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Chapter Eleven
Then
Ryleigh avoided melike the plague.
I didn’t know how she got home, but I hadn’t been able to find her at the banquet, and when I got back to the apartment, all my things were sitting in bags outside her door. She’d moved fast.
Never doubt a woman scorned…
I didn’t force myself into her apartment. I decided to give her a night or two of space, but that proved to be yet another wrong move on my part. On day three, I knocked on her door.
Nothing.
Days four, five, and six, all the same.
Day seven, I decided enough was enough, and tried to use my key.
Ryleigh had had the locks changed.
One week turned to two, and not once did I see her. Not at a game, not out and about around the apartment complex, and the more I went without her, the more I realized space hadn’t been what she needed. I should have been a man, and confronted her and the situation—both what I’d said out of my ass, but also regarding Jason—not letting doubt and ill-at-ease run our relationship.
It had been damn near three months, the post season dwindling to a close, when Natalie called me. “You about ready to get your head out of your ass?”
I knew that Natalie and Ryleigh had grown close. Over Christmas break, I’d brought Ryleigh up to the lake house, where she met the family and became fast friends with my sister. If anyone knew what was up with Ryleigh, I hoped it was Natalie.
When I didn’t answer, she said, “You and Ryleigh were perfect together!”
“Were. Now we’re not,” I told her, even though the words were stiff to my own ears. It couldn’t be over…
It had been ten weeks.
It was over.
“You should talk to her.”
She won’t listen. I’ve tried. I’ve been there. I’ve knocked on her door. I’ve called her phone.
“I saw her,” Natalie continued. “You should talk to her, Noah.”
I’d told her I would try, and I’d started hatching up a plan. Once again, though, the decision was taken out of my hands—this time, by Ryleigh herself.
It was my birthday. Big ol’ quarter of a century old. I couldn’t even be happy about it though, because the hockey season was over. It was my birthday, I was apparently single, and we’d just lost in game four of the Calder Cup series.
There would be no more hockey for months to come.
I was pissed, sure; we’d been so fucking close to winning. So close.
We lost in the last ten seconds of the game.
I drove back to my mostly-empty apartment, working off a mad, but that quickly evaporated when I walked inside.
Standing in front of me after I closed the door, was Ryleigh.
My Ryleigh.
The one I hadn’t seen, or heard from, in weeks.
She stood there, worrying on her bottom lip, and all I wanted to do was pull it from between her teeth and kiss her senseless. The only person who should have been nibbling on that full lower lip was me.
