Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Oliver
The puck flies across the ice, hitting the middle of the net with a soft thwack.
I make a tight turn, hitting another puck, then another.
The rhythm should be soothing—stick connecting with rubber, the scrape of my skates carving lines into fresh ice—but it’s not.
It’s not as satisfying without anyone in my way, and for the first time in years, I find myself craving the chaos of a game, the deafening roars of the crowd drowning out my endless thoughts.
Here, alone in the rink before it’s even open, it’s impossible to ignore the memories sweeping over me.
Devin and I laughing in her bed, her hair spilling across the pillow as she told me about the worst date she’d ever been on before me.
The way she held me when I panicked in the hospital, her hand steady on my chest, her voice low and certain.
Her face when I told her we were over—the hurt and the defeat, like I’d physically struck her.
My wrist throbs, but I grip the stick tighter, recover the pucks, and scatter them across the ice. The motion sends a fresh wave of pain up my forearm. I haven’t made it to the first one before the door opens, the sound echoing in the cavernous space.
Turning around, I start to tell the janitor—who I bribed with homemade cupcakes in order to get in here—that I just need another hour, but I stop short. It’s Niall on the other side of the plexiglass.
And he’s got that “let’s talk” face on.
Sighing, I skate over to the rink gate. “Hey.”
“You’re out and about early.”
“How did you know where to find me?” Now that I’ve stopped moving, my wrist has taken it as an invitation to completely give up.
I can’t even close my fingers around the stick.
The wooden handle slips from my grip, clattering against the boards.
Stepping off the ice, I collapse on the closest bench.
“You only go a few places. I didn’t think I’d find you at the ballet school or senior citizens’ center.”
I snort. “Fair enough.”
He sits down next to me, both of us quiet as I unlace my skates. My fingers fumble with the knots, the swelling making even this simple task harder than it should be.
“I’m fine,” I say before he can even ask, pulling the first skate off and replacing it with a shoe. “I just needed to get out some excess energy.”
“How is playing on your wrist?”
It’s a rhetorical question. My wrist looks like it’s been attacked by a whole hive of bees.
“How about a walk?” Niall stands, not waiting for an answer. “You can get some energy out and give your wrist a break.”
“Sure.” I finish packing up my bag and stow it in the locker room before we head out into the windy morning.
The cold air hits my face immediately, sharp and bracing.
With every step I take, there’s something to remind me of Devin.
The bookstore where we got her a journal, the one with the navy cover and cream pages she kept touching like she couldn’t believe I’d noticed she needed one.
The pizzeria where we found each other a second time.
Rye Again, where we had our coffee date, where my hope in our love was rekindled.
That’s all gone now, scattered to the wind. She’s free to start a new life without the burden of lugging my dead weight around. Her family probably threw her a party the moment I left the resort.
I suck in a sharp breath. Speaking of...
She should be back home today.
The urge to call her is sudden and all-encompassing, my fingers twitching to find her name in my phone. I take a deep breath and keep walking. One step at a time. That’s all I need to do, just get through this moment... Then the one after that... and the one after that.
I can do it. What’s life anyway, but one stupid moment after another?
Niall breaks the silence. “I have a question.”
I side-eye him. We’re almost to the waterfront, and the cold wind calls to me, promising to sting my cheeks, a sweet pain that will help me forget everything I’ve lost.
“Why do you push yourself so hard when your body tells you that it needs rest?” Niall asks. “As an athlete, it seems you would pace yourself so that you don’t completely break down.”
I give that some thought, but I’m pretty sure he already knows the answer, since he knows me better than anyone. “Are you trying to get me to reflect on my life?”
“Is that so bad?”
I laugh dryly and shove my hands deep into my coat pockets. My brutalized wrist protests, a dull ache settling into my bones. “It’s easier that way.”
“It’s easier to run away from your feelings, you mean, rather than face them.” He says it softly, kindly.
“You think that’s what I do?”
He arches an eyebrow. “Am I wrong? If it’s not sports, it’s something else. When you and Devin first met, it was her for a while. You threw yourself into the relationship so that you could avoid everything not going well in your life. Hell, sometimes you even make baking your escape.”
“You taught me to bake,” I protest.
“And I didn’t expect you to get addicted to it and use it as a coping mechanism. Dude, when I came into the kitchen this morning there were five loaves of bread. Five. In my kitchen alone. How many are upstairs in your kitchen?”
“A few,” I grumble at the sidewalk.
Dammit. He’s right. Whenever things get tough, I throw myself into some kind of project. It’s always felt like a productive process, taking frustrations and turning them into something tangible. It got me to the NHL, didn’t it?
It also got me a shattered wrist, an early retirement that would have happened from burn out if not the injury, and a bachelor pad above my best friend’s garage.
Oh, and let’s not forget that I’m also perpetually single, the woman of my dreams too good for me times a hundred.
If I’d taken my head out of my ass years earlier, I could have worked on myself instead of constantly chasing more money and accolades.
I might have been good enough for Devin.
We might have gotten our happily ever after.
“Here’s the thing,” I sigh. “My feelings have always been so... big. Bigger than I can hold. Movement is the only thing that shrinks them down to a manageable size.”
“And how has that worked out for you?”
“Poorly,” I mutter.
“Your feelings aren’t bigger than anyone else’s, Oliver. You just weren’t given proper tools for managing them. Your parents... they didn’t know. Shit, look at the way they handle their emotions. They take them out on others.”
“You think I’m like my parents?” I can’t imagine a worse diagnosis. The thought alone makes my stomach turn, bile rising in my throat.
“No. You’ve picked up some habits from them, though.
” He stops and leans against the railing, a thick fog resting between us and Pine Island.
The water is invisible beneath it, only the sound of waves lapping against the rocks below tells me it’s there.
“Did you ever share these big feelings with Devin?”
I start to ask if he means during our first or second go-around, then realize it doesn’t matter.
The answer is the same either way. “Hardly ever.” I grip the railing, the cold metal biting into my palm.
“Most of the time, I let them out in awful ways. In New York, I’d make digs at her to make her feel bad.
I didn’t know what I was doing then, but I think I wanted us to be on equal footing.
I couldn’t stand her being happy when I wasn’t. ”
“Is that what happened on the ski trip?”
“Her family...” I pause. Is it really about what they did?
Or is it about how I reacted? Some people would be able to brush off Jemma and Vera’s rude comments and silence. I never could because I worried that they were right.
What if I believed I was truly good enough for Devin? Would anyone else’s opinion still matter? Or would I be able to laugh and tell myself they didn’t know what they were talking about?
“I freaked out,” I say. “I was worried that her mom and sister are right and I’m not good enough for her.”
“Did you tell Devin that?”
“Kind of... I told her that she deserves better than me.”
“And what did she say?”
The memory has a vice grip on my heart. Her mouth had opened, then closed. She’d looked at me like she was trying to solve an equation that didn’t have an answer. “Not much,” I rasp.
“Maybe she was having trouble expressing her feelings. She’s not the best at it, either.”
I look sharply at him. “Oh, yeah?”
“She still tends to keep frustrations to herself, even at the practice. She’d much rather fix something on her own than address an issue with the way another person does their job.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, hating that for her. She doesn’t deserve to live that way, always in fear of confrontation.
And neither do I.
“I want to fix this,” I whisper. “I want her back.”
He looks elated. “That’s what I was hoping you would say. You both are amazing, man. Maybe you can’t see it when it comes to yourself, but I can.” He gently pokes my chest. “You make a killer couple.”
“But what if...” My mouth goes dry, my throat tight.
“What if what?”
“What if I mess it up again?” I rasp.
He gives me a blank look. “Oliver. What do you have to lose?”
I inhale that truth, letting it spread through my veins and take root in my heart. At this point? Nothing at all, and damn it if that doesn’t feel like freedom.
Tonight, for the first time in a long time, I decide to go for a run, not to punish my body, or to avoid thinking about the shit show that my life is, but because it makes me happy. Even though I haven’t gotten to see Devin since I left the ski trip, I know exactly what I need to do.
I’m going to apologize to her and beg her to give me a seco—well, third?
fourth?—chance. The route that I’m taking has become so familiar to me that I’m not paying much attention to my surroundings.
My feet know where to go, turning left at the corner where the old maple tree has roots that buckle the sidewalk, continuing straight past the house with the wind chimes that sound like church bells.
Which is why it takes me by surprise when I’m hit from the side by a large body and tackled to the ground face down.
The impact knocks the wind from my lungs. Pavement scrapes against my cheek, and I taste copper on my tongue. I struggle against my attacker but he keeps his weight on top of me, pinning me down. My injured wrist is trapped beneath me, and the pressure sends white-hot pain shooting up my arm.
I feel breathing next to my ear, hot and uneven. “You got people checking into me, asshole?” A menacing voice whispers harshly.
I pause my struggle for a moment. “Bailey?”
He laughs humorlessly. “I’m going to take that as a yes.”
Deciding I have nothing to lose, I start talking. “Is there a reason someone should be checking into you?”
“You can’t prove anything,” he says, avoiding the question.
I wiggle slightly. Trying to get my finger onto the button on my smartwatch that will send out an alert that I need help without Bailey noticing.
Since he’s sitting his considerable weight on my back, with my arms pinned between us, I just need to wiggle my hands just a little bit closer together and hope I find the right button.
My wrist screams in protest with every movement, but I grit my teeth and keep going.
Finally, I reach it, letting out a loud grunt to cover any beeping that might happen when I press the button. “Let me up, Bailey, and we can talk.”
“No,” he says, starting to sound desperate.
His weight shifts, pressing harder against my spine.
“There’s nothing to talk about. When I messed with your skates and it caused your shattered wrist, I was so happy you were gone.
Finally, I could stop living in your shadow and actually be the one in the spotlight getting the sponsorships, the women, the applause. ”
I grit my teeth. “So it was you?”
He ignores my question. “But then, I saw an article about you taking this coaching position. I wanted to make sure you were still wallowing in depression and self-pity, and I had some unexpected time off, so I decided to come check on my old buddy, Oliver Paxton.”
I bark out a laugh despite my constricted airway. “Old buddy, huh?”
“Imagine my surprise,” he trudges on, “when I see that you’ve reconnected with Devin, and have friends, and a good job. Meanwhile, here I am, suspended from playing hockey, and my girlfriend broke up with me and is pressing charges for assault and battery.”
“That’s not my fault,” I spat.
“Living in your shadow did this to me.”
“No, you did this to yourself, Bailey,” I say, as I hear sirens in the distance. The sound starts faint, then grows louder, closer.
Unfortunately, Bailey hears them too and gets up to run. I act fast, and grab his leg, sending him to the ground. He grunts when his body makes impact but he recovers quickly and gets up, starting to run again.
I lie on the ground, leaving the pursuit to the police that just pulled up behind me.
Red and blue lights wash over the pavement, painting everything in alternating colors.
I glance down at my smartwatch relieved when I see that, not only did I successfully alert the police that I needed help, but I was able to record the entire conversation I just had with Bailey.
It’s a good thing I kept my voice note app handy since it’s easier to voice record my lists and memos than use a pen when my wrist is in a lot of pain.
An officer that stayed behind helps me up and starts to take my statement. My legs are shaky, adrenaline still coursing through me. And a few minutes later, the officers that chased Bailey come back with him in handcuffs. His shirt is torn, and there’s dirt streaked across his face.
“You still can’t prove anything,” he shouts to me.
I can’t help myself. “Actually, I can,” I shout back.
This nightmare can finally end. Now all I need to focus on, is getting Devin back.