Page 152 of Keeping Score

“Yeah, you look like one, too,” Liam said in that dry way of his.

“Take a look in the mirror, buddy. I have the baby-fresh face of an angel.” I patted my freshly shaven cheeks. “Whereas you are sporting a few gray hairs.”

“I am not.”

He wasn’t. But I made a point of looking, anyway.

“How about you shut up and tell me what your next step is?”

“I guess I’m going to go back to the apartment today, pack up my stuff, and ship it to Michigan.”

“Yeah?” he asked, slightly surprised. “And when are you officially leaving?”

“Well, that depends on when we’re booted, but probably right after,” I said, thinking grimly of our piss-poor performance this year.

“Yeah,” Liam grimaced, in turn ashamed. “My heart hasn’t been in it. My mind’s been occupied with… other things.”

“And I’ve completely dropped the ball. I know that. This might be our worst season in our entire career.”

Liam shrugged. “It happens. We’re human.”

He said that, but I knew he was disappointed in himself. If this was truly his last season, then he deserved to go out with a bang.

I couldn’t reconcile the fact of me leaving on such a sour note, for that matter, either. But I didn’t see what else could be done about that.

Some things crashed and burned, despite how brightly they started out—whether that be hockey or relationships or life in general. Lucky me, it was all three at once.

“If you want, I can come help you pack everything up now,” Liam offered. “We’ve got a few hours before we’re due at the rink.”

“Honestly, man? That would be great,” I told him.

I couldn’t think of anything more depressing than packing up my entire life on my own, with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company.

“Are you going to tell Maggie you’re packing up?”

“She won’t care,” I told him, remembering that word she used, solidifying the nail in our coffin. Friends. “Besides, I just want to get it done and over with.”

“All right,” he said skeptically, remaining firm in his decision to stay out of it. “Let’s go do it then.”

And as casually as that, we went to go pack up the last decade of my life.

Chapter Fifty

Maggie

“Brody?” I burst through the front door of the house, searching for the man I had a hundred things to say to.

Namely one, more important than the rest, that just might change the trajectory of everything.

“Brody?” I called again, poking my head into various rooms, finding them all disappointingly empty.

I was desperate and frantic and excited all at once with the newfound realization that I had more power than I’d ever given myself credit for.

Brody and I loved each other. I knew we loved each other. Had known all along we had loved each other. I had just never put enough faith in that certainty. But I wasn’t afraid to anymore. To bet everything on him. On us.

I heard steps descending the staircase and hurried back into the foyer in the hopes of seeing him, only to be once again disappointed.

“You are not the person I wanted to see.”