I sank back into the chair and rubbed my face with my hands. I couldn’t take this. I couldn’t tellhim about Vanya, but I also couldn’t bring myself to stay silent. It was all too much. “I’m gonna go.”
“Of course you are,” he said with a sarcastic snort.
I bristled as I stood and unfolded my cane. “You told me to go! You said I?—”
“I know,” he cut me off. “See you around, I guess.”
“Doubt it.” It wasn’t a blind joke either. Jonah and I would be on the same ice but too far away to really be aware of each other’s presence. He’d be known to me every time my team scored and every time he stopped a shot.
But that was it.
And maybe the progress I thought I was making with him right after Dad was moved here was all bullshit.
“It’s not personal,” I told him. “I just have…things.”
“Secret things,” he said, his voice soft but bitter. “Things you can’t tell me about.”
I swallowed heavily. “I just need more time.”
“How much longer before you decide I’m worthy to be let back into your life, Micah? When do you decide to start giving a shit about me again?”
“It’s not about you.” My anger was rising, and I didn’t want to say something I was going to regret. “I can’t do this right now. I’ll call you.”
“Whatever you say,” he called after me, but this time, I didn’t let his words stop me.
I followed the maze of hallways, lost until a nursewas kind enough to guide me to the front, and it was by some miracle alone—or maybe they all just knew better—that no one came to fetch me from the curb.
For a moment, I allowed myself to sink into an uneasy, uncomfortable, very fucking lonely silence. And the worst part of it all was I couldn’t run any longer from the fact that all of this was my own doing.
CHAPTER FIVE
MICAH
Rollingmy cane along the curb, I heard a car pull up, and my stomach began to twist. I wanted to trust it was no one. Or maybe it was the Uber, who was still supposed to be ten minutes away. My heart began to race in my chest at not being able to know who was there.
Maybe it was a random doctor or a nurse who forgot something.
The door shut, and then footsteps fell heavily on the pavement as they approached me. My entire body went tense. There was no way it was Hunter.
No way he followed me.
No way he?—
“Micah, what’s the matter? You look like you’re about to faint.”
I almost did faint, but with relief, and maybe still a hint of fear. Hugo’s voice was a balm to my nerves, but I was so fucking high-strung I thought maybe this was the moment I’d well and truly lost it.
“Are you and Boden taking off?”
He snorted. “No. Jonah has some paperwork to fill out, and he’s waiting on Alexio to get here.”
“I—oh.” I’d thought the Glaciers had a game this afternoon, but maybe I was wrong. I hadn’t been paying attention to the schedule as much as I should have. “Okay. So…”
“So, I’m here to give you a ride,” Hugo said with more patience than I deserved. “Maybe we can grab a coffee, though I’m not sure you need any caffeine right now.”
He was probably right. A single drop would send me screaming into the distance until I smacked face-first into a light pole.
“You know what I want right now? One of those giant easter buckets at Tim Hortons. Filled with Timbits,” I said.
