Chapter One
Resilience
Shane
Her hand shot into the air, and with it, she knocked my whole world off balance.
Four years to hone my skills on the ice with the Eagles, earn my degree, and enjoy a little bit of a normal life.
And then, it was off to the races.
I’d had a plan ever since I was ten years old. That was the year I realized hockey was everything to me. That was also the year I stopped treating it like a game and started manifesting a career.
I’d play my ass off through high school.
I’d get drafted. I’d make sure the team that drafted me understood I wanted to go to college, and they’d hold my rights until I graduated.
I’d go the full four years, get better and stronger on the ice, and make sure I had a backup plan in the form of a degree that could be used for a future career.
So far, I’d checked the boxes.
I’d played like a beast through high school, securing a spot in the USHL when I turned sixteen.
I garnered scout attention early and was drafted the summer after I graduated high school, with the understanding that I would attend college, but the team would retain my rights.
And here I was, the top-scoring winger for the Eagles and just three semesters away from graduation.
I had a plan.
And I was following that plan perfectly.
Until the second that girl raised her hand and ruined everything.
“Is resilience an individual trait, or is it built through community?” Professor Reid asked, scribbling Nature vs Nurture in the Home Environment on the whiteboard as he did.
It was the first day of my Human Behavior in the Social Environment class — an elective I’d selected with team leadership in mind.
If I wanted to be a leader, not just on this team but on the ones I’d play for in the future, I needed to understand how humans ticked. I needed to know how to work with players from all backgrounds and upbringings.
Again, all part of the plan.
Two rows in front of me in the lecture hall, a hand bolted into the air.
I had a clear view of the girl the hand belonged to — or at least to the back of her head. She wore a white t-shirt, and her dark blonde hair was plaited into a thick braid that she had pulled over one shoulder. Even from two rows back, I could see that her nails were bitten short.
And she had a scar — right in the middle of that hand suspended above her.
“Yes,” Professor Reid said, nodding to the girl as he clasped his hands behind his back. “Miss?”
“Ariana Ridley,” she answered, lowering her hand. Her voice shocked me. It was smooth and raspy, like that of a woman twice her age. “I believe it’s an individual trait.”
Professor Reid nodded. “I see. Can you explain your reasoning?”
“Resilience is about the fight inside you — even when no one else is there to help or bail you out. It’s born out of necessity, out of circumstance, and out of a will to survive. You can put two people in the exact same situation with the same community around them and they’ll respond differently.”
Professor Reid jutted his lip out in thought, bobbing his head side to side as he considered.
“Support systems are nice, but they’re not what gets you through. You get you through,” she finished.
A ripple of murmurs echoed through the classroom.
Before I knew what I was doing, my own hand was in the air.
Professor Reid’s brows shot up, and he nodded to me. “Go ahead, Mr…?”
“Shane McCabe, sir.”
I didn’t miss the flutter of noise at my name. The students sitting in my section had already noticed me, but now the whole class knew they had Boston College’s star winger in their class.
“I disagree with Miss Ridley.”
As soon as I said it, she turned around, balancing her forearm on the back of her chair as she looked up at me.
And once again, I felt my world tilt.
She was a knockout. There was just no other way to describe her. She had the kind of beauty that robbed a man of common sense — smooth, alabaster skin, golden hair, heart-shaped, rose-colored lips.
But it was her eyes that had me speechless for so long it was embarrassing.
They were piercing, a shocking bright blue like two glowing pools of spring water.
And they were haunted the way only a survivor’s can be.
“Go on,” Professor Reid said with a smirk when I didn’t elaborate.
I thought I heard a few chuckles near me, but I blinked, swallowing and tearing my gaze from Ariana and back to Reid.
“I don’t disagree that survival comes down to what’s inside you,” I said slowly. “But I’ve lived enough to know sometimes what’s inside isn’t enough. Sometimes, you’re standing in the wreckage with everything you thought you could count on gone.”
I paused; the weight of those words heavy on my ribcage.
“And the difference between drowning and making it to the surface isn’t how hard you struggle in the waves.
” I leaned forward, tapping my desk for emphasis.
“It’s how graciously you accept the hand that reaches for you.
It’s the steady voice of a coach, the encouragement from a brother on the ice.
” I shrugged, sitting back again. “It’s your team — whatever that may look like. ”
The room went quiet, and my eyes flitted back to Ariana’s. She was frowning at me, and I wasn’t sure if it was because she was annoyed I was arguing with her, or because she understood the point I was making.
“But hey, maybe it’s a bit of both,” I conceded, and really, I was speaking only to her then. “Maybe, sometimes, resilience is what you carry inside. And sometimes…it’s who carries it with you.”
“Very good points, Mr. McCabe,” Professor Reid said, and then he tapped the white board and transitioned into his lecture.
But I was still looking at Ariana.
She was still looking at me.
And when her lips melted into a soft, breathtaking smile; I knew I was a goner.