Page 95 of Keeping Score

“It should be,” she said. “It can be.”

She shifted until she was on her knees facing me, a pleading look on her face as if she were about to ask for the world and was already expecting I wouldn’t give it.

The thing about Cassie, though—you couldn’t help but want to give her whatever she asked for. She was just so sincere.

“Maggie, you just have to go to him and apologize. You have to tell him everything that you’ve been dealing with in that pretty head of yours and let him help you.”

Help me?

But if I showed him how much I needed him, how much I would always need him, that would just send him running.

But I didn’t want to get stuck in this cycle of wreaking havoc and then living in the fallout of my own chaos. I couldn’t bear it. It was unsustainable. I needed to change.

For Brody’s sake. For Liam’s sake. And for my own.

So I heaved a deep breath, readying myself for the challenge of a lifetime, and looked into her eyes.

“Okay.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Brody

How was I supposed to think about hockey when my heart was shattered in more pieces than a jigsaw puzzle?

And not the kid version. Hell no.

I’m talking those 1,000-piece expert-level puzzles that gave me hives just thinking about. I mean, who sat there and did shit like that for fun?

The only reason I felt somewhat decent as I skated onto the ice for the home game that night was because I had hope.

I had to, didn’t I? In order to keep functioning in any semblance of the word, I had to believe that the love of my life really wasn’t gone from me forever.

No way.

Maggie and I were meant to be. I knew it the first time I saw her and felt that certainty deepen each time I was with her.

We were going to be just fine. It was only a matter of time.

And doing what Mr. Waterman suggested—letting her miss me. Letting her come to me.

Giving her space? I could do that, right?

It was sort of easy, having Liam around. He was like a walking reminder of Maggie. A way to be closer to her.

“Stop staring into my eyes like that,” Liam snapped, shifting to skate away from me. “It’s creepy as hell.”

“Sorry,” I muttered, skating over to the net.

I had to focus. Get into game mode.

Especially because my sister Tara was somewhere in the stands tonight.

I’d texted her about the… incident with Maggie, and even though I certainly wasn’t labeling it a breakup, that’s exactly how Tara was treating it.

Full of sympathy and a dire need to tend to my emotional wounds, she booked a flight to Boston, telling me we could go out to dinner after the game.

I wasn’t really up for it, but I guessed dinner with my sister beat yet another tea party with Lily. I couldn’t watch her cry again when the rubber bands of the fairy wings she tried to force onto my back snapped.