Chapter 26 – Trace
chapter
twenty-six
Trace
I hadn't expected her to come.
Maybe there had been a wish and a hope and a prayer. But expectation? No.
So when the doorbell rang and I checked the security camera to see Lena standing on the porch, arms crossed, chin up like she was bracing for a fight, the air actually reached my lungs for the first time in weeks.
For days after the incident with Trevor, I'd tried everything, texts, calls, showing up at her dorm, but Kimmy hadn't let me anywhere near her.
For such a little thing she sure was fierce.
Lena had blocked me on everything. All social media, her snap, places she hadn't even blocked me in high school. But I couldn't give up.
I couldn't have guaranteed she'd talk to Aunt Tammy if I'd been the one to call, so I'd looked up Max Porter instead. It had actually worked out for everyone.
Aunt Tammy offered him a job, and he'd gotten my aunt to look at Lena's tape, which was all I needed.
She deserved a shot. It sucked that because her dad had a whole other secret family, she'd been the one to pay.
And Lena wouldn't ask for help. Not for herself anyway.
For her mother, yes, but never for herself.
I ran to the door, but Waylon beat me to it. "Well, hello beautiful. Haven't seen you around in a while." He leaned against the doorjamb with one bare foot crossed over the other, Gatorade in hand, grinning down at her like she'd just made his whole week.
Down, boy. Not yours.
"Hi, Waylon." Lena's voice was steadier than I expected, but her fingers were white-knuckling the strap of her bag. "If you miss me so much, how come you never come say hi?"
"If I thought you wouldn't eviscerate me for coming to talk to you, I would have been eating lunch with you, and not Mr. Mopes A Lot.
But I figured we were all persona non grata thanks to the company we keep.
" He took a pull of Gatorade and shrugged.
"Sometimes he's not too bright, but we love him. "
Lena bit back a smile. I watched her from the stairs as she tucked a long, slim braid behind her ear. "Speaking of persona non grata, is he here?"
My heart thundered in my chest, almost as if it were trying to run out of my chest cavity and back to her like it belonged. "Hey, Lena," I called from the stairs, and my voice came out mostly normal, which was a goddamn miracle.
Her gaze flickered up. "Hi, Trace. Do you think we could talk?"
Waylon stepped aside and she crossed the threshold. Behind her back, he made kissing faces and pointed at me with the Gatorade bottle. Jackass.
"Sure, come on up."
In hindsight, having her in my actual room could be a problem. If this went poorly, her scent would linger over everything and there was no way I could sleep in here. But if it went well, then her scent would linger over everything.
The thought made my cock hard.
Great. Very helpful timing.
I punched in my door code, he deadbolt clicked, loud in the quiet hallway, and held the door open.
She stepped past me and her smell hit me before anything else, coconut and something warm underneath that cut straight through the sandalwood still hanging in my room from the candle I'd burned to nothing over the last two weeks because it was better than staring at the walls.
She stopped a few steps in. The late October light came through both windows at a low angle, catching dust above the walnut desk where my laptop sat open to nothing.
Her eyes moved across the built-in bookshelves, then to the photographs I'd finally unpacked and put up everywhere — dresser, shelves, tucked into the mirror frame above the media console.
Me and Dad at a game. The team with a trophy.
Mom and everyone at the lake house. Stuff I'd kept boxed in the closet for months because looking at it hurt, until not looking at it hurt worse.
She paused at the nightstand. Next to the charging dock and my Breitling, the worn paperback sat where it had been for weeks — spine cracked, cover gone soft. Her fingers hovered, then she picked it up and turned it over.
"Kindred. It's the copy I gave you." She opened to a random page and her thumb grazed the margin notes. "My handwriting is still in here."
Fuck. Why had I not thought about that book?
Lena had been gifted and talented in English our freshman year of high school — they'd done an Octavia Butler unit a semester before we had in honors.
Instead of making me buy the book, she'd annotated every margin.
Not study notes. Real reactions, sharp and personal, the kind of thing that felt like reading someone's diary without permission.
She'd written this is what it costs to survive someone who's supposed to love younext to a chapter about endurance, and the fourteen-year-old me hadn't understood she was describing her own life.
I had kept the book. One of my prized possessions.
Which makes you a stalker or a romantic. Jury's still out.
I cleared my throat and took the book from her — her fingers brushed mine and I felt that contact all the way up my arm like a goddamn live wire. I set it back on the nightstand. "So what's up?"
She frowned, looking down, and licked her bottom lip. The motion made me want to bite it. Instead, I leaned against the opposite wall, shoved my hands in my pockets so I wouldn't do something stupid, and waited.
"You lied to me."
It burned. "I did. I thought I was doing it for a good reason, but turns out I'm just as selfish as Trevor is. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you."
Her gaze lifted to mine. Tears sat heavy along her lower lashes and my chest cracked open. "You lied to me." I opened my mouth but she held up a hand and I shut up. "But you also did your best to protect me when I was too dumb to see what was right in front of me."
Wait, what?
"And even though I cut you out, you called Max Porter to make him call your aunt to give me a shot. You didn't take credit for any of it."
I shrugged, one shoulder. "I figured if I called Aunt Tammy directly, you would have seen it as charity."
"This feels like love, Trace."
About damn time.
"You just figuring that out? You “have been my heart since the moment I first saw you. Even when you hated me. I saw you on campus everyday and I let that be enough. Even if you never spoke to me again. It’s you, Lena. It’s always been you.”
A laugh broke through the tears, ragged, startled, like it escaped without asking first. "A little slow on the uptake, aren't I?"
“Don’t talk about my girlfriend like that." I pushed off the wall and crossed the room before I could talk myself out of it. She didn't step back. Just watched me come with those dark, wet eyes, her fingers still death-gripping the strap of her bag.
"I was scared, Trace." Her voice dropped and I leaned in to catch it. "Scared of what it would mean if you really were in love with me. Scared of what it would mean if I let you in." Her gaze drifted past my shoulder. "And now I see you kept that damn book."
"You gave it to me."
She let the bag slide off her shoulder — it hit the carpet with a soft thud — and reached past me. I caught her shampoo again, coconut and shea, close enough that my hands flexed at my sides.
She opened Kindred to the last page, past the author's note. Turned it around and held it up.
There, at the bottom, in her neat cursive, Lena Maxine Hartwell loves Trace Coulter.
I took the book from her. The pages were tissue-thin and warm from her hands. I read the words once, twice, a third time. My thumb hovered over the faded ink. How many times had I held this book, slept with it on the nightstand two feet from my head, and never once turned to that page?
She loved you then. Even then.
My vision blurred. I blinked hard and a tear hit the page anyway, darkening the corner. I swiped it off with my thumb but she'd already seen it — her hand came up over her mouth, and the noise she made behind her fingers was barely a sound at all.
"You love me?" It came out scraped raw.
She nodded, jaw tight. "I've loved you for a long time, Trace."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
She dropped her hand and wrapped both arms around herself, shoulders curling in. "Scared you didn't feel the same. And mainly scared that if I told you and you didn't, I'd lose you."
I set the book on the bed behind me, took her face in both hands, and brushed the tears off her cheekbones with my thumbs. Her skin was hot and damp and I could feel the tension in her jaw, the way she was clenching it to keep from falling apart. "Lena. You could never lose me."
"Promise?" The word cracked in half.
"I promise."
I kissed her. And it wasn't fire or urgency or any of that first-time desperation — it was the opposite.
Slow, and quiet, and it tasted like salt from her tears and like coming home after being locked out for weeks.
Her mouth was soft and familiar and I knew exactly how she fit against me, knew the sound she'd make when I tilted her chin up, knew her fingers would curl into my shirt right above my belt.
There it was. That small tug of fabric, and something in my chest unlocked so hard it almost took my knees out.
I pulled her closer and she let me, her body flush against mine, and I kissed her like I had nowhere else to be for the rest of my life.
When we broke apart I kept my forehead against hers, both of us breathing hard, her fists still twisted in my shirt, my hands on her jaw.
"I love you," I said. You know that, right? You have to know that by now."
"I'm starting to get the picture." She laughed, shaky, her breath warm against my mouth.
I pulled her into my chest and she came easy, her head fitting under my chin, her palm flat over my heart. “Trevor said something. He said you do a ritual with my name?
I held still for a long moment. “Yeah. I’ve always done it. Whether you know it or not, you’re my good luck charm.”
“I don’t even know what to say.”
“Before every game, I skate to the left goalpost and I tap it.
Twelve times. Same post, same spot, same number.
Every game since the first one you came to watch in high school.
One for each letter. Every game, every season, for seven years.
Even the ones you weren't at. Even the three years you hated me.
I'd look up in the stands knowing you wouldn't be there and I'd tap the post twelve times anyway, because some stupid, obsessive part of my brain was convinced that if I kept counting the letters in your name, you'd come back. "
Her hand flew to her mouth. The other one was gripping the ring so hard her knuckles had gone ashy, chain biting into her fingers. She tried to say something and it came out as just air.
"Seven years, Trace?"
"Like the obsessive bastard I am."
"Every game?"
"Every single one."
She made a sound, not a laugh, not a sob, somewhere in between that hit a frequency I'd never heard from her before and pressed her forehead into my sternum hard enough that I rocked back on my heels.
"I'm going to spend however long it takes proving just how much I love you.” I glanced at the clock on the nightstand.” You coming with me?”
"To your game?"
“How about to every game."
She pressed up on her toes and kissed me — hands in my hair, the chain and ring caught warm between our chests — and I stopped thinking about anything at all.
The arena hit me the way it always did — the cold first, sharp enough to scrape the back of my throat, then the wall of noise pressing into my ears and settling into my teeth.
Students packed the stands in blue and silver.
Overpriced nachos and stale beer and the mineral bite of fresh ice.
Bass thumping from the speakers during warm-ups, rattling the boards, vibrating up through my skates into my shins.
Scouts in the upper section with their clipboards. Coaches along the glass. The whole machinery of my future doing its thing.
None of it registered the way she did.
Third row. Same section as the first game.
Kimmy beside her, bouncing in full Loveland U gear.
But my eyes went straight to Lena — my grandfather's ring on the chain around her neck, catching the arena lights against her dark skin.
She'd tucked it under her sweater at the house, but it had worked its way loose, and now it sat right at the hollow of her throat.
The exact spot I'd had my mouth on an hour ago.
Focus, Coulter. You have a game to play.
Way bumped my shoulder pad during a warm-up lap. "She's here."
"I know."
"You're staring."
"I know that too."
He grinned and peeled off toward the far boards, leaving me alone.
I skated to the left goalpost. Same post, same spot where the paint had gone thin from years of sticks and gloves and superstitions. I pressed my glove to the cold metal and started tapping.
One. Two. Three. Four.
The noise dropped away.
Five. Six. Seven.
I looked up.
She was watching me. Not the ice, not the scoreboard, not Kimmy chattering beside her. Just me. And her lips were moving — counting along, her hand pressed flat against the ring at her throat, her eyes locked on my glove against the post.
Eight. Nine. Ten.
Her other hand came up and pressed over her heart.
Eleven.
Twelve.
She mouthed the last number and her whole face changed — not the careful, guarded Lena, not the one who kept score and built walls.
This was the girl from the back page of a book she'd annotated at fourteen, the one who'd written my name next to hers and never told me.
Tears and both dimples and something so wide open it made my throat close up even from fifty feet away, even through the glass.
I pointed my stick at her. Quick. Subtle. The kind of thing only she would catch.
For you. Always for you.