Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Justin
“You need to skate up the wide more.” I look down at Dylan.
“You skate to the middle too much.” He looks at me, his chest heaving after his play.
It was a good play with him skating to the middle and then shooting the puck.
“It worked this time, but when you go too much down the middle, you can get blocked in by the defense before the puck even hits the goalie. If you skate in the side, the goalie is usually stuck to one side of the post, giving you a big opening on the other side.” He just nods his head, and I know he’ll understand it if he sees it.
“Watch Ralph.” I call over to the other side of the ice where Ralph is teaching another play and raise my hand to tell him to come here.
He skates over and stops in front of me.
“I want to show Dylan how to skate down the side with the puck and not to the middle. Do you think you can play defense?” I joke with him, and he just smirks.
“It’s summer, right?” he asks, skating backward in front of me. “Which means I don’t really have to go easy on you.” He tilts his head to the side, and I look at the bench and see that all the kids are watching this one-on-one.
“You think you can stop me?” I goad him, skating to the middle of the ice and dropping a puck.
“No one is here to tell me to go easy on you.” He winks at me, and I just shake my head.
“Golden boy, my ass,” he continues, and I skate around in a circle before skating over to the puck and making the play.
I’ve been practicing against Ralph for the past five years.
He got drafted to Edmonton the year before me, and when you are number one on the team, they make you train with the number one defenseman, and that is Ralph.
His eyes aren’t on the puck; instead, his eyes are on me.
Another thing he does better than anyone is read the play.
I skate to the right, and the puck hits the blade of my stick.
I skate to the left, and my eyes go to Ralph, who skates backward never leaving or moving with me.
My hands slide the puck right and left as I make my way down the ice, and I move more to the right.
Once I pass the blue line, I pick up speed, and he stops skating and makes me move right to left to see which way he is going to go.
His body is now close to mine, and he knows that if he gives me just a touch more space, I’m going to slap in the puck.
But he doesn’t; instead, he sticks out his stick and tries to poke check me, giving me just enough room to shoot the puck under his raised hand and into the net.
The kids on the bench cheer loudly, making Ralph laugh and then push me away. “You got lucky.”
“No such thing as luck.” I wink at him this time and skate back to the bench as the horn sounds, letting us know it’s time to rotate the groups. “Okay, that’s it for you guys.” I watch them walk off to the changing area and then feel Ralph looking at me while he drinks some water. “What?”
“Nothing. I’m just wondering if Justin Stone has finally met his match?” I’ve been asking myself that same question.
I shrug at him. “No fucking clue. The only thing I know is that I can’t walk away.”
“Don’t tell me that the biggest bachelor in hockey is finally going to be taken?
” He goads me with the title that I’ve gotten through the years, making me roll my eyes and look away.
I skate off the ice and see that it’s lunchtime.
Unlacing my skates, I walk outside, pulling my phone out of my pocket to call Caroline.
My hands suddenly get clammy. I wait for her to answer, and when she does on the third ring, it sounds like she’s out of breath.
“Hey,” I say softly and then hear traffic in the background.
“Hey,” she says, and it almost sounds like she’s running.
“Where are you?” I ask, going over and sitting on the bench outside the rink.
“I just left the grocery store,” she says, and her breathing doesn’t let down. “I’m on my way home.”
“Are you running home?” I ask and smile, thinking about her. Her green eyes that light up only when she looks at Dylan.
“No.” She laughs, something she doesn’t do often, but something I want her to do more. “I’m walking home. I somehow didn’t think about the walk when I was filling the cart,” she says.
“You’re walking home?” I ask as I sit up, my voice coming out harsher than I mean to.
“Yes,” she says, ignoring my tone. “I thought about taking the bus, but it just made more sense to walk.”
“How far?” I ask, and she lets out a big breath as if my questions are annoying her.
“Did you need something?” she cuts me off and ignores my question.
“There are a lot of things I need,” I say. “The first thing is for you to let me in.” I close my eyes when the words tumble out of my mouth.
“Justin.” The way she says my name, it is almost like a breakup. I’m waiting for her to start with the “It’s not you, it’s me” speech.
“God,” I say, wishing I could hang up and start this over again. “I was just calling to check on you and see what you were up to.”
“I went grocery shopping, and now I’m on my way home,” she says. “How is Dylan? Is he okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s fine.”
“Okay, I have to let you go. The bags are slipping out of my hands, and I’m trying not to drop the phone. Gotta go,” she says and hangs up. I look at the phone, and I dial the one person who I know I shouldn’t, but I do anyway.
“Grasshopper,” he says, answering the phone, and I laugh.
“Will you ever not call me that?” I ask Matthew, who now laughs.
“Nope.” He doesn’t miss a beat. “What’s up?”
“Does something have to be up to call my big brother?” I say, but even I don’t buy it.
“The last time you called me, you wanted me to break it to Mom that you didn’t want to come home Christmas because the girl you wanted to bag bought a bunny suit.”
“That is not what I said,” I say with a groan. “A bunch of people were going to Colorado to ski.”
“And were you not bringing a girl with you?” he asks, and I don’t answer. “And did she not put bunny ears on?”
“It’s a Snapchat filter,” I say.
“I honestly have no idea what that means,” he says. “And I don’t really want to know. Sounds like some dirty shit.”
I laugh. “I’ll explain it to you again when I see you.”
“I can’t wait,” he says sarcastically. “Now to what pleasure do I owe this phone call?”
“I need to ask you something, and before I do, I need you not to bust my balls about anything,” I say, suddenly regretting my decision to call him.
“Why do you do this to me?” he asks.
“I also need for you not to tell anyone.” I add that in even though I know he’ll tell Karrie.
“Jesus, did you get a girl pregnant?” I know he’s talking between clenched teeth. “How many times did I tell you to wrap it up? Jesus,” he says and doesn’t stop. “Are you going to marry her?”
“Okay. One, I didn’t get anyone pregnant,” I say. “That’s your job.”
“Hey,” he snaps. “I was always going to marry her, but I just had to convince her.”
“You mean trick her,” I joke with him. He and Karrie met when she was his chaperone, and then she got pregnant. There was no denying he loved her with everything that he had, but he was also a caveman. “Anyway. I met someone,” I say it out loud, admitting it to the universe.
“Okay,” he says, waiting for the rest.
“She’s a mom, and her son attends the hockey camp.”
“Justin,” he says my name almost like a warning.
“I know what you’re going to say.” I lean forward on the bench, putting my elbows on my knees.
“There is a lot I want to say, but the first thing I’m going to say is that if you don’t think you can give her what she needs, then you need to walk away.”
“I know that, Matthew.”
“No, I don’t think you do. This isn’t just one person,” he says as if I don’t fucking know. “You can’t think with your dick this time.”
“Matthew,” I hiss. “It’s not like that.”
“What are you saying?” he asks, and I take a deep breath.
“I mean that I like her a lot.” My heart beats fast, but then my chest constricts when I tell him the next part.
“She’s had a rough time. I don’t know the details, and I’m afraid to ask, but she isn’t giving me the time of day.
I want to just help her,” I say softly. “I want to just be there for her.”
“You have to knock her walls down,” he says.
“I don’t know how,” I say. “I’ve never been here. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than for her to sit down with me and tell me everything. I want her to know that I don’t want to solve her problems but to help be by her side.”
“Have you told her this?” he asks.
“No,” I say quietly, almost whispering. “I’m afraid to.” I look up at the sun. “She has a lot to her past. I don’t know much, but I met one of them, and he isn’t the friendly neighborhood type.”
“Fuck,” he hisses. “How in are you?”
I think about my answer just as I’ve been thinking about this whole thing for the past couple of days, and that is what it has been … a couple of days. But just the thought of not seeing her hurts my heart. The thought of going a day without her makes it almost hard to breathe. “I’m all in.”
“Then you need to sit with her and put all your cards on the table. You need to tell her.”
“What if she …” I start. “What if she’s overwhelmed by it?”
“Then you show her,” he says. “She has probably had people promise her things before.” His tone is soft. “But they were probably empty promises, so you have to show her that you are a man who stands behind his promises.”
“Yeah,” I say, and then I hear my name being called and look back to see Ralph is trying to get my attention. “I have to go.”
“Okay. Call me for anything,” he says. “You hear?”
“Yeah,” I say into the phone and then hold up my hand to Ralph. “I’ll call you later,” I say, disconnecting, then getting up and walking to meet Ralph. “What’s up?”
“Nothing, but Dylan was looking for you,” he says, and we turn to walk inside.
“Is everything okay?” I ask. My heart had started to beat faster, thinking he was hurt, but then I see him playing basketball with the other kids, and he looks up and sees me.
“Justin,” he yells, “I got a three-pointer!” His eyes beam with pride, and his smile is so big that his eyes crinkle at the sides. “It even went swish.”
“That’s amazing, buddy,” I say. Standing, I watch the game with my hands on my hips, already setting a plan for tonight into motion.
I get into the truck after buckling Dylan in and call Caroline’s number.
“The customer you are calling is unavailable at the moment. Please try again later.” I look at the phone and then hang up, and during the forty-five-minute drive, I spend most of the time speeding and trying to tell myself that she just turned off her phone.
I try not to think about the trouble she could be in or the trouble that is always lurking around her.
We get there, and now I’m about to crawl out of my skin when I grab the hockey bag from the truck and walk toward her apartment.
We walk up the stairs, and Dylan goes on and on, but I’m not even focusing on him.
I’m focusing on the fact that I need to make sure Caroline is okay.
When we get to the door and Dylan turns the knob, it’s locked.
I’m both happy and then worried. What if she got hurt somewhere and her phone is broken?
The what-ifs are playing over in my head, so I don’t even hear Dylan knock on the door nor do I hear the door unlock and open, but I do see her face, and I step back.
“Mom,” Dylan says, and she switches right away before my eyes.
“Hey, sweetheart,” she says, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and kissing his head. “How was your day?”
“Good. Justin had a one-on-one with Ralph, and he won,” he says to her, “and then I played basketball, and I scored a three-pointer.”
She smiles down at him, and he doesn’t see the redness in her eyes or on the tip of her nose. “Did you score all the points one after another?”
“No, Mom,” he says, going to the fridge and opening it, his eyes going wide. “The fridge is full.” And it’s at that moment my heart sinks for her. This woman who puts on the bravest face is now having all of it in front of me. “Can I have a Yop?” he asks, wanting a yogurt drink.
“Yes,” she says and then looks at me. “Was everything okay?”
“Yes.” I want to take her in my arms and kiss her softly and hold her and be her rock. I’m about to bring up the fact that her phone was off and that I tried to call her when the front door suddenly opens, and I turn to see who it is. I don’t have to guess for long when I hear Dylan yell.
“Dad!” he says, running to this guy standing there with dirty clothes and stringy hair. His arms are bare and skinny, and you can see the scabs on the inside creases of his arms.
Dylan wraps his arms around his waist, but the guy doesn’t even notice because his gaze is fixated on me. I’m watching him, but more importantly, I feel Caroline stiffen beside me.
“Who is this?” the man finally asks. It’s almost as if he’s accusing us of something. I want to step in front of Caroline, but before I can do that, she speaks up.
“He’s nobody, and he was just leaving.” Her voice comes out strong and firm. I look at her. “Thank you for bringing Dylan home. We’ll see you tomorrow.” And just like that, my heart breaks for the woman who I thought was mine.