“You need to tell him,” he said quietly, with his cheek resting on top of her bad-day hair bun.
“It’s too late.” She buried her face against his chest, wishing for things it was definitely too late to be wishing for.
“You better not be wiping your nose on my shirt. And it’s not too late. He’s still reaching out, Kris. You need to be willing to reach out, too. To compromise. As much as it kills me to admit it, he and I are both looking at a few more years at the most. You’re going to give up a lifetime of love with him because of a few years of hockey and travel? He’s in Baltimore, not California. It’s like an hour and a half flight. Or you move to Baltimore for a few years. You can make it work if he’s worth it. And he’ll make it work because heknowsyou’re worth it.”
“Or maybe he could get traded to the Marauders,” she added.
She actually felt his full-body shudder. “I’ll miss you when you move to Baltimore, sis.”
Laughing, she backed out of his arms, using the sleeves of her baggy sweatshirt to mop at her face. “I don’t know, Erik.”
“This wholehockey or mething? That’s your damage, Kris—done by Dad and by me—not his. Don’t put Cross in that box with us without giving him a chance to prove he can love youandplay the game.” The muscles along his jaw flexed a few times, and she thought she glimpsed a sheen of moisture in his eyes before he blinked. “Give it a chance, Kris. Trust me, you’ll always be sorry if you slam that door without even trying.”
Andie.The sadness and regret was clear in Erik’s eyes, and Kristen was sorry she’d brought her into the conversation. But her brother kept his emotions so locked down as a rule, she hadn’t realized until now just how sorry he was he let Andie walk away.
“Has he reached out to youtoday?” Erik asked, and she nodded, even though she didn’t see the significance. “Yeah, so he’s preparing to go out on his home ice tonight for the first time in months, and he has to prove he’s back to a hundred percent against a team with a bad habit of teeing off on opponents’ known weak spots, but he’s thinking about you. Reaching out to you because you’re what’s on his mind. That means something, Kris.”
She nodded, glancing at her phone where Will’s texts and voicemails waited, unanswered. “I’ll think about it.”
“Think about it in the shower,” he suggested, and the exaggerated wrinkling of his nose made her laugh.
He left a few minutes later, after she promised to clean herself up and eat a proper meal since the empty Little Debbie wrappers littering the coffee table had ratted her out.
But she didn’t get in the shower after he left. Instead, she returned to the couch and picked up her phone. She didn’t feel strong enough to hear Will’s voice at the moment, so she didn’t listen to the voicemail. Instead, she pulled up the text messages and read through them.
Then she took a deep breath and finally responded.
I miss you, too. Have a good game tonight.
There was no response, not even the little dots to tell her he was typing, and she looked at the clock and realized he had to be in the locker room, gearing up and going through whatever pregame rituals he had because it was almost game time.
She was halfway to the shower when it chimed.
Thanks. I’ll call you tomorrow. Please answer.
* * *
“Cross,the Marauders are on your schedule for next week. Do you think your relationship with his sister will have any effect on the rivalry between you and Erik Burke?”
Will swiped sweat from his forehead, using the motion of his arm to hide the flash of emotion he was sure had to show on his face. They’d just won their second game since his return, and the media still wanted to talk about Kristen, who he hadn’t heard from since her text last night. He locked his feelings down because he’d known this question would come, and he’d rehearsed his answer for it until he could say the words without emotion.
“Burke and I will do what we’ve always done,” he said in a flat voice. “We’re both out there to get the win, and that’s what we’ll be focused on next week.”
He’d tried to call Kristen three times before tonight’s game, and she hadn’t answered. That had hurt even more than the unanswered text messages and voicemails, because she’d given him hope. She said she missed him, too. So he’d spent the rest of the night and most of today hoping she’d missed him enough to answer when he called, but apparently not.
“Do you think Kristen will be at your game against the Marauders? Will she have to choose between her brother’s team and the Harriers?”
“She’s pretty busy, and we haven’t had a chance to talk about it.” He gave the man behind the microphone a terse smile. “Are we done here, or do you have more questions about how we played tonight?”
“How’s the shoulder?”
“It’s solid, and it won’t be a concern going forward.”
There were a few more inane questions before he was able to escape and head for the locker room. Instead of lingering and clearing his head as he’d done for pretty much his entire career, he hit the showers and got dressed in record time.
He was going to try one more time. He’d call, and if she sent him to voicemail, he was going to let her go. But he didn’t want to call her from the locker room or his car, so he needed to get home.
Several years after he signed with the Harriers and had earned himself a sense of job security, he’d invested in a condo close enough to the water to be overpriced but too far away to have a decent view. But he’d liked the neighborhood and the secured entrance. It was pretty unassuming on the outside, but the units inside were nice, and it worked for him.
