22. Dash
TWENTY-TWO
DASH
Noelle’s boyfriend.
I said it without thinking, maybe even a little too sharply, but hell if I’ve ever remembered liking the taste of words more. Boyfriend. Hers. Mine. Ours. We’re a fucking team. Team Pembrooke-Sterling, or hell, Sterling-Pembrooke sounds even better right now.
Elliot blinks, as if he’s been caught staring too long at the sun.
Good. Let him. Because I’ve got no problem burning this image into his brain.
Me and Noelle, how at ease she is with me close to her like this.
The kind of closeness anyone can see and fools like him can think they can mimic with a girl like her.
Inside, though? My head is a goddamn carnival ride—lurching, looping, throwing me upside down.
I know who he is. Not in a name, not in a history, but in her pages.
He’s fucking Emmett. The one she wrote when maybe she couldn’t allow herself to feel.
The man who lived in her imagination as a hero.
And I hate him. Not Elliot—he seems to be catching on that he’s just a guy who makes lattes and probably listens to indie bands nobody’s heard of and would never get down to Taylor Swift.
I hate Emmett. The placeholder. The safety net.
Okay, maybe hate is a strong word, and not really what I’m feeling. Why? He’s the fantasy that kept her believing in love when my estranged cousin— that piece of shit —stole things from her he had no right to.
My jaw aches. I force myself to unclench it.
The last thing I’ll ever do is make her feel cornered.
Not by me. Not physically, not emotionally, not ever.
If she wants out, I’ll let her walk, even if it kills me.
But it won’t last. We belong together. I should go see that old Mama Fratelli-looking bitch and tell her she didn’t ruin me, my mother, my sisters, my family.
In fact, in a horrific way, her hate did what hate does until love eventually erupts in such a way that the whole world can see it.
We take a small table by the front window, sun pouring in, bowls steaming between us. She asked if I wanted to take it back to her place, and maybe the smart, quiet choice would’ve been yes. Private. Safe.
But no, not today. Today, I want Elliot to see.
I want him to clock the way she curls into me, the way my hand rests easily over hers, the way her eyes— those eyes —find mine every time I speak.
I want him to know he’s not just some muse anymore.
She’s my life. My present. My future. I want him to commit it to memory.
Inside, I’m promising myself that nothing— no one —is ever going to make her feel trapped again. Not Elliot. Not Emmett. Not my cousin’s ghost. Not even me.
So, I lean back in my chair, stretch my legs out under the table like I own the whole damn shop, and grin at her. Out loud, I say, “This is good, right? Protein bowls. Starting our day off right.”
She looks at me, slightly amused, and responds a little louder than she’d normally speak. “Yeah?”
I narrow my eyes, realizing she’s caught on to my play, and she cocks her head to the side.
“I have about a dozen unfinished manuscripts. One about Rocky, the sanitation worker. Another about the single daddy crossing guard name Clarence. Oh, and one about a shifting squirrel.” She nods toward the window.
“I filed that away when Milo, my favorite squirrel to watch from my window, got flattened by Rocky’s truck on a quiet yet smelly Monday when Clarence missed work for the first time since I moved in. ”
I bite back a laugh. “I wasn’t worried about you.” I motion between us. “We’re long game, unbreakable, Noelle Pembrooke. Just gonna make sure Elliot knows that.”
“Really love that you have that kind of faith in us.” She sips her coffee with a smirk, then smiles past me, and I look back. She whispers, “That’s Sandra. She’s got a huge crush on Elliot, who has yet to realize how awesome she is.”
“Thinking you’d better find a different coffee place if you expect him ever to notice another woman when that poor bastard thought he had a shot.” I lean over and whisper, “He knows better now.”
“Oh yeah?” she says with a little shiver.
“You and I, we were meant for each other, just took us both some time to get on the same page.”
By the time I hit the training facility, my head’s clearer, body ready to burn. The gym smells like rubber mats and sweat, the clang of weights and hum of treadmills filling the air.
“Look who finally crawled outta Pembrooke’s bed,” Killer calls from across the room, smirking as he racks his barbell.
Faulker grins, wiping his face with a towel. “Man’s glowing. Don’t even deny it.”
I roll my eyes and step onto a treadmill. “You assholes ever get tired of talking about my personal life?”
“No,” they say in unison, like a damn choir.
They give me shit through circuits, but it’s not mean. Every jab is laced with approval. Every smirk says the same thing: they’re all in on Team Noelle.
Between sets, Killer elbows me. “Paul’s been bragging again. Says that hat trick was inspired by him.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “Inspired by him, huh? It was more about making sure Coach D remembered I was a team player and not a loose cannon. However, he can certainly claim it. Why not? He was my hero.”
“Good man.” Koa nods. “Real good man.”
“Moretti, you good?” I ask.
He lifts a chin as he walks toward the exit. “Time to lace up.”
I look at the guys. “What’s up with him?”
All of them answer, “Claudia.”
I’ve been out of the loop for like a week, and we now have a Claudia and Moretti situation?
By scrimmage time, the rink hums with energy. Laces tight, sweat dripping, I push through drills until my lungs burn and my legs scream. This is the part I live for—the blur of the puck, the cut of blades, the smack of stick on ice.
We’re cooling down after a hard set when Moretti skates into the huddle, grinning like he’s deranged.
“Got an announcement,” he says, puffing out his chest.
“Jesus, here we go,” Killer mutters under his breath.
“I’m gonna ask Claudia to marry me.”
They all go silent.
Me? I choke out. “The hell you just say? You’re not even dating.”
“Don’t act like you know everything. Just because I haven’t acted like a love-struck puppy doesn’t mean that we’re not”—he pauses and swallows hard—“madly in love.”
“Not yucking your yum, man. Claudia’s hot as fuck and smart, too. But you do know that means the dick Costello let go of, dude who hates you is her baby daddy?” Killer asks the question we all didn’t even think to ask, but he’s not wrong.
“Daddy would mean he even gave a shit about Savannah before he got engaged to the owner of LA’s daughter.”
I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I’m piecing things together from a conversation we had a couple of months ago when we played LA at home.
Claudia’s baby daddy, an ex-Bear’s goalie, showed up at Icehouse after we crushed them, and all hell broke loose outside when the girls stopped in for Nalani to reclaim her man, Koa.
Claudia had brought Savannah to the game, and they were waiting in Sofie’s SUV.
We made our exit with them before the police arrived and we all got in trouble.
This was also the day I met Paul Bronski, but I digress.
The point? Deacon knew Claudia before that night.
Had actually warned her about Dingy. A warning she didn’t heed, because she was a graduate student and heading back West. It wasn’t serious.
She did reach out when she found out she was pregnant but told him that she didn’t expect anything.
He opted out. Kid’s close to a year-old now, and he starts pulling shit when she’s got a good job and life here.
“You’ll be a great stepdad to Savannah, not like mine was.” I pat him on the shoulder.
“Wait, you had an abusive stepdad and father?” he asks.
“Huh?” I ask, confused.
“That night in Sofie’s ride after all that shit went down at the bar, you said your old man was a dick. That he thought child support was paying for time to abuse his kids.”
I don’t have to think about that conversation too hard at fucking all.
“Davidson, my father, wasn’t my old man.
Hell, he didn’t live long enough to become an old man.
Mom’s second marriage lasted a year. My ‘old man’ convinced her that he had to adopt us so we could be covered under his health insurance.
He was great to us then, so yeah, it made sense, even though it crushed me, but I knew how hard shit was even then.
When his true colors shone through, and she filed papers to divorce him, get back our names, and be done, he demanded visitation.
And, of course, money talks, and the courts granted that shit.
Fucker didn’t mind paying child support that she didn’t want so that he could knock me around.
Smart bastard, at first. Drills to improve my game were his punishment; emotional fuckery with the girls if I complained. ” I laugh.
“But you all know I can talk shit, so yeah, I got big, I pushed back, made him lose it at the rink, caught on camera. That wasn’t enough, so I did it at a practice with an audience. Mom moved us to New York. So, yeah, my old man was a dick, but father was a fucking prince.”
“He your coach?” Killer asks.
I nod. “Best revenge was making pro.”
Walking out of practice, Koa jogs up beside me. “You good?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Took you till senior year to share any of that with me.”
“You’re still my favorite, Kok,” I joke. “They got the diluted version.”
“Understandable. Just … you may want to give it to Noelle full strength. The shit that fucked up Nalani and I could have been avoided if she had just trusted I could handle it.”