Page 67 of Cherry Picking

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“Danny. Doesn’t he look gray to you?”

Danny wanders over with a plate of someone else’s cookies, looking unbothered. “He looks like a man who just played three hours of hockey. Leave him alone.” He claps me on the shoulder. “Hell of a night, buddy. Your old man actually cried during the anthem.”

“I did not cry,” my father snaps.

“He misted,” Danny corrects. “Misted heavily.”

“It was cold by the glass,” my dad says with wounded dignity. “I have a condition.”

“I’ll have him home by eleven,” Danny tells me. “Ten thirty if he keeps lying about his tear ducts.”

Neither of them mentions the woman they must have passed on their way in. I don’t know if that’s a mercy or if they genuinely didn’t register her presence, and I don’t bother asking for the details.

Either way, the silence is a relief.

They pull out of the lot at nine, and I stand there in the biting cold until the taillights vanish into the Vegas sprawl.

The team bus leaves at ten. I find Augie by the door and speak low. “Cover for me.”

He studies my face, the smirk fading. “You in trouble, Maxie?”

“No. Yes.” I scrub a hand through my damp hair. “There’s something I should’ve done back at Christmas.”

Augie’s eyebrows climb, and then his whole face splits into a delighted grin. “Flight’s at nine tomorrow. Wheels up with or without you, so don’t make me explain to Bellan why my top winger is still in the desert.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Hey.” Augie’s palm finds my arm as I’m passing. “Don’t choke now, Briggs. Go get her.”

The trek over to her side of the valley is a blurry rush of highway. I’ve committed her address to memory, mostly because it gives me a target while I rehearse a dozen different apologies, every one of them sounding wrong before I even reach the end of the sentence.

I pull onto her street just past ten. And there, tucked under the lot’s one functioning light, a silver Audi is sliding into the space directly beside her battered Corolla.

A guy rounds the hood to open her door. He’s tall, blond, and dressed in the kind of clothes that suggest he makes good money. Evie steps out in a leather jacket, her hair down and wild, and she’s laughing at some joke he’s made before her boots even find the pavement.

I pull to the curb half a block back, kill the lights, and immediately hate myself for it.

They walk to the base of her stairs. The conversation lasts a lifetime, or four minutes—the clock on the dash says four. She’s got her keys out, turning them over in her palm. He says something, and she laughs again, the real one, her head tipped back.

If he goes up those stairs, I’m driving straight to the hotel. I won’t look back again.

He doesn’t go up. He leans in, and she offers him her cheek. Then she’s climbing the stairs alone while he walks back to the Audi with his hands in his pockets, a good sport about the whole thing.

Her door closes. The light behind her curtains flickers on. His taillights pull out and swing left at the corner.

I sit in the dark with my heart beating frantically.

I’ve spent a long time believing that letting someone in will only lead to pain. That it’s better to hold myself back than go all the way in. I’ve got a scar on that theory shaped exactly like my brother.

But tonight, I finally said exactly what I was feeling out loud, and the ceiling didn’t collapse on my head. God didn’t smite me for speaking ill of the dead. I’m still breathing.

And Evie . . . she gave him her cheek.

I’m out of the car before his taillights have even cleared the corner.

CHAPTER 20