AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When we pull into the driveway, I feel exhausted and hollow. But instead of crying, I put on a brave face. I turn to Mom and smile like nothing is wrong; like at eighteen, I haven't just found out I'll never have a family of my own. I'll never have the daughter I imagined in a far-off dream with my long blonde hair and Ryan's sky blue eyes, or the son with dimples that pop when he's mischievously hidden his sister's favourite Barbie doll. They're just gone, and I'm left to mourn the loss of something I never even had.
"Please don't tell anyone," I whisper, swallowing hard. My throat is burning and tight, as my emotions hang on by a thread. I'll break if anyone tries to comfort me or walks on eggshells around me. "Not Dad, Ollie, or Ozzy. Not even Holly. I don't want anyone to know. I don't want anyone's pity or them to feel sorry for me."
Mom nods and squeezes my hand. That little show of affection almost cracks the wall I'm building around myself, but somehow I keep it together. I plaster on the biggest, brightest fucking smile the world has ever seen and exit the car.
Prologue
Part 2
It’s Not You. It’s Me
Ryan
Four Months Later
I've loved Emerson Avery for as long as I can remember.
It started as puppy love. She was the cute little sister of my two best friends and teammates, Ollie and Ozzy Decker. I was eight, and she was six when my mom and I first moved into the neighbourhood. She and her friend Holly always wanted to play with the boys because they loved sports as much as we did. Holly's a kick-ass hockey player and just as good as the boys, and Em loves to watch and take notes. She would be the first to cheer us on at our games and share her chocolate on the way home if we lost, as she filled us in on things we could improve. She'd also be the first to stick up for us when we got into trouble.
She was just a friend—until she wasn't.
I'm not sure when things started to change. Suddenly, we weren't kids anymore. She grew her hair out long, golden, and luscious in high school. I dreamed of running my hands through it as I kissed her. Her lips seemed to turn up at the corners like she was smiling just for me. And perhaps it was the haze of teenage hormones, but I swear her eyes, the colour of warm caramel, sparkled every time she looked my way.
She was always bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to take on the world. She was stunning, and all the boys knew it. It made me crazy, wanting her. I hated seeing every douche-nozzle try to cozy up to her. She would laugh it off and flirt harmlessly, but she never encouraged anyone and never dated.
Until me.
Deep down, I knew I would end up with a black eye over Em. Everyone else calls her Avery, but to me she's always been Em, and I'm the only one who gets the privilege of calling her that. It's a sports thing. When your last name is always on your jersey and gear, you usually end up with a nickname that's some variation of your last name. Em also hates it when people call her by her first name. So when she started running track, everyone just called her Avery and it stuck.
I knew I was about to cross a line three years ago when I stepped over that threshold with tea and Skittles in hand. She was sitting on her bed with a book and wearing a set of pink, heart-print flannel pyjamas. That’s when I just knew. She was it for me.
At the ripe age of seventeen, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I would marry that girl one day. And then I kissed her. I kissed her like any seventeen-year-old boy who was hopelessly in love with his best friends' little sister would. Then I took her brothers' fists to my face and stomach for good measure. I took it like a man because she was worth it.
She still is. She's worth everything.
Three years later, I still feel like the luckiest bastard in the room, or the arena, when she's around.
Unfortunately, hockey is not a sport conducive to long-term relationships, especially in Canada. Junior hockey is not only a breeding ground for young NHL talent. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet of young women willing to do just about anything and everything for a night with a young star. I'm not stupid. The girls are here to get their tickets punched in the hope that one of us will make it big in the NHL and bring them along for the ride.
The NHL environment is the same but on steroids; some guys love it. They lap it up. A lot of guys take home different chicks every night—sometimes several at the same time. There's a reason they're called bunnies, and it's not because they have fluffy tails. It's because when guys take them home, they fuck like crazy.
I don't understand it. I can appreciate a nice pair of tits and a tight ass, but when I have the girl of my dreams at home, why would I risk fucking that up?
I was drafted high by Montreal, but I've been playing junior hockey in Barrie for the last few seasons. This year I expect to make the big club. I was lucky to be drafted close to home. Montreal is just a train ride away, and even though I'll be on the road a lot with an eighty-two-game schedule, Em and I can make it work. I believe in us.
Em is headed to Western with Holly in one month, and I have training camp starting around the same time. I'm already kicking my own ass with conditioning workouts. I hate being away from her. I hate the thought of her going away to university with all those horny shitheads, but I know I've got nothing to worry about; I trust Em.
She's mine. She will always be mine, and I will always be hers. But before I head off to Montreal and she leaves for school, I want to make it official.
All summer she's been acting weird, like she thinks the end is in sight and she's trying to drink in every last second we have together. Like she believes we have an expiration date. We don't. Our expiration date isn't until death do us part.
I finger the velvet box in my pocket. I'm not exactly nervous, but I know we're young. Em's stepdad and brothers already think we're foolish, but her mom is on my side.
When I told Mrs. Avery I wanted to ask Em to marry me, she smiled, hugged me, and said, "Ryan, honey, when you know, you know. It doesn't matter if you're sixteen or sixty. When you meet the right person, it just feels right."
My mom said something similar. When Martha Timms met Joseph Gunner, they just knew. They were eighteen when they married, and I arrived seven years later. They were married for seventeen years. Then, at thirty-five, my dad's heart just stopped. Mom used to tell me that he loved us so much his heart wasn't big enough to handle all that love.
I was a ten-year-old kid. I didn't understand death. At twenty I still don't, but I knew my dad loved my mom and me, and he would have loved Em too.
