31. Sydney
thirty-one
sydney
Bright and early on Thursday, the day before Halloween, I join my father on the ice at the arena. We skate around the perimeter with to-go coffee cups in our hands. He somehow remembered exactly how I take my coffee. I’ve drunk it with cream and two sugars since I was in high school.
“I wanted to talk to you about your plans for the future,” he says. “And it’s a tough conversation, naturally, so…”
“Doing it while skating,” I agree. Because sometimes it’s easier to focus on what your body is doing than where your mind is going.
“My future. Do you mean next year?” I’ll be a senior if Dad allows me to stay at FSU. “I was hoping to continue here…”
He side-eyes me. “Uh-huh.”
“What?”
“Don’t kid me, Syd. It’s hard to miss how students treat you. Or talk about you.” He sighs. “I thought my name might give you some protection, but it’s just made you stand out more. I apologize for that.”
I grab his arm and stop. “Dad, I’m the one who owes you an apology.” Shame colors my cheeks, but it’s time for the truth. “I broke into Oliver Ruiz’s house right before playoffs last year. And it wasn’t originally to steal those plays, but…”
His eyes widen. “You did what? Sydney, why ?”
I can’t let go of his arm. My eyes burn, and my vision goes blurry. “Because Mom sold Grandma’s bracelet to a pawnshop. I bribed the owner to tell me who bought it, and he gave me Oliver’s name. But then I couldn’t find it in his house.”
A sob builds its way up my throat.
“I took pictures of his playbook because I was stupid and angry. And my roommate and I went to a party after—he was there, he recognized me. H-he said some things and I just got even more mad. So I sent them to Carter.”
I can’t look at Dad, even though I’m latched on to him for dear life.
“I’m so sorry.” I sniffle and wipe at my nose with my sleeve. I don’t have hands—one to keep Dad from leaving, another on my cup.
Dad sighs. He takes the coffee from my hand and sets it on the ice. His, too. And then he pulls me into a hug that might as well be tight enough to draw me into his skin.
And all at once, the tension leaves my body.
“It’s okay.” He strokes my hair. “You don’t apologize to me. I’ve done a lot of things wrong in regards to you.”
He offers me a tissue from his pocket. I curl my fingers around it and dab at my eyes, then blow my nose. So lovely and ladylike.
After a long moment, I put some distance between us. He picks up our coffees and puts them on the bench, returning with a handful of pucks and two sticks.
I take one from him.
“You remember skating around my practices as a kid?” he asks.
I nod. I still feel raw, but an invisible wall between us that I didn’t realize was there seems to have crumbled.
“I’d give you a stick and a puck, and sometimes you’d occupy yourself going around the outside. Other times, you’d get more daring and weave between players doing drills.” He laughs. “I was more in danger of being fired for bringing my six-year-old back then than I was after this last season. So ignore rumors that my job was on the line.”
He meets my gaze.
I nod, he nods.
He passes me the puck, a quick flick of his wrist. The puck slaps into my stick’s blade, cradling it so it doesn’t go rebounding off is almost second nature. I pass it back, and we both put more distance between us.
And then he ruins it by saying, “We should discuss your mother.”
Ugh.
“She’s never not come back,” I tell him. “But when I went to check on her, it was clear she hadn’t been around in a while. So the house is gone…”
House is a stretch.
He sends a pass farther up the boards, making me skate for it. When I pass it back, he’s watching me.
“Part of the reason my job might be a bit more secure than other coaches is because I’m an alumni. The Board is a little more lenient,” he says.
My parents were together until I was five, and then the shared custody happened. At twelve, Dad took her to court for something. Fifteen, he got remarried. Eighteen, I stopped talking to him.
The thing is, though, that nothing bad ever happened at Dad’s house. The three years between him getting remarried and me cutting off contact were good. If I actually think back on those shared moments, I can’t pick out any truly scary or negative moments. I had three hot meals, affection, respect.
Going home was the problem. Telling my mother everything about my weekend and having her pick it apart was the problem.
I’m going to fucking start crying again at the realization.
“She wasn’t a good mom.” I face him again. “I don’t know why I want to find her, because she sucked as a mother. And I think if I wasn’t living with her seventy-five percent of the time, if she wasn’t constantly in my ear, I would’ve kept up a better relationship with you.”
He winces.
“You never talked badly about her,” I add. Accuse. “Never tried to get me to see that side of her, even though you probably knew what she was doing.”
“No, Syd.” He puts his hands on the top of his stick. “No, I wasn’t going to do that to you or her.”
Then… “Where did her resentment come from? Why did you take her to court when I was a kid?”
Dad comes close again, forgetting the pucks and our passing game. “I didn’t take her to court. She wanted more money from me and less visitation. I was fighting it.” His gaze softens. “I don’t know where her feelings came from, kiddo. I wish I did.”
“Coach?”
He glances over his shoulder. Our positioning hides the other person from view—and probably hides me, too. Which is why Oliver Ruiz stops dead on his way toward us when Dad shifts enough to clear our lines of sight.
“What are you doing here?” he blurts out. He looks around. “It’s…”
“Skating with my daughter, Ruiz,” Dad snaps. “Do you have a problem with that?”
His hockey captain straightens. “No, sir.”
“Good.” He checks his watch, then glances at me. There’s a lot conveyed in that glance, but compassion is at the forefront. “Come to dinner Saturday night, Syd.”
I nod.
He motions to the pucks around us. “You up for a passing game, Ruiz? I’ve got some work to do before my nine o’clock meeting.” He pushes the stick into Oliver’s grasp on his way by. “Oh, and you’re invited to dinner, too.”
Great.
We stare at each other a beat. I haven’t seen him since he beat Bear at the fight, and he doesn’t seem particularly worse for wear.
“Penn talks about you,” he finally says. He skates closer. Who knows why he even laced up—and on his own, no less. “It’s driving me absolutely insane.”
“Why?”
“Are you exclusive?”
I shake my head. No, we’re definitely not.
“Do you want to be?” The muscle in his jaw jumps.
“He thinks he can convince me to pick him.” I don’t say the other part: that I don’t know how I’m going to choose at all.
“Who’s his competition?” Oliver demands.
I laugh. It startles out of me, and I have to move away from him. I can’t just have a staring competition with the man, or else my thoughts will turn wicked. And I certainly can’t have that with my father in the building.
“Sydney,” he calls.
I snag a puck and move it to the far side of the rink. I take a snap shot toward the boards, the boom of it hitting and rebounding back to me satisfying.
“Sydney, who’s his competition?” He skates up beside me and pauses again. “Are you dating someone else?”
“More like I have two stalkers.” I flip my hair off my shoulder. “They know what they want and are going after it.”
Unlike you , I don’t say.
His gaze darkens.
“What are you going to do about it, Oliver?”
I head for the door, and he follows. I’ve admitted some pretty painful truths to him and got nothing in return. Nothing except where my bracelet ended up, which I guess is on his mother’s wrist. If she even wears it.
My stomach flips at the idea of it sitting in a box somewhere, in the dark. That’s how my mother kept it, too. Hidden out of sight. But from that photo in the yearbook I found, it wasn’t always like that. She wore it at school.
I want to wear it.
I met his abuela, and now his family has a piece of mine’s history.
My grandmother died when I was eight. She got terribly sick and spent almost four months in and out of the hospital, then with home aid. Her husband had died before I was born. At that point, Mom already had the bracelet. Although I have no idea if she wore it at that time. Maybe she took it off when she got pregnant. Or only after her mom passed.
But Grandma used to tell me stories as I perched at the foot of the hospital bed in her living room, about her fantastic love story. Her grandmother’s bracelet broke only a week after she died, and it was the one thing she passed along to her only granddaughter. The others were boys, they didn’t care about jewelry.
Devastated, she took it to a jeweler to have it repaired.
And she ended up with a date. A date that turned into several over the course of a week, and before she knew it, they were madly in love.
“I want love like that,” I used to say, my hand on my chin.
She smiled at me and patted my leg. There were no words of comfort or reassurance. Her smile said she knew something I didn’t. Something I wouldn’t figure out until I was much older.
I rub my wrist.
I never wore it before I lost it.
In the back of my mind, it occurs to me that it should’ve been mine. From grandmother to granddaughter, isn’t that how it went?
Selfish thought. Selfish to take that piece of our family history away from my mother.
And selfish of her to sell it like it meant nothing.
Oliver follows me into the locker room, where I sit at Penn’s cubby and unlace my skates. Oliver sits directly next to me and mirrors my actions, his movements faster and more practiced than mine. He finishes first and puts on his street shoes. When he’s done, he leans back, watching my profile.
What are you going to do about it?
“Why are you here?” I question. “Why can’t you just be honest with me?”
His brow lowers. “Honest? You want honesty, Sydney?”
“Yes,” I hiss.
“You’re an intrigue that never should’ve caught my attention.” He rises.
I stand, too, vulnerable in just my socked feet. Not that he’s childish enough to stomp on my toes. Maybe .
“I can’t stop thinking about you.” He inches closer.
“Good,” I whisper. This feels like the opposite of the rage room, but I give him the same ‘come on’ motion. “More.”
“You’re so fucking bright.” His eyes glitter. “It’s like you suck up the sunshine and emit it from your skin, even in the dark, and I’ve just been stumbling around blind without you.”
I inhale sharply.
He lifts his hand, his fingers grazing my neck. I’m a professional with the concealer by this point, although the bruising is healing nicely. It’ll be gone in another week and a half. He doesn’t stop at where the bruises are, though. His fingers ghost backward, into my hair, and he draws me forward.
I go.
“I’d like to think I’m Penn’s competition.” His lips are so close to mine, his breath feathers across my mouth.
“You are.” One of them anyway .
Lord help me. I want him to kiss me. I want to burn in his gaze until I combust.
When his lips touch mine, electric zaps flood through me. I may as well be holding a hot wire or hit with a taser. I can’t help but compare his kiss to Carter and Penn. Penn is an inferno. He stokes a fire inside me, and his kiss consumes me like flames do. Carter walks the razor’s edge between pain and comfort. Sweet and controlling.
Oliver is hungry. He kisses me like I’m the first drops of rain after a drought. He cradles the back of my neck while his tongue strokes mine. He tastes me, he groans at what he discovers.
I feel seen.
It’s the kind of kiss that may as well suck out my soul in the process. I want the same from him, though, and when I surge up on my toes and kiss him back, harder, he gives me everything. He tastes like mint toothpaste. His scent is citrus and musk, something that buries in my lungs and refuses to let go.
I trace his chest with my hands and move upward, to the back of his neck, into his hair. His hair. It’s as silky as it looks. He makes another noise in his throat when I tug, so I do it again. His hips shift forward, his erection pressing into my belly.
The locker room door opens, and we break apart in an instant. He runs his hand down his face, while I return to my seat. I duck my head, letting my hair fall in front of my face like a curtain. My lips feel puffy.
“You left pucks,” Dad says. “Ruiz.”
“Yes, sir.” Oliver turns around, somehow a thousand percent more composed than me. He hurries past Dad, back to the rink.
I bury my face in my hands.
Dad clears his throat, and I peek through my fingers.
“No funny business in my arena.” He points at me, frowning slightly. But then he shakes his head and follows Ruiz out.
Well, fuck .