by Hughes, Maya
Hands were braced on my arms, but I tore them out of his hold. If I hadn’t been on the verge of losing my shit, I’d have kneed him in the groin. Viktor. He’d emerged from a doorway still on his skates. Bailey came out after him, flush faced and panting. Her eyes widened as they collided with mine.
She called out my name too, but I kept running. Pushing on the long metal bar across the glass door, I escaped into the daylight and climbed in my car with trembling hands.
I drove, not stopping until I made it to my destination. What had I done? Who had I just lost?
37
Colm
She left. I proposed and she ran away like I’d menaced her with a twelve-inch knife instead of a ring.
The look in her eyes had been one of abject horror.
Surrounded by my friends and family, I’d watched the woman I love run away, barely stopping on her mad dash to the exit. A brief flash of light filled the end of the tunnel as she made it to the door. And then darkness.
Emmett kept his hand on my shoulder. Declan joined him on the other side. Everyone looked at me like I might collapse at any second. But it wasn’t my body I worried about. That had been repaired and rebuilt, better than ever. It was my heart that lay shattered in my chest with the shards jammed into my ribs.
Had I thought the rejection hurt before? It had nothing on this.
“Let’s get you changed.”
“We’ll be back.”
The mood of the crowd nosedived into embarrassed somberness. It wasn’t like anyone had died, right? Except for my imagined picture of a life with Imogen as my wife. But the embarrassment couldn’t slice through the pain. I welcomed the numbness that invaded me, blocking out everything else around me.
No looks of pity to dodge when you were already drowning in self-loathing.
“Colm.” Liv grabbed onto my hand.
“It’s okay, Liv. Don’t worry.” The words were wooden. My reflex words I’d always said to reassure her.
“It’s us against the world, right?” She searched my face for a response.
But there was no response. I had to hold it together because falling apart here and now…I might never get back up. Imogen had pieced me together and shattered me in a matter of months.
I couldn’t think about the future. About our child. All I wanted to do was get out of my gear, take a shower and go home.
Coach came up and begrudgingly shook my hand. He said something about no selfishness on the ice and needing my ass to be at practice in two days.
I nodded on autopilot. Emmett, Declan, Heath, and Ford corralled me into the locker room, letting me know the next step of what I needed to do. Oh, take off my jersey. Take off my skates. Get undressed and get a towel. A bar of soap was shoved into my hand. Showering? How strange. Had I done any of this before? It all felt alien. Was this an out of body experience?
The urge to maintain this fog with a bottle of whiskey was strong, but I wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t hide from this pain forever. And I needed to be there for my team. And for my child, whenever he or she was born.
How far would Imogen run? How much would she push me away? Would she let me be a father?
In the shower, under the spray of the water, I rested my forehead against the cold tile and let the tears fall. I could give myself this moment to fall apart and then I needed to get my shit together. I’d used up my lifetime supply of wallowing.
Leaving the shower, no one had to tell me to dry off or get dressed, but I didn’t miss their worried glances.
“I’m okay, guys.”
They exchanged looks, waiting for my beard to sprout and a bathrobe to appear out of thin air.
“I’ll be okay. I just need some time. And your help, if I haven’t burned through enough of that to last a lifetime.”
Without another word, the group hug slammed into me. A wall of the best friends anyone could ever have. The family I hadn’t been lucky enough to be born into, but one I loved just as much as blood.
“We’re here for you, whatever you need.” Declan pulled his head from under Ford’s arm.
The arms relaxed and everyone took a step back.
“You don’t need to ask, of course.” Emmett clapped me on the shoulder. “What do you want me to do with the ring?”
I swallowed and breathed deeply through my nose. “Can you hold onto it for a little bit?”
He nodded, face full of understanding. He’d held onto a ring for Avery, the woman who owned his heart, for way longer than I’d held onto mine.
Ford put both his hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes. “You deserve the love you’ve been searching for, and you’ll find it. Don’t let this stop you from opening up that big heart of yours. You tried to pretend it wasn’t there for a while, but we all knew the truth.” He thumped his fist against the center of my chest.
“Thanks, man.” I choked out the words with the rising swell of feelings making it hard to keep my emotions in check.
“This probably isn’t the right time, but I ordered a massive cookie cake to celebrate. What should I do with it?” Heath offered a half smile and shrug.
A tight laugh burst from my mouth. Count on Heath to cut through the room’s tension with the promise of an oversized, slightly under-baked chocolate chip cookie from B&B.
“Let’s eat the damn thing.”
We filed out of the locker room to the waiting few people left. Avery, Mak, Kara, and Liv. Crushing emotions flared in my chest and burned in the back of my nose at their eyes staring back at me.
Liv flung herself at me with red-ringed eyes. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me tighter than I would have thought possible for someone with her small stature.
I hugged her back. I was used to being the one doing the comforting, not the one being comforted. But my baby sister had taught me so much about life already.
“It will be okay. She’s scared and once she realizes what she did, she’ll be back.” She didn’t mean it in a vindictive or snarky way. Her voice was full of a pain and understand beyond her years. “I’m sure she’s confused and she just needs to work through everything in her head. Some people take too much onto themselves and give so hard they bleed themselves dry. And sometimes that gets so overwhelming they snap and do things they wouldn’t normally do.” She tilted her head with a small smirk. “Give her some time, big bro.”
“I want to believe you’re right.” I stared down the long abandoned exit. Was Imo safe? Was the baby safe? Where had she gone? How long would she run?
I’d thought I’d learned not to hope for happy endings, but I’d been stupid to think I wouldn’t imagine one with her. I’d gotten ahead of myself once again, scared Imo off, and possibly ruined any chance I’d had with her forever.
* * *
A frantic blur of activity. After the last five months, being back on the road was a blast of insane intensity. It was a firehose of sights and sounds and people, but I wasn’t going to hide away from everything and everyone. Going back to that screwed up place wasn’t going to fix anything. I’d wanted back on the team and here I was.
Lugging my bag off the team bus for what felt like the twentieth time that day, I walked through the lobby with the rest of the team. A squadron of suited hotel employees escorted us to our floor and helped everyone into their rooms.
I sat on the edge of my bed, staring down at my hands. Was any of this real? Did any of it matter? For so long it had been the only thing I could think about, and I’d been afraid I’d never do it again. Now, here I was, and we’d won every game since I’d been back, but it felt hollow.
Each time I picked up my phone, I flicked to my contacts. Imo’s smiling face was the first one in my favorites. The stricken look in her eyes when I’d gotten down on one knee had kept me up at night, staring at the ceiling and wondering if she’d ever cared about me half as much as I cared about her. As much as I loved her.
Out on the ice everything else outside the stadium faded away and for a coupl
e of hours, I poured myself into the game. I pushed myself harder than I ever had to make sure I didn’t let them down.
And the second the adrenaline crash hit in the shower after the game, her face would fill the blankness of my mind.
A knock on my door broke through the quicksand I was treading through. Right on time.
I grabbed my key off the dresser and opened the door.
The four of them stood in the hallway like sentries after each game, ready to make sure I ate and didn’t sit in my room staring at the blank wall until I passed out.
Ushered into a private dining room, we ordered bad food and drinks. The beers arrived first and we all grabbed one.
We’d adopted Emmett’s old Avery rule when it came to Imogen. If anyone brought her up, I’d leave the room, so they learned not to.
“Three more days until I can sleep in my own bed.” Declan stretched his arms overhead, cracking his back. “You’d think these hotels would have beds that were more comfortable.”
“It’s not their fault you’re incapable of sleeping without Mak.” Heath grinned and gulped from his bottle.
Declan picked at the label on his bottle, muttering something about how good she smelled.
The ache in my chest didn’t stop me for being happy that he’d found his other half in a woman who he’d sworn to hate during our senior year of high school.
“Do you remember that last party our senior year at Rittenhouse?”
Everyone’s gaze swung to me. While I hadn’t fought their dinner invitations, I hadn’t been a conversational savant since we’d all gone back on the road.
“You mean the one where you and Ford bailed because Liv showed up with her other thirteen-year-old friends? The one I left early to make out with that hot student teacher? The one where Mak and Declan had their monster throw down? The one where Emmett broke up with Avery and shattered his front door? That one?” Heath drained his bottle.
The guys stared at him, slack-jawed.
Heath looked up as it dawned on him that no one else was talking. “What? We had a few parties that year, I wanted to make sure I had the right one.”
“Yes, that one.” I broke the tense silence. “But before all that happened. We figured it would be our last night all together. We’d go away to college and hoped we’d make it to the pros, but never imagined we’d all be together like this again.”
“Well, for you and Ford, we knew that was a given.” Emmett chuckled, finishing off his beer.
“Even that wasn’t a guarantee. But I wanted to say thank you all for being here. You guys are my family and you’ve been there for me even when I didn’t deserve it.”
“It’s what we do.” Ford leaned over and clinked his bottle to mine.
Our food arrived. Burgers and fries. A plate of nachos for the center of the table. None of us were looking for anything other than comfort food. The rest of the night was quiet and over early. The guys all wanted to go back to their rooms to call their better halves.
I lay in my bed and stared up at the ceiling with my hands behind my head.
I hadn’t messaged Imogen since the day she’d run, not wanting to freak her out even more. I’d been lied to, used for my money and cheated on, but nothing hurt more than watching her back away from me after I’d shared a piece of my heart with her and asked her to exchange a piece of hers in return. But I’d be there for her and our child, even if that meant I needed to stay hands-off until she was ready to talk. As much as I wanted to show up at her apartment and demand that she speak to me, I couldn’t force her to love me. All I could do was make sure I was the best father I could be and give them both whatever they needed. It would kill me seeing her and not being able to touch her, but I needed to stay strong and find a new future for myself without her.
38
Imo
They’d found on me on the beach in my favorite spot. The spot where Colm and I had sat that night. Without a word, they’d brought me back to the house I’d felt was my home for so many years.
That had been…five days ago…no, maybe it had been a week. Time slowed down and sped up, slipping away and lingering all at once.
As much as I’d wanted to be the same Imo that Fern and Charlie had always known and counted on, never showing the cracks and splinters, I couldn’t scrounge up the energy to keep the charade going. Curled up in a ball in Becca’s bedroom, I ate whenever they brought me food, and went to the bathroom when the baby decided to turn my bladder into their own trampoline, but I couldn’t do more than that.
Walking away from Colm had been like ripping out a vital organ, but everything about that day had been amplified, shining a spotlight on everything in my past and the wounds I’d thought had healed, but never had.
“Imogen, can you come down?” Charlie called up the stairs, not giving me the excuse of staying upstairs any longer.
My toes hit the cold wooden floor and I hugged my arms around myself as I walked down the stairs. They busied themselves at the stove, taking boxes out of the cabinets. I sat in the chair pulled out at the kitchen table and waited. Instead of staying in Preston’s room like I always did, they’d put me in Becca’s. Like they didn’t even want me in his room anymore after everything that had happened.
Eventually, Charlie and Fern sat across from me at the kitchen table. My stomach knotted, the tension so heavy it made it hard to lift my head.
Fern covered my hand with hers. “We have some news for you.” Her voice was soft and gentle, but the worry shone through.
That made me feel even worse for upsetting her. I kept my head down.
Charlie set a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows in front of me. The thick richness of it had always been a go-to on cold winter nights.
“Thank you.” I slid my hand from under Fern’s and wrapped them around the mug.
Her sigh, coupled with the disgruntled scrape of Charlie’s chair, sent waves of sadness rolling through me. I felt like an intruder, an unwanted guest who’d ruined a happy family portrait.
I glanced at the one hanging on the wall in the living room. The five of us standing together a year after my parents died. It was like losing them all over again.
“You don’t like it?” Charlie caught my eye.
I offered up a meek smile and took a sip, burning my lips, but not caring. “You said you had news.” Would they tell me to pack my bags? That I’d forgotten Preston and it was time to move on?
“You have some of your own too.” She nodded toward my stomach.
The baggy clothes were gone. The only thing I had in the drawers at their house were my summer clothes. Becca’s sweatshirt was tight around my midsection.
Dropping my hands into my lap, I cradled my stomach.
“How far along are you?”
“Six months.”
I would have sworn there was a thud from the way their jaws dropped.
“But you’re so small! I’d have thought you were barely out of your first trimester.”
“No, I’m almost two thirds of the way there.” The flutters weren’t so much butterfly wings anymore. Movement rippled in my stomach like a reassurance from the baby that they were still there.
“Is this why Colm proposed? Because you’re pregnant?”
Hyperventilating had never been something I understood. You breathe. We all do. It’s a fact of life. How could you not just breathe normally? Through the injuries, hospital stays, and funerals I’d never had anything close to a panic attack, but this question sent me on a spiral.
Tears flooded my eyes and my shoulders shook as I tried to keep it all inside.
Fern was out of her seat, holding into me. Her shhs and the gentle touch of her hands across my hair made it even worse. I couldn’t breathe, choked by my emotions and tears. I’d lost so much, and just when I thought I couldn’t lose anymore, I was on the very of losing them too.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Tears flooded my eyes. God I hated being a weepy mess. I could count on my hands the nu
mber of times I’d let them see me cry before all this. “It’s all so hard. Moving on without Preston here. We were supposed to do all these things together and now we can’t. But doing them with someone else—it’s hard because I feel like I’m losing him again. Leaving those pieces of him behind and moving on. I was supposed to be your daughter-in-law.”
“Sweetie.” She pulled back and cupped my cheeks, tilting my head up to look into my eyes. “You’ll never be our daughter-in-law.”
I didn’t think anything could hurt more than what I’d been through, but those words reached inside of me, plumbing the depths of my deepest fears and bringing them to life. I couldn’t catch my breath. My eyes slammed shut.
She smoothed my hair from my face. “I need you to know that, Imogen. You’ll never be our daughter-in-law, but you’ll always be our daughter.”
I looked back at her with tears blinding me.
“Your parents loved you. And we love you. Not because you were Preston’s girlfriend, and not because he planned on marrying you, but because you’re our family and nothing will ever change that. Not hundreds or thousands of miles, not time, not a baby, and not you finding love with someone else. We want that for you. He’d want that for you. You can’t keep living in this holding pattern circling a life you’ll never have. That life died when he did.”
They exchanged worried looks as I tried to pull myself together.
Letting out a shaky breath, I dried my face with the handkerchief Charlie held out for me.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t ever be sorry, Imo. You’ve always been so good at keeping everyone else afloat and making sure they were okay, but now you need to do it for yourself. And we’re going to try to do that for you now.
“The news we have for you is that we’re leaving.”