, then said she wanted to stay home, and I asked if I could move into that position.
A lateral move, but I felt that was where the action was. ”
“By that time, you were dating Carter.”
Her blonde brows dipped together. “Yeah, I was. But it was casual. On again, off again. I told Ryder up front in case it was a conflict, and he said he didn’t see a problem.”
Now conflicts abounded. “Carter said you had no family living.”
“That’s what I told him.” Two spots of color appeared high on her cheekbones.
She was embarrassed to have lied, but especially to have lied to the man she had planned to spend her life with.
“I know that makes me some sort of snob, but I haven’t spoken to my mother or anyone back in Thunder Creek for ten years.
I never felt safe there. She—” She broke off, her eyes welled.
“Sunshine, it’s okay.” I couldn’t help myself. I scooped her up into my lap and wrapped her in my arms. She sank into me willingly. “I’m guessing you had a pretty toxic home life.” Why else would she be running away at fifteen?
“You could say that.”
“No reason why you wouldn’t want to separate from all that. Leave it behind.”
She rested her head against my forehead, composing herself.
“It seems like another lifetime. In a way it was. Shelby Mae, wild-spirited, but caged. Then I come here, reinvent myself and become Summer. Toned down my wild, only to put myself in another kind of cage. Thinking I had made it when I was merely running in place.”
“So you reinvent yourself again. Take what you’ve learned and figure out what comes next.”
She peered at me through the veil of her fair lashes. “Not exactly what you expected when you asked me where I came from, was it?”
“No, but nothing about you has been expected. I like that you told me the truth. That you felt comfortable enough for that.”
“You make it easy. It’s so strange because … well, you’re not going to believe this.”
I let my thumb brush the soft skin at her waist. She shivered, but didn’t move away.
“Try me.”
“Do you remember the first time we met?”
I nodded. Like I could possibly forget that Rebels Christmas party five years ago.
“That was my first date with Dash, and I’d already met your dad and a few of the other Rebels because I’d worked in the front office for a few months. But I’d never met you.”
“I was home for the holidays from college. I went to that party because I had a crush on Giselle DuPre.”
She laughed. “Harper and Remy’s daughter?”
Harper Chase was the Rebels CEO while Remy DuPre was a former star player and now her husband.
“Uh huh. But she had brought a boyfriend, so I got over it really quickly. She was too old for me anyway.”
“I figured you were distracted. When we were introduced, you barely said two words to me, but I was a little boy struck when I met you.”
I felt like I’d swallowed a puck. “Boy struck?”
“I had a crush on you, Hatch Kershaw! But then the next time we met—I think it was in the Empty Net when the season was over, maybe four months later—I tried talking to you, asking about your new contract with Denver. You shut me down. Cold!”
“No, I didn’t.” Yes, I did. “I just didn’t want to be too friendly with you because you were another guy’s girl.”
“To the point of being rude?” Another laugh, like it was so amusing, while inside I was dying. I had been rude. I had shut her out. I didn’t want to get to know her.
Because knowing her, and not being able to have her, would have broken me.
And yet, not knowing her had the same effect. This last year, especially, had been miserable.
“I hope I’ve made up for it,” I said quietly.
“Oh, you have, Dino Boy. You most definitely have.”