Page 6 of The Has-Been

As she turns, her hair sways as she looks back. I wish someone, other than just us cousins, saw Reese’s beauty. Maybe one day someone will. Maybe someday the girl who loves rain will find her sunshine.

“Take it from someone who knows,” I say, tilting my head to study her. “Time here goes too quickly. Live a little this year.” I encourage her.

Reese nods. “This year is going to be different.” Her vow is like a spell, enchanting me as I watch her disappear back downstairs.

I hope her words do, in fact, hold magic.

CHAPTER 2

WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?

LIAM

OCTOBER

“Damn,” I say, frost-kissed hands reaching for the zipper of my jacket. “It’s colder than Aubrey Vaughn’s heart out here.”

Beside me, my best friend lets out a long, slow whistle. I can practically feel his pointed stare on my back as he stops walking. I take a few more strides before I realize that he’s far too hard-headed to take another step without me acknowledging him.

Stubborn ass.

But then again, introduce me to any hockey player within a hundred-mile radius of this campus that isn’t, and I’ll take a puck straight to my teeth.

I turn my head, my shoulders pulled tight as the cold wind whips around us. “Come on, Reid, it’s too fucking cold to be standing out here staring at me.”

But he’s unmoving along the paved pathway, arms crossed over his broad chest.

“You’ve been back for a month, and that’s the first time you’ve said her name.”

He probably thinks it’s some breakthrough in my healing process—it isn’t, but he doesn’t need to know that. Just because I can say her name doesn’t mean I’ve come close to processing anything about her.

And I don’t plan to anytime soon.

I throw my hands in the air. “It was just a bad joke, alright? And no—” I start, turning to look at him. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I add, knowing how his mind works.

That, among other reasons, was why the pair of us were unstoppable on the ice. Emphasis on the: were. As I don’t—can’t—play hockey anymore.

Reid shakes his head, and I know he’s figured me out. That I still haven’t gotten over her, even after she ripped my heart out and ate it for breakfast.

“You are one pathetic motherfuc—” Reid begins, pulling me out of my trance.

He never finishes his sentence—his words cut off as he tries to jog and catch back up to me. A split second later, an echoing thud sounds from behind me. I don’t have to turn around to know what happened.

It’s early October, and while it’s not uncommon for snowfall this time of year, it must have taken the Grounds Department by surprise because all of campus’s walkways are covered in a thick layer. And as Reid just found out the hard way, the sidewalks are slick as shit.

I turn around to find his sorry ass sprawled across the walkway. He curses while scrambling to his feet, frantically gathering the spilled contents of his pack, his textbooks now waterlogged from the snow.

I reluctantly help him gather his belongings, my chest finally steadying. “Talk about irony—” I say, handing over the books while Reid hastily shoves them back into his backpack. I chuckle before finishing, “A three-million-dollar hockey player eating shit on an icy sidewalk.”

He shoots me the middle finger before throwing his backpack over his shoulder, frantically dusting off the snow coating the beanie over his head.

When Reid is put together enough to continue walking, we pick up our pace, desperate to get out of the weather. The wind from the lakes is wicked in the wintertime, chilling you to the bone if you are out in this shit for longer than you need to be.

Typically, there is never a silent moment between my best friend and I, but right now, there is an awkward silence, and I know we both hate it. He wants to talk about Aubrey, and I don’t—so we choose silence instead.

It’s bad enough that I think about her all the time, no matter how hard I try not to. But being forced to talk about her is even worse. God forbid I actually see her, which is entirely possible, considering we attend the same college and share the same major. Thankfully, she isn’t in any of my lectures. If she were, someone would have to knock me unconscious, the only thing short of death that might spare me from the misery.

Conversations about Aubrey, or any of the Vaughn cousins for that matter, always end the same way hockey discussions do. In awkward silence. Even when my friends try to hide it. I’ll walk into a room, and the conversation dies instantly. Then the quiet stretches, thick and uncomfortable, until Reid inevitably tries to crack a joke to lighten the mood.