Chapter 31
Daisy
Daisy watched Patrick beat the shit out of Connor on TV, and couldn’t help but cry.
She’d watched all of Connor’s games since the trade.
He looked perfect out there. He scored goals.
He helped Casey and Evan score goals. He killed penalties.
She had no doubt that a contract extension was coming his way in the next few days. Everything about the situation sucked.
In the first couple of days after Connor left, Daisy had been a shell of herself. When left to her own devices, she moped and cried and did the bare minimum. They had been together for a matter of weeks, and this was by far the worst breakup of her life. She didn’t eat or sleep for days.
But since then, she’d started to pull herself together. She attended open practices and put podcast episodes out.
After careful consideration, she’d signed Coach Bree’s contract and started training with the players who came in at the deadline. She’d always imagined that when she worked with the Freeze, Connor would be there. Was that stalker-ish? Maybe. But even without him, hockey was her dream.
One good thing came of his ditching her. For years she thought that if Connor didn’t live up to her expectations, it would ruin hockey for her. That hadn’t been true. Her anger and sadness at Connor’s behavior persisted, but so did her love for the sport.
She wouldn’t give up her dream because one guy was an asshole. Even if she loved that guy. It also helped that her dream was more lucrative than she had ever imagined. In the few days she’d already worked, she paid her rent for a year. On the outside, she was thriving.
Her ‘fake it until you make it’ mindset crumpled as she watched Connor’s blood drip onto the ice at the hands of her best friend. The worst part about the fight was that Connor didn’t try. He let Patrick beat him to a pulp. The pain may as well have been Daisy’s with how she cried.
After the game she waited for Patrick to call her. He always called her after facing Connor. Since college, his anger and disdain for his rival had been newsworthy.
Patrick didn’t call. He didn’t text. Daisy watched the post-game, and then the highlights, and then the YouTube interviews on Nashville and San Jose’s profiles.
She ate a pint of ice cream, painted her toenails, and watched ahead in the show she had started with the boys.
She checked her phone’s network connection.
Powered it off and then back on, unconvinced it was working.
When it was no longer late in the evening, but early in the morning, Daisy gave in and dialed his number. On the second ring, Patrick answered.
“Hey Darlin’.”
“Oh, thank God.”
He laughed, the sound muffled by background noise Daisy couldn’t identify.
“Are you out right now?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“I’ve been waiting for hours for you to call.”
“Why?” Patrick sounded unfazed by her distress.
Daisy looked at the screen of her phone and frowned. Who even was he right now? “Um, because you always call me. After I mean.”
“I didn’t realize I was keeping you waiting.”
Rage bubbled in Daisy’s veins at how cavalier he was acting. “Why are you being so weird?”
Patrick was quiet for several seconds. “Ask me what you called to ask me, Darlin’.”
Daisy was pissed he was making her spell it out for him. Why couldn’t he tell her without her having to beg? Fighting for any tiny piece of Connor she could get when he hadn’t cared enough about her to consider working around their new constraints was humiliating.
Still, she swallowed her pride, hating how her voice broke when she asked, “How is he?”
It wasn’t Patrick’s voice that carried back along the line. “I’m fine, Daisy.”
Daisy couldn’t decide if she was relieved to hear from him, or if she wanted to throttle him. “You’re both fucking assholes.” She slammed her thumb into the red End Call button, wishing for the satisfaction that would have come with a flip phone. Daisy sobbed herself to sleep.