Chapter 8 Tanner
Tanner
He stepped outside to take Arlo’s call.
“I’ve tried you twice already this evening.” There was an irritable edge to his friend’s words that wasn’t uncommon when Arlo had to wait for something.
“It’s the weekend,” Tanner answered simply. “And you know I’m at Savannah’s pre-wedding thing.”
“I don’t understand why you couldn’t all just go out and get wasted. None of this dragging it out for a whole weekend shit.”
Tanner stifled a snort. “Yeah, cos you’re famously one to cut a party short. Did you want me for something?”
“I’ve got the paperwork through from Rapids management.” On the other end of the line, Tanner heard the rattle as Arlo popped the lid on a plastic pot of gum. “Still not sure about this move, dude. You had better offers and Boston wanted to keep you.”
Tanner rubbed at the uncomfortable hitch in his chest as his feet led him down toward the lake.
“We’ve been over this, I’ve considered all the pros and cons.
Last season was brutal, with Mats’s accident and my shoulder causing me trouble.
There was . . . that other stuff, too.” Things he was mortified to think about.
Arlo scoffed. “Must suck to be you with women just throwing themselves—”
Cutting across him, Tanner said, “Staying in Boston is out. I want to see how it feels to be nearer home again while I give it another season to see if I’m gonna need surgery.”
The words stuck in his throat. Trying to outrun the toll that hockey was taking on his body gave him more nightmares than he was ready to admit.
“I’ll tell you how it’ll feel. Quiet. There’s fuck all going on in Pine Springs. Unless you want to spend your days talking about potholes and the weather.” Arlo chewed as he grumbled.
“You’ve never been here.” Just steps away from the toes of Tanner’s sneakers, the water rippled seamlessly in a coral-tinted glow as the sun dipped below the trees. “Come visit and you might not be so keen to rush back to your traffic pollution and high-rises.”
“It’s more likely you’ll miss the nightlife, restaurants, and women, and then you’ll kick yourself. Can’t be much variety in a town with a population under three thousand.”
“Maybe I don’t want variety,” Tanner said softly.
Arlo’s laugh echoed in his ear. “Sure you don’t. Remind me how well you got on settling down with Lily again.”
“Fuck off.”
“Casual is the way to go, dude. You’d be stupid to tie yourself down at this stage of your career—to a woman or a second-rate team.”
Happily single, Arlo embraced both his lack of emotional ties and the role he’d awarded himself in Tanner’s life, doling out sage advice as if they weren’t exactly the same age. Only, some of his words of wisdom weren’t ringing quite as true these days.
“I’d tie myself down to the right person without a second thought,” Tanner admitted, his mind sliding all too easily to blue eyes and freckles.
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Fuck me, bro,” Arlo groaned. “What have you done?”
“Nothing—yet,” he said, then paused for a moment. “But Avery Delgado is here.”
“Who?”
“The girl who saved my scholarship.” Tanner dug the heel of his shoe into the sand.
“The high school princess?” Arlo asked.
“Yeah, her.”
His friend scoffed. “Keep your distance from that one, dude. You jump in with your ‘I owe you’ shit and she’ll be after payback before you know it.”
“You’re wrong,” Tanner said. “She’s never reached out before.
” Not even when he’d wanted her to. He chose to ignore Arlo’s quiet grunt of disagreement.
“I’m going to sign the Rapids contract as soon as I’m home.
I’ll call you on Monday and we’ll run through the details, OK?
” Winding up the call, Tanner shoved his phone into his pocket and took another minute to stand and stare, while old memories twined like ground fog around his feet.
By the time he wandered back to the clubhouse, some of the group had dragged folding chairs from a stack near the grill and settled in a circle around the firepit.
Savannah and Griff, as rightful guests of honor, had secured the comfort of the swinging bench seat with actual cushions, firelight dancing over their faces in the dusk.
Johnnie and Drew handed out fresh beers and Tanner took one even though he didn’t really want it.
“Nice work on the scavenger hunt, you two,” said Savannah.
“I had very little to do with it.” Shrugging off the praise, Tanner met Avery’s gaze on the other side of the firepit. “Avery’s the brains in our team. She’s always been smart.”
“Not sure I ever worked as hard as you did, though. I was just lucky it came a bit easier.”
The glow of the flames flickered across her face, blending with the red of her hair, and the generosity in Avery’s reply was as sweet as warm syrup on his tongue.
He’d always found her kind. She had seemed to look deeper than anyone else—past the lanky fidget with worn shoes who couldn’t stay away from trouble if it took out a restraining order on him and left the country.
Despite her dad being the mayor, Avery had never treated Tanner any differently because his mother worked in the local laundromat.
“I’m picking up vibes.” Leaning forward, Gemma wiggled a finger. “Were you two a thing back in the day? Are we talking high school crushes?”
“No, I’d have known if you were.” Savannah fixed Tanner with eagle eyes. “Right?”
Avery, flushing fiercely, opened her mouth—and he didn’t want to hear her deny it, so he gave a careless shrug, the beer bottle loose in his hand, and said, “You saw her at school. I never stood a chance.”
It was an answer and not an answer at the same time.
Leo got up to throw another log onto the fire, shifting his chair closer to Avery to avoid a wispy plume of smoke. When her eyes remained on Tanner, bright and steady over the rim of her glass, he wished he could read her expression.
“I know—let’s play Truth or Dare!” Savannah bounced in her chair and everyone groaned.
“Just because we’re at a camp doesn’t mean we’re actually still fourteen, Sav,” Sam groused without heat.
“She could have picked Spin the Bottle,” Kash pointed out.
“Exactly! And it’s my special weekend so you don’t have any choice.” Unmoved by the moans or Sam’s complaint, Tanner’s cousin jumped up to stand in the circle and began to spin with her eyes shut.
“Mind the firepit!” at least four people shouted in unison.
Her pointed finger was on Kash when she stopped and opened her eyes. “Kash gets to start. Truth or dare?” Savannah asked, her eyebrows dancing with evil intent.
He gave a gusty sigh. “I’ll go with truth and hope I don’t regret it.”
The game turned out to be pretty damn funny because Savannah chose to keep the questions just the right side of savage.
Kash admitted that his guilty pleasure was watching either of the first two Despicable Me movies with a packet of dried mango slices. (“Embarrassingly wholesome,” griped Bel.)
Leo had to do one of the TikTok dances on his “for you” page.
Sav was roasted for rating her own looks as a ten out of ten.
Gemma read out the last five things in her search history—one of which was “do ducks have accents?”
Drew managed to fit all the toes on one foot in his own mouth.
Griff admitted to having performed a striptease—fortunately it had been for Savannah.
Sam ate a stick of chalk from Gemma’s purse and said it tasted like a whitewashed cookie.
And, while Johnnie had to watch the trailer for The Exorcist without looking away, everyone got temporarily sidetracked and decided that Bel was who they’d want on their side during a zombie apocalypse.
“Honored,” she responded simply.
As the temperature began to dip, Avery dragged a hoodie from the back of her chair and tugged it over her head.
Stretching the soft cotton right over her folded knees, she huddled in a bundled heap, a smile playing over her lips as she listened.
When Drew dared her to let the person opposite draw a tattoo on her body with a permanent marker, Tanner walked over to crouch by her knees.
His hands, so deft with a wrist shot on the ice, felt clumsy as he held Avery’s smooth skin taut and tried to ignore the scent of her shampoo in his nose.
He sketched a hockey stick on the outside of her thigh that Bel said looked more like a dead snake. He’d never been great at art.
He chose truth when it came to his turn because no way was he letting Sam dare him to do anything.
“What’s your biggest regret?” Savannah asked.
Ouch. His cousin landed a direct hit with that one. He should have gone with a dare after all.
Running his tongue over teeth that were suddenly dry, Tanner tried to think of something humorous so he wouldn’t shatter the vibe, but nothing came to him.
In the end, there was only one thing he could say.
“That’s pretty easy. It was me who smashed up Principal Harris’s car in the school parking lot—the other two, as well.
And I regret letting Avery take the blame. ”
He felt her jolt of surprise like jumper cables to his chest even from a distance, and there was a moment of absolute silence.
“You didn’t!” Gemma’s mouth was an open “O.” Leo stared, his heavy eyebrows pulling into a scowl.
“But Avery owned up. It made the Pine Springs Observer,” Savannah stated, as if that last fact alone was intrinsic proof of his innocence.
Tanner noticed Bel was quiet for once.
“Only a small paragraph. No photo.” Avery’s voice was husky as she neither confirmed nor denied. “My dad had connections at the paper.”
His family had no connections.
And if that didn’t sum the situation up in a nutshell.
It was the most selfless thing anyone had ever done for him. But he wasn’t the same scared teenager anymore and there was no reason to keep this secret any longer.
“It’s true,” he said simply. “It was a filthy night and pouring with rain. I caused the accident.”
“No way!” Savannah’s jaw was gaping.
“Tell us more,” begged Gemma from across the firepit.