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Her expression turns baffled. “No. You seriously think I’m wearing his shirt to bed after what he did? Years later? After what I told you last night?” She lifts up on her elbows to stare at me head-on. “Really?”
“Sorry.” I wince. “I know you’re not hung up on him.” The possessive feeling ebbs, fading.
“Jealous,” she teases, the corner of her mouth tugging up.
“A little bit,” I admit, pushing my hair back. I swallow and look around her place, thinking about another guy being here, in my spot on the bed, and I feel sick. “Sometimes it feels like you’re the only good thing I have going for me, and I don’t want to share that with some other guy.”
I’ve said too much. I study her face, waiting for her to recoil.
Weak, my dad would say.
“What time is your practice today?” she asks.
“No practice this morning, but I have a training session at eleven. Do you have to get to work?”
A tiny head shake. “Not until ten.” She looks like she wants to say something.
“Can I take you for breakfast?” I ask.
Another tiny head shake, but she’s starting to smile. “I had something else in mind.”
CHAPTER34
RORY
Half an hour later,I’m following her along the Vancouver seawall, dodging strollers and joggers as we run. Gray clouds stretch across the sky, but it isn’t raining, and that’s a win for November in Vancouver. We’re making our way to Stanley Park, the big emerald forest at the edge of downtown. I check my heart rate on my watch.
“Let’s speed up,” I tell her. “I want to keep my heart rate above one-twenty.”
She thrusts her hand out toward me, palm up. “Give me that.” She points at my watch. “Your watch. Hand it over.” She’s breathing hard, face flushed, looking goddamned gorgeous in the morning light. “You keep checking it.”
“What else should I be doing?”
She waves her arms at our surroundings. Looking at the ocean, the glass towers, the trees. “This. All of this.”
There are a few people sitting on the logs on English Bay Beach, gazing out at the ships in the water.
I point at a seagull eating pizza out of the trash and gasp with overexaggerated awe. “Oh my god. Look at this majestic nature, Hazel!”
She slaps my shoulder, but she’s laughing. “Miller, shut the fuck up.”
I grin down at her before squinting at a building we’re passing. “I just saw a rat. Let’s go take a closer look.”
“Unbelievable.” She shakes her head, flattening her lips, but there’s laughter in her eyes. “You know why I like running and yoga and swimming? Because all the other shit in life just disappears. I’m just trying to breathe and not collapse, and nothing else matters. No family shit, no hockey, no McKinnon. Just this.” She looks out across the water. “Just trees and water.” She tilts her head behind us. “And that seagull eating pizza.”
We enter Stanley Park, and the noise of the city dies down as we run down the sidewalk between enormous fir trees. The air feels cleaner, crisper in here, and it’s the perfect temperature for running.
“Alright, fire-breather. I’ll do it your way.”
That nickname makes her glare at me. “Call me that again and I’m going to bully you.”
“You know what happens when you bully me.”
A huge grin spreads across her face and her chest shakes as she laughs, and the same feeling floods my body as when we were sprinting up the stairs at the team dinner. The feeling I was chasing when I tried playing pickup hockey. And last night, when I flipped the puck to Owens and watched him score.
We run around the park, and I stop caring about my pace or my heart rate. I just run with Hazel. Everything falls away, and it’s just us, right here.
“Come on,” I goad her later as the entrance of the park comes into sight again. She’s lagging a bit, but her pride would never allow her to ask me to slow down. “Is that all you got, Hartley? I thought you were strong.”
