5. Paxton
Ipaid for our partially eaten meals soon after my heartfelt statement because Hana had fallen silent once more.
“I need to think about what you said. What you want. What I want,” she told me as we exited the restaurant. Her limp had become more pronounced. I wanted to ask her about it, but I doubted she wanted to rehash more of our past right now.
We were both raw.
A group of hockey fans who must have been waiting converged on me then, asking for autographs and photos. Hana slipped away—once again taking my heart with her.
I wished I could have expressed how much she meant to me, but I hadn’t gotten through to her. Not really. That had to do with my father, his manipulations—his reasons, my mother had said—but I didn’t have a clue why he was so adamant that we stay apart.
A few minutes later, I caught a glimpse of Hana as she stood at the edge of the parking lot, her head tilted to the side as she watched me interact with the group of ten or so college students. I’d managed to text Cruz, and he’d replied that he’d pick me up. I was thankful when he arrived. I caught Hana’s eyes and tipped my head toward the car, asking silently if she wanted a ride. She shook her head, relief sweeping over her features before she ducked her head to hide the expression.
I told my fans goodbye and pulled myself into the rental car, slamming the door shut with a thud.
“How’d it go?” Cruz asked.
“I’m not sure. I may have overplayed my hand,” I replied. My stomach was still knotted, and I shook out my arms, struggling with the tension pulsing through my muscles.
Cruz pursed his lips and stared out the window for a moment before he shook his head. “By being honest? Doubt it. That’s your girl, right?”
“Yeah. Well, she’s not mine. She’s not sure she wants to be, and after what she told me today, I get it.” Fuck, did I get it. “But at least she’s not with the skinny shit.”
Cruz rumbled. “That’s something. Hang on, I’ll do you a solid.”
Before I could ask what he meant, Cruz hopped from the car and strode toward Hana. He offered her his hand and gestured toward where I sat. She answered, confusion tugging at her straight, black brows. Her skin glowed in the sunlight.
She took my breath away. She always had, and in this moment, I knew she always would.
Cruz pulled out a card and handed it to her. She took it and stared. Then she lifted her head and met my gaze. She held there before she returned her attention to Cruz. Whatever she said made him smile. He gave her a gentle cuff on the shoulder before he headed back to me.
“What did you do?” I asked as he settled back in the driver’s seat, panic seeping into my limbs. “If you fucked this up?—”
“I invited her to the game and gave her a pass so she could get into the locker room area afterward. That’s what you wanted, right? To have time with her, to have her get to know you and us and see if you two would fit?”
I nodded, though I resented Cruz prodding me. I was handling the situation. Maybe not well or with any suaveness at all, but I had been handling it.
Cruz drove past Hana, where she still stood, clutching the pass in her hand. I waved. She began to raise her hand but let it fall. She whipped her head around, and I noted the skinny shit striding toward her, his mouth twisted with anger. His eyes moved toward me, and I noted the hot, ugly jealousy in them before Cruz pulled out onto the road.
“My mother has a saying,” Cruz said. “Only the most stubborn survive. That’s been true for me in hockey. You think many kids from the wrong neighborhood in a city that doesn’t have a professional team end up in the NHL?”
“I know the statistics, man. That’s why I do the outreach to the Fifth Ward.” That was one of the roughest neighborhoods in Houston—ironically, perched near the downtown area where hundreds of millions of dollars flowed through the city with lightning speed.
Yes, kids like Cruz, who’d been raised on the edge of the Fifth Ward, were lucky if they had schoolbooks in their classrooms. No lie. The Wildcatters had bought the elementary school new textbooks, and I’d watched six kids—mostly boys—cry as they touched them for the first time.
Poverty sucked.
“It’s not just the ability to get on ice,” Cruz said. “It’s the cost of the equipment and teams, travel—all of it is too much for many families. Definitely for mine. So I figured it out. I wasn’t going to let my sisters go hungry because I might have a chance at the pros.”
“How’d you do it?” I asked. Cruz seemed like an open book, but I actually knew very little about his formative years.
He glanced over, and I would’ve sworn his lips curled up in a self-satisfied smile. “Sometimes, you need to beg.”