Chapter 18 #3
The letter is two pages. Front and back. The handwriting starts controlled. By the second page, it loosens—the letters leaning harder right, as if whatever is being said has gained enough momentum to override the control.
Dear S.B.,
I mentioned someone in my last letter. A woman from my past. One who treated me exactly the way I always thought she would and broke something in me anyway.
I’ve been thinking about why.
So this time, instead of talking about one of your stories, I’m going to tell you one of mine.
It’s a story about a girl whose dad coached peewee hockey at Northwoods from the time we were kids.
She used to come to the rink after school—every day, 4:50, like clockwork.
She’d climb into the stands with her bag, do her homework, and watch the Blue Ox practice (back before they an arena of their own) after peewee was done.
I don’t think she ever noticed the time. But I did. I memorized it.
I was the last one off the ice every day. On purpose. I told myself it was extra time. Conditioning. One more lap.
It wasn’t.
I was scheming like a villain to catch one glimpse of her before I had to leave. That’s the honest version. I knew she’d be there at 4:50. So I stayed until 4:51. I’d take my time with my skates, find reasons to linger near the boards, circle back to the bench one more time.
And she never saw me. Not once. She had her notebook open and her headphones in and she was somewhere else entirely, but seeing her was enough.
She was a bright spot long before I hurt her. Long before my memories of her became a blemish on the way I saw myself—something to look forward to that didn’t have to do with pushing through my grief or being the best on the ice.
She didn’t know me. I was just a kid on her dad’s hockey roster, until he picked me out of the crowd and made me feel important. And then she was no longer someone outside of hockey. No…even worse, she was the competition.
I never spoke two sentences to her, except the two that left a scar on my heart. I hurt her to protect myself.
And then she stopped showing up.
She stopped coming to the rink. And I didn’t see her again. Not in the stands. Not until a week ago.
When she got stranded with me in a mall.
It was the worst possible scenario. Stuck with the girl and knowing she hated my guts. Because every time I had a chance to be there for her, I hurt her instead.
Except she didn’t hate me. She held hurt and baggage, but not scorn. And she probably has no idea what it meant to me when she told me she forgave me.
See, I’ve been carrying a weight my entire life. A weight compounded by how I was perceived—the star player, the good son, the coach’s favorite, the drug addict, the bully—until that weight was crushing. Until I couldn’t breathe anymore.
And when she looked at me in the dark and told me she forgave me, it was like coming up for air. Just one of those weights was lifted.
But I was still holding on to the rest. And I knew if I let them fall, even for a moment, everything good in my life would come crumbling down.
So I took the coward’s way out. I picked that weight back up. The bully. And I hurt her again. I told the world she didn’t belong in mine. I called her nothing.
It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done, and I don’t know if I can ever undo it.
But the truth is, she has never been nothing to me, and I’d like the chance to tell her that. To tell her I’m sorry.
The Blue Ox are playing tomorrow night, and I’m praying she’ll decide to show up. Even if I only get a glimpse of her. It was enough back then. That would be enough for me now.
I think this might be my last letter to you, so I want to thank you for every word you’ve written. I recently got my hands on an early copy of your newest book. I think it’s your best work yet.
Sincerely,
—B.B.
P.S. I found something I think might belong to you. It’s in the envelope.
I set the letter aside and pick up the envelope, pour out the contents. A silver chain pools in my palm, a tiny book charm nestled on top.
I draw in a stunned breath. My bracelet. The one I lost the night of the gala. How fitting that it was with Beckett all along. A piece of me, finding its way back to him.
“So?” Bree’s voice says near my ear. I nearly jump out of my skin. “Are you going?”
“Hmm?” I frown.
“To the Blue Ox game tomorrow,” she says, gesturing toward the letter, confirming my suspicion that she read the whole thing over my shoulder.
The question sits with me, taking up space in my chest.
Are you going?
Going would mean leaving the house—stepping outside these nice, safe walls to be surrounded by crazy Blue Ox fans who surely know my name now, maybe even all three of them after that social media post last week.
Which also means letting people see me instead of hiding behind my heroines. Out there in the stadium lights.
“I don’t know,” I say. I mean, it’s honest, right?
Bree nods. Doesn’t push. She is a woman who works with writers and knows that the worst thing you can do is rush the draft.
“Well, think about it.” She stands. Plucks her jacket off the back of the chair where she hung it. “But Everly?”
“Yeah?”
She nods at the pages. “I’ve read a lot of Sutton Blake books. And in my professional opinion—my extensively credentialed, highly compensated professional opinion—when the hero writes that letter”—she meets my eyes—“the heroine goes to the game.”
She lets herself out. The house is quiet.
My fingers trace the bracelet in my palm, running over the little book, the symbol of the meaning of stories in my life.
I guess the puck’s back in my zone.