Page 7 of Crack the Ice

TWO

MAVERICK

Cecilia Samuels is a captivating human. Sweet, kind-hearted, a genuinely good person. She’s also the only woman I’ve ever loved, and the only woman who can get under my skin as bad as she does. I’ve been infatuated with her since I met her at fifteen. I wanted to know everything there was to know about the brown-eyed girl my mom brought home with Lana from dance class.

I wanted to know what her favorite color was and why, and if her favorite food was something I could learn to make, though I more than likely would have burnt it to shit. Would she think it was weird if I took Spanish in high school so it would be easier to talk to her when the English words she was searching for wouldn’t come out? I wanted to know what made her tick, how her brain worked. And for the longest time, I thought I had it figured out.

She’d been my best friend for almost a decade when she took off to Spain, seemingly out of nowhere. Through heartbreak and tragedy, she stuck by my side like glue. She was my person, my everything, the person I called anytime something went haywire, well, until I got to the league and started sharing a room with my alternate captain.

I would have been given shit for calling a girl while I was on the road. Especially because good ole’ Ryan Parks was a playboy, and monogamy was not something he encouraged. He unfortunately made sure she knew that, it almost ruined everything before it even started.

She was nineteen the first time I realized my feelings were more than friendly. The moment I knew still sits fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday, not seven years ago.

She was sitting across from me at the kitchen table, her feet tucked under her, covered in her favorite pair of pink fuzzy socks with strawberries on them. She was reading something on her phone, completely oblivious to the fact that I was watching her.

Her face split into a smile before a raspy laugh fell from her heart-shaped lips. It wasn’t the contained laugh she used around other people, but her real one. The one that started deep in her chest and wheezed a bit as it escaped.

My fork froze halfway to my mouth, as if the sound of her laugh completely overrode my brain. I remember thinking, “holy shit, how do I get her to make that sound for the rest of her life?” My fork clattered to the plate, startling her from whatever she was looking at. Her eyes widened, and a flush crawled up her neck as she stared at me.

I pushed up from the table and ran to the bathroom, doing everything I could to convince myself that this was wrong for so many reasons. Lana’s best friend, strike one. Her brother plays in the league, too, strike two. She’s four years younger than me, strike three.

It was a can of worms I couldn’t open, but man did I want to. I splashed some water on my face, looking at myself in the mirror and telling myself to get a grip. When I’d made it back to the kitchen, she’d moved to my favorite spot on the couch. I didn’t say anything, just let her keep it.

I loved seeing her in my space back then. There’s not much I wouldn’t do to have her there now.

The silence stretches, and I realize she still hasn’t answered my question, so I raise both my eyebrows and watch as she rolls her eyes. In an instant, I’m transported back to my kitchen table, the game of Life spread across the flat surface with half-eaten bags of chips and enough sparkling water to have all of us burping for days. God, I miss sparring with her over that stupid board game.

Her voice pulls me from my thoughts, but her reasoning is a load of shit. “We grew up.”

“So what? You turned twenty, and you decided you didn’t want to be part of my life anymore? That’s what “grew up” means to you?”

Her tongue pokes against the inside of her cheek as she draws in a long breath. “Yes.”

“Bullshit, Cecilia.”

I watch as she swallows roughly, but then she armors up. Her shoulders roll back, chin lifting slightly, and her eyes are ablaze when she looks back at me. “We were not meant to be forever, Maverick. We had our fun. That’s where we need to leave it.”

I step into her, hands fisting at my sides. “Fun?” I seethe. “That’s what you’re minimizing our relationship to? Just a few quick fucks for the hell of it?”

She flinches, wrapping her arms around her stomach. “What do you want from me, Maverick?” she asks the floor. “I already gave you everything I had… it wasn’t enough.”

“You are everything, you always have been.”

She scoffs, rubbing her hand over her arm. “Right.”

Her eyes lift to mine, and her lips part slightly as if she’s waiting for my response.

My head is a mess of thoughts: what went wrong, and when, how could I have kept it from happening, but I can’t think straight enough to voice a single one. “Keep the S’mores on the menu. I have a feeling it’ll be a hit.” I say, rapping my knuckles against the cool metal of the prep table.

Her chin trembles, and it takes everything in me not to pull her into my chest and hold her the way I want to. Instead, I turn on my heel and push through the door.

I step into my sister’s office and smile when I see her hunched over her computer, laughing at something on the screen. “I need to head out.” Moving across the room, I wrap my arms around her neck. “I’m glad you got us all here.” I kiss her cheek, making her squeal.

“Don’t get all sentimental on me now, Mavy,” she calls as I walk out the door, closing it behind me. I’m tall enough to see through the window in the kitchen door, and what I see has me tripping over my own two feet.

Cecilia has both hands splayed flat against the prep table we’d just occupied, her head bowed and shoulders shaking. My hand is on the door before I realize I’ve moved, breath stuttering in my chest as I take in her defeated form. My eyes trail over the curve of her shoulder, chest clenching at the sight of her tucked chin, and what’s left of my heart shatters at the way she has angled herself slightly away from the door as if she could hide in the off chance that someone walks in.

My phone rings as I’m pushing it open. I mutter a curse, doing my best to silence it before I give myself away. But when I look up, her eyes are already on mine, angrily wiping the tears from her face.