AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I wince.
“Part of the game,” Miles comments. “Some of them like that shit.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“I can tell.” He’s quiet for a minute. Then, “How was the trip to the prison?”
I sigh. “I’m sorry we ditched you like that.”
“You could’ve tried to ask us to go with you.” He shrugs. “We would’ve done it. Gone with you. We probably would’ve had to wait outside, but still. Moral support and all.”
I push my glasses up my nose. One of these days, I should try contacts. Or get that surgery to fix my eyes. Because glassessuck. They’re always in the way of things or getting smudged. Or worse, I take them off and then forget them somewhere. And how am I supposed to find my glasses when I can’tsee?
“Thanks,” I offer. “It wasn’t great. Seeing him brought up a memory, but of course it wasn’t a good one. So I just… walked out without talking to him.”
“What happened?”
“I put him in prison,” I admit. “I mean, the rational part of my brain knows that he put himself in prison when he came at me. But I pressed charges. He assaulted a minor, and he already had a history of violence with the cops. Assault that he pled out and did community service for earlier in his life, bar fights. Stuff like that.”
“And he’s still in prison for that?”
I shake my head slowly. “No… he killed someone in prison a few months before he was supposed to get out. Ended up with twenty-five years added to his sentence.”
Miles’ jaw tics. “Did he hurt you badly?”
“Yeah.” I can still taste the fear as he slammed me into the door. The pain of my cheekbone fracturing. It swelled the next day and took almost two months to go back to normal. For the black eye to fade. And even after it was gone, I was reminded of that night every time the cops came to interview me, or when they went to trial and I was called to testify.
Mom was nowhere to be seen. Not that it mattered. I was eighteen, a legal adult, and totally free.
“Kids who are involved in trauma often find themselves in abusive relationships later in life.” Miles is watching the game, but his focus is so intenselynoton me, I don’t believe for a second that he’s not paying attention to my body language. “Henry is his name, right?”
I let out a laugh. It’s more nerves than anything, and I wrap my arms around my stomach. That’s my defensive maneuver, always.
Did I really leave my parents’ house and run right into the arms of a guy who reminded me of my father?
I nod slowly. “For a professor, I wasn’t very smart.”
He glances at me sharply. “That’s not your fault, Melody.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “No, it’s not. If anyone, blame your mother for not getting you out of there before it got to physical violence.”
“I have a feeling she was worse on my psyche than my dad,” I murmur. “But that doesn’t matter. She’s dead. I have the restraining order against Henry—”
“He’s leaving you threatening voice messages.”
I wave him off. “We don’tknowthat’s him. We think it’s him.”
Jacob has the puck again. I’ve been tracking him as he got on the ice and off it, and now he’s back and skating for his life. He hops a player’s outstretched stick and drives for the goal.
I jump to my feet. Miles joins me, and suddenly the suite is screaming. Cheering. It doesn’t matter that Miles and Knox’s parents are here. They’re yelling, too.
He scores. I miss the puck slipping past the goalie’s defenses, but Miles is yelling a split second before everyone else. Then the red siren flashes behind the goal, and the Titans fans in the crowd, few and far between, go crazy.
First goal of the game.
Violet, Aspen, and Willow take Miles’ place around me. I stare at the ice, trying to keep track of Jacob and Knox, although my attention strays more often than not to Jacob. How could it not? Sitting on the bench, in perfect view of me—although his features are almost indistinguishable, just on the cusp of my vision—he blows me a kiss. Andthat’sclear enough to see from a mile away.
