Page 159 of Secrets on Ice

The season continues for the boys. They are deep into the back half now, every game mattering more than the last, and the whole city starts whispering about how far this team might go. It plays on the TV most nights, and I can watch it without being dragged back to a dark club and a hand at my elbow.

And slowly, one impossible small thing at a time, I start to feel like a person again. Not the person I was before. I don't think she exists anymore. But someone new, someone who breathes in for four and out for eight, someone who is, against all odds, still here.

My brain won't shut up. It's early evening, dinner is cleared away, Cassidy has gone out, and I'm restless, so instead of sitting on the couch and letting it build, I put on leggings, grab my water bottle, and go down to the gym. There are a few people down there, a guy on the treadmill with his headphones in, a woman stretching in the corner, the hum of the machines and the low music through the speakers. I get on a bike near the window and start pedaling, letting my head empty out.

And then the door opens, and Sully walks in.

We both stop dead.

For a second, neither of us says anything, and I feel it hit me all at once, how long it's been. Two whole months since I've laid eyes on him, since he stood in our kitchen and told Cassidy he was leaving, since I stood in that hallway and heard him say it. Two months of knowing he was one floor above my head and never once going up there. He looks good, he's got his gym bag over his shoulder and his hair's damp like he's already been swimming, and there's a look on his face I can't read at all.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.” My voice squeaks out. “Sorry, I didn't … I didn't know you'd be down here.”

“Neither did I. I mean …” He shifts the bag. “I usually come later.”

And that's it, that's all either of us has. We just look at each other across the gym while the guy on the treadmill thumps away behind us.

My legs start moving as I sit on that bike, and my heart is thumping as he stands there looking at me.

“You look well,” he says, and then winces slightly like he's second-guessed what he said. “I mean it. You look … you seem good, Em.”

“I'm getting there.” I make myself hold his eyes. “Slowly.”

“I’m glad.”

He drops his bag in the corner and jumps on the other bike. I keep pedaling, and neither of us leaves. That's something, I suppose.

“How's the Maine house going?” he asks.

“Good. Winter is making it hard to get out there, so we are working on getting all the fabrics and things sorted and we will probably start working in the spring.”

“Fish has been talking about your ideas, he’s loving them,” he says.

“Thanks. Glad he’s happy.”

The treadmill guy has stopped, and there is nothing but silence behind me. The woman in the corner rolls up her mat and leaves, and that's when I notice it. I'm alone in a quiet gym with a man, waiting for the flinch, the cold to flood my veins.

But it doesn't come.

My heart's going a thousand miles an hour, and it’s not from fear, it’s from the actual workout.

“You've been playing well,” I say before I can stop myself.

He goes very still. “You've been watching.”

“Yeah.” I shrug like it's nothing, like my face isn't going hot. “Course I have.”

I think he's going to say something, but he doesn’t. He just nods, slow. “Thanks, fingers crossed this year is our year.” He focuses on his machine. And that's how it goes for the next half hour, the two of us at opposite ends of a room, throwing the occasional line across it.

When I'm done, I get off the bike, wipe it down, and grab my bottle. I make myself walk past him on the way out because the coward's route would be the other door.

“Night, Sully.”

He smiles. “Night, Em.”

And then, when I'm nearly at the door, he calls out.