10. Chapter Ten
Aspen
I don’t want to go.
I make this position extremely clear to my roommates over the course of the afternoon, in escalating formats — verbally, then via the look, then via lying flat on my bed like a woman protesting her own evening — and none of it works, because Kirra has decided that I’m coming to the party.
They have decided I’ll be the DD, and that’s just fantastic.
I’m being dragged out and forced to have no fun. Awesome.
“It’s going to be huge,” she says, going through my closet like it’s hers. “My cousin’s friend knows the people throwing it. You said no on Sunday, and I let you. I’m not letting you twice.”
“I have work.”
“You did your work. I watched you do your work. You do nothing but your work.” She throws a top at me. “Three hours.”
“Like you’re going to watch the clock?”
She laughs.
I put in no effort into my outfit or how I look.
This is deliberate. I wear the kind of thing I’d wear to the library, my hair down because making it would signal I cared.
When I come out, Kirra looks me over and sighs like I’ve personally disappointed her and unclasps a thin gold chain from her own neck and fastens it around mine without asking.
“There,” she says. “Now you look like you have a pulse.”
The house is somewhere off campus, and it’s loud before we’re even up the driveway, the bass coming through the walls, and I groan internally. Inside, it’s hot and smells like beer and somebody’s vape. I want to leave already.
Kirra presses a water bottle into my hand — see, responsible — and then she and Bree vanish into a back room I can’t see into. Now I’m alone in a crowd of people who all seem to know each other, which is awkward.
I find the kitchen and keep my back to the counter, with a clear line of sight to the door.
I lean there with my water and scan the room.
I look at the time. Three hours. I watch people my age do the things people my age do — dance, shout, lean into each other, fall a little in love for the length of a song — and I have never in my life felt more like I’m observing a sport I don’t play.
Then I realize it’s been an hour, and I’m scrolling on my phone looking at hockey highlights. I’ll give the girls twenty minutes. Then I’m telling Kirra I’m —
“Aspen Linwood.”
My eyes dart to the voice.
Gavin.
Shit. How is he here right now?
He texted me that he was in town, and I deliberately ignored it, but I never would have expected to see him here.
This cannot be happening right now.
My heart starts jumping in my chest at the sight of him. I don’t even think I’m breathing when I meet his eyes. Great, he’s smiling. And I don’t know why. We didn’t end things on a good note.
“Hey,” I force between my teeth, glancing down at the beer in his hand. It looks like a prop rather than the real deal. “You.”
I wince, hearing my voice. I sound as fake as my mother right now.
He pulls me into a hug, and I’m immediately trying to get out of it. I hear myself fake laugh. Jesus, I need to get out of this kitchen right now. I look around for Kirra or Bree. They’re not in sight. Where did they go? I see Gianna Reeve, and then she walks past the wall. Shit.
He pulls back. “How are you?” He looks down. “You look good.”
My face starts burning. I can feel the heat crawl down my neck. The last time I saw him, we were holding up a pregnancy test and impatiently waiting for the results. I’ve tried really hard to get past it, but I haven’t.
His voice rings in my head, “Would it even be mine?”
“I’m good. Yeah.” He looks bigger than the last time I saw him.
But in general, he looks the same. He’s always been good-looking.
A little older around the eyes, maybe, the way they get when a season’s been long.
He’s smiling at me with the exact smile he smiled the night he asked me out, and my whole body goes still.
“Aren’t you a little old for this?” I say, because it’s true and because it buys me a second.
He laughs. “I’m here on orders doing some sponsor stuff, community stuff. My friend dragged me out tonight.” He shrugs. “I figure, why not?” He’s loose and warm. He’s always been good at this. That’s how he charmed his way into my pants. He smiles like he knows it.
My heart’s pounding in my chest, but I can do this.
I let my facial expression fall to unaffected and rein in my tone.
I give him the version of myself I give everyone, the one that’s all clean edges and no doors.
He keeps talking. He gets closer than the conversation needs him to be.
He brings up the time we’ve been apart, and I cut him off before he can finish his thought.
“Honestly,” he says, dropping his voice, leaning in, “I was kind of hoping I’d bump into you.”
Get me out of this kitchen.
“Yeah?” I ask, but it’s not flirty.
He nods with that charming smile, taking it like I’m flirting. “Yeah.”
Where’s Kirra? Bree? Why is there no familiar face nearby?
I dated Gavin for four months, and he spent a lot of it talking about my father.
It was lame to say the least, and then I was a day late for my period and freaking out.
Of course, I called him first, but that was my first mistake.
He didn’t want to hear that I missed my period unless I was sure.
I remember telling him that’s not how periods work, and that missing it was a sure thing.
It was the biggest red flag. He came over and didn’t help with the situation at all.
He knew he was the only person I was seeing, but he still acted as if it couldn’t be his.
I recall staring at him in the bathroom mirror when the pregnancy test was negative, filled with immense relief, and I told him right then and there that we should stop seeing each other.
He easily agreed. And watching him walk out on me after everything, I felt struck.
Now I’m standing here realizing I don’t know him at all, that I never did, and he is looking at me like nothing much has happened between us, like we’re old friends catching up, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I would rather be home. I would rather be at the rink.
I would rather be writing reports about other people’s sons at one in the morning than be in this kitchen for one more second. I would rather be ––
Stanley walks in through the front door. Benson and Blue are right behind him.
The room, sort of, just stops.
And I realize that, as much as I’ve disliked Stanley Ermington, for one moment, I would rather be bickering with him than talking to Gavin.
That’s my sign.
Stanley shakes hands with someone, and my heart’s racing. I thought I despised Ermington’s existence, but right now, it feels like a Hail Mary.
Look my way, Ermington. Look my way.
His eyes find mine across the room, but he doesn’t give me a moment. His eyes glide over to Gavin next to me, and his face lights up. I watch it in real time. The way his expression relaxes, and his smile reaches his eyes. What the hell? He’s smiling like that because of Gavin.
“Yo, Gavin,” Stanley calls out, widening his arms as he walks over. “What’s up, man?”
They pull each other into a bro hug, slapping each other’s backs loudly.
When Gavin moves on to greet Benson, I don’t hesitate. Hesitation is how you lose, and I am done losing tonight.
I slide my hand into the crook of Stanley’s elbow and pull him into my body. I look up at him and smile like he just saved the world because he’s about to save mine.
He’s staring down at me, mortified.
“There you are, babe,” I say loudly.
The party doesn’t stop. The party has no idea. Gavin finishes shaking hands with Blue, and then when he turns around, the beer is at his mouth. He briefly chokes on it.
As he’s wiping his mouth, Gavin looks at me. He looks at Stanley. He looks back at me.
And Stanley’s mouth opens a fraction, and nothing comes out of it. Nothing. The single most verbal human being I have ever encountered, the man who has something to say about absolutely everything, has run completely out of words.
I smell him before I remember I’d be smelling him — cucumber soap and that clean pine thing underneath it, the cold of the night still on his jacket — and I cringe, internally, violently, at how familiar it is now.
I press myself tighter against his arm anyway, because the only thing worse than noticing how he smells is Gavin getting another sentence out.
“Babe?” Gavin’s looking between us now. His eyes settle on Stanley. “Is this why you didn’t text me back?”
I look up at Stanley to see what he does with that.
And all he does is glare at Gavin.
He’s not grinning anymore. His happy-go-lucky act has dropped completely.
I’ve watched him grin at coaches mid-bollocking and goalies he’s just humiliated and me, endlessly, insufferably.
I have never seen this. Whatever’s on his face right now is colder than anything I knew he was capable of.
I think Blue and Benson know too because they get taller.
Stanley’s free hand moves to the small of my back, and I can feel the heat of his palm straight through my sweater. I wince but hide the heat on my face.
“Give us a minute,” Stanley murmurs, already moving.
He turns me toward the front door and doesn’t look at one other person on the way.
When we step out, I get my first full breath since Gavin appeared, and it’s only then that I realize I’d stopped taking them.
I walk down the cold concrete driveway and turn to face Stanley.
He looks down at me, not grinning or making a joke out of this. He looks…mad.
“Did Gavin do something to you?” he asks.
I shiver at his tone. “What?”
“I will lay him out, Aspen.” He steps forward. “I’ll do it right now. Answer me.”
I should be insulted, or amused, or anything other than what I am, which is steadied because nobody has offered to lay anybody out for me in my entire life.