Chapter 25 Avery #2
Pushing hesitantly away from the boards, Avery took the hand he offered, and the rough heat of Tanner’s calloused palm against hers felt infinitely more dangerous than the prospect of taking a fall.
“Hey, you’re not bad!” A delighted smile lit up his face. “You’ve done this before.”
“Not many times,” she warned as he tugged her faster.
Thigh muscles bunching as his feet moved with fluid ease, Tanner spun to skate backward, fingers still linked with hers. His balance and control were effortless, the hours and hours of practice apparent in every smooth glide as he towed her around a small boy with a penguin-shaped skate aid.
It was sexy as fuck. And distracting.
Misjudging her next push, Avery stumbled and Tanner caught her elbow before she went down.
“Steady there!” he warned. “Just keep it loose and easy.”
“Not helpful.” Avery took a double handful of the front of his t-shirt, buzzing all over from his closeness. “I could have said that when we were stacking crates. You weren’t so ‘loose and easy’ then.”
When Tanner threw back his head and laughed, he drew the eyes of everyone close by. Releasing him reluctantly, she picked up her stride again and they skated a few circuits of the ice.
“Give me another half hour and I’ll be ready for beer league,” she bragged as her steps became more fluid with repetition. “Sign me up and stick me on the first line.”
Tanner winced. “We might have to bulk you up a bit, or you’d get annihilated.”
“Nah, I’d let them underestimate me and then I’d surprise them.”
“Surprise them how?” His dimple grew deeper.
Avery fixed him with as steady a look as she could manage on two blades. “I am the storm, Tanner.”
He spluttered and choked, the overhead lights burnishing gold flecks in his eyes that singed like sparks in her chest. “Oh, they should be very afraid. No one is safe when Avery ‘The Storm’ Delgado is on the ice.”
“You can talk,” she said. “Seems you’re always in the middle when everything kicks off. D’you enjoy the fighting?”
“Maybe less so these days but it’s still a rush.
Although the bruises I get during the season are something else,” he admitted.
“Growing up, the fights were a great way to let off steam. I’ve toned it down some as I’ve got older.
There’s only so many times I want to reset my own thumb in the penalty box. ”
Avery flinched at the thought. “You had a lot to be frustrated about back then.” More than most.
“Yeah. No dad, no money, crappy grades, Tyson Dax, fucking expensive hobby. I was always fighting.” Tanner’s grin made light of it all.
Since he’d brought it up, she ventured to ask, “Have you ever tracked down your dad?”
“Dex did—he’s in the UK now. They spoke a couple times on the phone and then we both went to see him a few years back.” Tanner spun her out of the way of a group of teenagers.
“What was it like?”
His face lost its ready smile. “He’s kind of weird.
Not a people person. Lives alone on a smallholding in Wales with a ton of animals and a compostable toilet.
Didn’t seem to bother him that he left us high and dry for a bunch of sheep.
” Tanner’s grip on her fingers was almost painful.
“All I could think of, when I was looking at him, was how sick my mom had been and how much she struggled to provide for the three of us. And all the while, this guy was messing about in his rows of carrots and fucking onions without sparing us a thought. I wanted to push over his water butts.”
“Have you stayed in touch?” Avery asked carefully, seeing the hurt in the bitter twist of his mouth.
Tanner’s lopsided shrug was an answer in itself. “Didn’t seem any point. We left him with our numbers and I even offered him money, fuck knows why. I don’t think he wanted either. In the end, he took the contacts but that was all. We’ve not heard from him since.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, clasping his hand a little tighter, and her heart ached for him.
“Don’t be. I’m OK with it.” The lie showed in the way his eyes stayed stormy.
“He’s never been in our lives and my mom is amazing.
I’m sorry for her that she had to struggle so much without him, but we don’t need anything from him now.
I’ve handled everything he should have. Shouldn’t have looked him up in the first place. ”
They skated in silence for a few minutes before Tanner made a deliberate attempt to change the subject.
“Want to talk about that look on your face this morning?”
“What look?” Concentrating on her footwork, Avery hoped he’d let it go.
“The one that held the weight of the world.” He glided easily next to her. “The one that was guilty and exhausted at the same time.”
It was scary how he managed to read her so well.
“Late night,” was all she said, her eyes dropping to her feet. Her mom had clung to both Bel and herself until nearly midnight, making it impossible to leave.
“Look up or you’ll end up on the ice,” Tanner instructed gently, and Avery could feel his fixed attention on the side of her face. “I didn’t think you had a bar shift.”
“No, not working. There was a bit of an issue with my mom.”
“She leans on you a lot, doesn’t she?”
Trapped by years of keeping her feelings to herself, Avery tried to sketch a description of her mom that would be the least revealing. “Oh, she just gets a bit lonely and needs some help with simple stuff around the house. She doesn’t really have anyone else to call.”
“You know you can ask me, if you need some extra backup, right?” Tanner slowed his strides to take both of Avery’s hands. “I’d like to help if I can.”
“I had Bel,” she said, choosing to avoid his question rather than consider it, although her throat tightened at his offer.
Tanner had told her himself how much he moved around. He wasn’t someone to rely on. Like a bright day in the middle of winter, it was tempting to trust the sunshine, but for all she knew he’d be gone soon. Avery had no intention of putting her faith in him only to regret it later.
“I’m glad you did. But if ever you need me, I want you to call,” Tanner pressed, his eyes fixing hers with earnest intensity. “That’s what friends do, Stretch. They support each other.”
There was a strange prickle in her nose and the nod Avery gave him was jerky, as if her puppet master’s attention had failed for a moment, letting the tension in her strings go slack.
“Not sure if this breaks the code we have going on here,” Tanner said casually, giving her a sideways smile, as his thumbs swept rough strokes over the backs of both hands, making it hard to concentrate, “but I thought of you over the years, Stretch. Not all the time, mind. Sometimes not for a while, and then I’d see someone who looked a little like you, see an abandoned hairband on the sidewalk.
Or I’d remember something from our schooldays and realize even though we didn’t get to hang out much, you were present in all of my memories.
And sometimes I’d wonder what things might have been like if I’d taken a different path. ”
Avery swallowed hard and cleared her throat.
“I guess everyone wonders that at some point or another. But there’s no such thing as a do-over.
” She gave him a quick look, steeling her heart against a stab of regret as his bright eyes seemed to shutter.
“I guess we live the life we’re meant for and learn our lessons along the way. ”
Tanner began to slow, almost coming to a halt, with Avery’s fingers twined so tightly with his that she wasn’t sure where she stopped and he began.
Hooked by the unreadable expression on his face, she dangled helplessly, unable to tear her eyes away as the ten years since school disappeared and this current highly charged moment took over everything.
When Tanner’s breath left his lips in a visible cloud, like iced cotton candy, Avery’s traitorous senses wanted to spear it on a stick and nibble at its edges.
“Excuse me?” The scrape of skates on the ice came to a stop as a young girl pulled up beside them, twirling a blonde braid between gloved fingers. “Are you Tanner Stone?”
“I am.” He pulled away to smile down at the pint-sized interruption and Avery’s exhale was shuddery. That was close, too close. “And you are . . . ?”
“Ella-Jane Wilson. I’m here with my sister and she said it was you.” The child’s snub nose wrinkled when she smiled and her top teeth were slightly crooked.
“Where’s your sister now?” Tanner asked, looking around.
“She’s a better skater than me and she was too embarrassed to talk to you.” The small girl pointed out a young teenager in a purple puffer jacket on the opposite side of the rink.
“Are you a hockey fan?” Tanner crouched so that he was no longer towering over the youngster.
“I love it! I’ve just started in the hockey program and I’m gonna play pro when I grow up.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said with a grin, offering his hand for a high-five. “I did all my youth skating here, so you’re in good hands.”
Another couple of children drifted over, gazing up at Tanner with curious eyes, and Avery shuffled gratefully out of the way so they could get closer.
This was what she needed between herself and Tanner—a bit of distance, a TV screen, hordes of small children .
. . any buffer to stop her throwing her very real and reasonable rules out the window.
“You’re not my favorite player,” chipped in a small boy with brutal honesty, his black, springy curls hugging close to his scalp. “I’m a Blackhawks fan.”
Tanner’s eyes danced when they met Avery’s over the boy’s head and she couldn’t hold back a snicker.
“Good choice,” he said wryly. “They’re a great team.”
With a winning smile that could have stopped wars, Ella-Jane tugged on his sleeve. “Can you help me with my crossovers?”
Tanner glanced back at Avery. “Well now, I’m here with a friend of mine—”
She waved him away with a sweep of her hand, cutting him off before he could finish.
No way was she giving up the chance to let their conversation slide, and part of her was desperate to see how he handled this.
“Don’t you worry about me. I’m fine right here, sticking close to the edge.
You guys go and show off somewhere else. ”
And of course, Tanner tackled it like he did everything else—with enthusiasm, charm, and bucketloads of charisma.
Resembling a frosty Pied Piper of Hamelin, he led a ragtag group of small children around the ice for the next half hour, while Avery watched him with her rebellious heart in danger of melting like butter on a hotplate.
Before they left the rink, he signed all the baseball caps they had at the concession stand and promised to return as a guest coach for one of Ella-Jane’s youth Stick & Puck sessions.
Avery wondered if he was just trying to impress her.
For all she knew, the season would start and none of them would see Tanner for dust. Not her, not his Pine Springs friends, and not Ella-Jane.
He’d be traveling again, living the dream, rubbing shoulders with puck bunnies and fans.
And he wouldn’t spare a thought for promises made or offers of help.
Slick words meant nothing on their own. And no one knew that better than her.