Epilogue Two
Bound
Shane
(AKA Coach McCabe)
If a heart was tied to a person, mine was bound to her — and it stopped beating the day I left her behind.
Ariana Ridley had tried desperately not to be noticed when we were in college, but one look at her and it was clear how impossible that mission was.
She was like a diamond buried deep, and her beauty was the volcano that unearthed her.
It wasn’t only her piercing blue eyes or snow-white complexion.
It wasn’t just her heart shaped lips or her goddess-like curves.
It was the untold stories in her gaze, the way she wore her trauma like a cloak.
She called to me in a way I couldn’t fight, because I saw what everyone else overlooked.
Ariana was a survivor.
She was just like me.
We fell in love too easily, too quickly, at a rate that should have foretold how bad it would be once we finally hit the ground.
I was young and stupid when I let her go, when I chose my dream of hockey over her because hockey was the only thing I’d ever been able to depend on and staying meant total life destruction for her.
I told myself I was doing the right thing, that I was saving her from the problem of me, that I was making everything easier.
But I hated myself for the choice I made.
And I regretted it every day.
I only saw her once after that, six years later, when I got injured and watched my dream go up in smoke. Our paths crossed by chance. I begged for her forgiveness. She rightfully denied it.
I never thought I’d see her again.
Which was why I was grinding my teeth together to keep my jaw from dropping now, my heart kicking back to life in my chest with a force strong enough to take me to my knees.
Because here she was, in front of me again.
My Ari.
Standing next to my new General Manager.
As his wife.
What happens when the youngest, most successful coach in the NHL comes face-to-face with the woman he never got over — only to find out she’s married to his new General Manager?
Find out in the explosive final installment of the Kings of the Ice series, Right Your Wrongs.