Off the Ice (Juniper Falls)

by Julie Cross

  I can’t look at Claire. What if she’s scared of me like my mom is? I’ll never be able to erase that image. I push up to my feet, and before Jamie and Leo can shove me back down again, I turn the other way. “Just…” I can hardly talk without getting winded, without feeling this crushing weight on my chest. “Just give me a minute, okay?”

  I act like I’m gonna walk around the building, but I take off in a jog toward home. I’ll go the back way, off the street. I don’t trust myself to stay here and not do anything else wrong. I need to reset or something.

  Chapter 51

  –Claire–

  I break away from Mom the second the squad car disappears with that asshole locked up in the back. I’m looking around everywhere. The parking lot is crowded with nearly everyone who was inside the bar. For a second, I catch Luke Pratt’s eye from a distance. He’s standing still, his mouth hanging open in shock. Yeah, that’s right. Make new friends, buddy. I can’t think about him or anything related to him at the moment. But I do hear him tell someone nearby, “I don’t even know that guy. I don’t even know his last name. We just started working together.”

  I shake my head and force his voice to fade into the loud chatter happening in the parking lot right now. My dad is shaking, his face twisted with rage. I grab his arms. “Dad, you have to go back inside. You need to sit down.” I glance over at my mom. She’s got that look like she needs to hold on to me again, just in case. “Mom, I’m okay. Bring him inside, please?”

  She takes a sharp breath and nods. Then Dad puts an arm around her shoulders and they both lean in to each other while walking toward the doors. I move quickly, looking some more. I spot Jamie and Leo talking in low voices.

  “Where’s Tate?” I ask.

  Jamie runs around the building and Leo, after seeing me shivering, sheds his coat and puts it around my shoulders.

  “He’s okay,” Leo reassures me.

  He might be physically okay, but I need to see his face. I need him in my personal space right now. Something broke in him. I saw it with my own eyes. And God, this was a long time coming. But it shouldn’t have gone down like this.

  “He’s gone,” Jamie calls, coming back around from the other side of the building. “Maybe he went inside?”

  That’s unlikely, considering the crowd that’s now formed near the front doors of O’Connor’s. I feel around for my phone, preparing to call him, but it’s not in my apron or my hand. Leo is already on it, his phone pressed to his ear. He waits for a minute and then shakes his head.

  Tate’s mom moves beside Roger, whispering something. And then she walks toward me. “I’m so sorry, Claire. I don’t know…I don’t know what that was…”

  I shake my head and zip up Leo’s letter jacket. “I saw that guy earlier. He did the usual teasing, but nothing—”

  “I mean Tate,” she says, tears bubbling in her voice. “I’ve never seen him like that. I don’t know where it came from.”

  My eyes meet hers. I try to make my voice firm and assertive even though she’s the adult. “He was protecting me.”

  “I know.” Her head bobs up and down, but her tone contradicts the movement. She’s not sure. “Of course he was.”

  “We need to find him,” I tell her. I’m starting to panic. “He’s scared and…well, I don’t know what else he is, but he shouldn’t be alone.”

  “She’s right,” Leo says from beside me.

  “He wouldn’t let us near him,” Jamie adds. “He just kept backing away.”

  “Maybe it’s best if we let him cool off for a little while,” Tate’s mom says. “I can take Olivia to your mom’s house,” she tells Roger.

  “If you want.” Roger turns to Jamie and Leo. “Let’s go find him.”

  I jump right behind them. “I’m going with you.”

  Roger shakes his head. “Your dad will pummel me. You need to warm up. Get inside and I’ll call you as soon as we find him, okay?”

  I open my mouth to protest, but Haley appears in front of me, holding out my phone. “Found this in the parking lot.”

  I’m dialing Tate before I even have a chance to thank her. It goes straight to voicemail. Dammit.

  “Tate’s gone,” I tell Haley.

  She gets her arms around me, and suddenly I’m craving the human contact. I rest my head on her shoulder.

  “My lip is throbbing. Does it look really big and fat?”

  Haley laughs, but her voice is nearly as shaky as mine. “Can we go upstairs? We can get you cleaned off.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Sheriff Hammond must have heard Haley mention going upstairs because he nods his agreement and says, “I’ll come up in fifteen minutes and get your statement, all right?”

  “All right.” I’m not looking forward to repeating the whole event. It was hard enough the first time.

  I lead Haley upstairs, and she goes into the bathroom to get something to wash off my hands. My stomach drops, remembering what Jamie and Leo said about Tate not wanting them to get close. “Where do you think he is?”

  “I don’t know.” Haley appears with a wet washcloth. “He was pretty upset?”

  “I’m not sure what he was.” I sink down onto the bed, my worry growing by the second. “Whatever he is, he needs someone.”

  “I know it must have been awful to see Tate in a fight like that…but his mom was so…” Haley shakes her head. “Weird. Not together. I don’t get it. It’s like she was upset with him.”

  I avoid her eyes, but she catches on quick. “What, Claire? Why did she react like that?”

  “This is just a guess, but I think maybe she was making an association between Tate and her ex-husband.”

  If Haley is shocked, she does a good job of hiding it. “Tate’s dad got in fights?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know.” He got in fights with Tate. That much I do know. And once with Tate and me. I glance at my phone, willing it to ring. Willing Roger to tell me he found Tate. “But I’ve seen Tate’s dad angry before. Seen him violent.”

  “Because you were friends with Jody?”

  I shake my head. “No, she doesn’t really know that stuff. It’s kind of been a secret between Tate and me for a while now.”

  “A while?” Haley lifts an eyebrow. “You mean while he’s been in town recently? To watch the games?”

  I look down at my hands. “I mean since right before I left for Northwestern.”

  It feels so weird to finally say it out loud. Not that I really gave specifics, but God, it was something at least. It’s time.

  Haley hands me the washcloth and sinks into the spot beside me. “That’s what he was going to tell me. He said—”

  “Wait.” I spin to face her. “He said he was going to tell you that?”

  “Well, no.” Her forehead wrinkles. “He said he knew that he hadn’t trusted me with really getting to know him and that he wanted to trust me now. As friends,” she adds quickly, concern filling her face. “But he needed some time.”

  My heart breaks all over again. He’s really trying. He’s trying to be ready to do this. He got what I said. That he can’t wait any longer. He has to do this now—

  Oh man… I cover my face and groan.

  “What?” Haley jumps. “What’s wrong?”

  I lift my head and look at her. “Just what my dad said today…you know, the do it now speech.”

  “Yes,” Haley says, nodding. She’s obviously wanted to push me on this since I spilled about this afternoon.

  I get up from the bed and start pacing. I’m so completely scared. Scared of where Tate is. Mentally more so than physically. I can’t focus on this too much.

  There’s a knock on the door, and then my mom enters with Sheriff Hammond.

  “Where’s Dad?” I ask.

  Mom’s face fills with concern. “He insisted on walking home. Wouldn’t let me talk him out of it.”

  My panic rises several notches. “He walked home?”

  “Ned is going to follow him
. He’ll be fine,” Mom reassures, moving closer to touch my hair. “He’s very upset. He wants to be able to protect you, and he can’t now. Not like he could have before. But he needs to accept reality. That isn’t something we can help him through.”

  My heart sinks again. Just when Dad was able to find peace with everything, he’s shaken up again with what he can’t do. Those feelings can be more crippling than the actual physical limitations he’s been forced into.

  Haley stands up and looks between Sheriff Hammond and me. “Do you want me to go?”

  “No,” I say right away. And I mean it. I want her here.

  “Okay.” She flashes me a smile and returns to sitting on the bed.

  In my hand, my phone vibrates. My heart jumps up to my throat.

  ROGER: found him. He’s ok. Give us a few minutes, ok?

  I sigh with relief. Then I look at Sheriff Hammond. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Chapter 52

  –Tate–

  When Roger walks into the garage, my whole body is shaking, my stomach flipping over and over. I’m not sure if I’m about to puke or pass out. Sweat trickles down my neck and back. I sit on the floor and lean against the back shelf.

  Roger rests a hand on my shoulder, and I have that instinct to pull away again, but I’m too sick and dizzy to move. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  He squats down in front of me, looking me over. “What for?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know—everything. I don’t know if…” My face drops into my hands. “Claire told me I wasn’t okay. I should have listened to her—I don’t know if I would have stopped. If you and Leo hadn’t been there.”

  The sickness increases, but it feels like I just coughed out a piece of that toxic part of me buried inside. It’s ugly in there. It’s a hole I want to seal off for good. But I’m not sure I can. Especially knowing that it’s been festering inside me for so long.

  I pull in a sharp breath, needing to release more. “I think…I think I would have killed him. I wanted to so badly. I was completely blind. I couldn’t see two seconds in front of me. I didn’t care. It was just now. Now.”

  Finally, I brave looking up at Roger. His face is full of concern.

  “That’s why my mom looked so freaked out, isn’t it? She’s afraid of me.”

  “Your mom has some of her own demons to work through,” Roger says quietly.

  Her own demons?

  “I’m turning into him.” Another exhale of toxic thoughts.

  “Your dad,” Roger says, no question in his voice.

  He knows. He sits down on the floor across from me. My gaze meets his and I’m desperate for the truth, no matter how awful it is. “You said you knew my dad in high school. Was he like me? Or am I like him?”

  I lift my hand to my cheek. My face is wet, but I don’t know if it’s tears or sweat.

  Roger leans against the shelf of tools behind him and pulls up his knees. “You know who you remind me of, Tate?”

  I shake my head.

  “Me in high school,” Roger says. “Every time I woke up hungover after a party or lost my temper, I worried that I was turning into my dad. I had all these emotions—I’d go from scared and depressed to feeling nothing but rage, and there was nowhere to put any of these feelings.”

  His dad. He told Steller about him. He wasn’t nice.

  My throat constricts and I can’t say anything. I wipe my eyes and look away from Roger.

  “Tate.” His voice is so firm, I force myself to look at him again. “You’re not a murderer. And you’re not like your dad.”

  “I don’t know.” I shake my head. “I don’t know anymore. I could be.”

  “You can tell me,” Roger says. “Whatever happened between you and him, you can tell me. I promise you, it’ll stay between us.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and press the heels of my hands over them. Claire’s right. She’s been right all along. I need to do this. I can’t keep living on the verge of explosion. I’m going to hurt someone. I’m going to do something even worse than tonight. Something I can’t undo. “What has my mom… I mean, has she told you anything? About him?”

  “She’s told me bits and pieces. Most of which I’ve had to work very hard to extract over many months. From what I’ve perceived, he was verbally abusive to her. And on at least one occasion, he put your life in danger.”

  I lift my head, surprised. “She said that?”

  “She told me he drove drunk with you in the car,” Roger says.

  All these years, I just thought she was mad about him drinking too much. I didn’t know she had realized that my life was in danger.

  “It didn’t stop after they split up,” I admit. “Well, not all of it.”

  “No?”

  I’m not sure if I can do this. Once I tell him, I can never un-tell him. “How bad was it with your dad?”

  Roger stares at me, maybe deciding if he’s going to allow the change in subject. “Sometimes it was fine. My dad was a very smart man. I was an only child, so he put a lot of pressure on me with my grades and school. One minute I would be glowing with pride from something he said and the next I would feel worthless. That was the worst part for me. That power he held wasn’t something I could take back. And he knew how to use it against me. The physical abuse was infrequent enough that no one would have suspected.”

  “You didn’t tell anyone?” My voice is hoarse, barely audible.

  “No.” Roger exhales, like he’s being forced back in time. I know that feeling. “He died of a heart attack when I was sixteen. And that brought on all kinds of other doubts, like maybe I was a difficult kid and he would have been easier to get along with if he’d lived long enough to watch me grow up. That maybe I missed out on the good parts.”

  I drag my finger across the dusty garage floor. “I might never want to talk about it again. Or tell anyone else.”

  Roger seems to understand what I’m asking because he nods and says, “Okay.”

  “Claire knows. Most of it, anyway.”

  He lifts an eyebrow, surprised by this, but he doesn’t interrupt me.

  I’m focused on my hand again, watching it shake. “Before Claire left for Northwestern, we had this party for her over by the pond. I had to leave to watch football with my dad at O’Connor’s…but later, we were in the parking lot. I took his keys and he was drunk and pissed off, trying to shove me in the car. And then Claire came outside—”

  His eyebrows shoot up. “Claire was there?”

  “Yeah,” I say, worry twisting in my stomach all over again. I force it back. I have to finish this. If I don’t, I might never have the courage to.

  Roger doesn’t say anything for a long time. He just listens; any emotions or thoughts he might be having are carefully concealed from his face. It takes me a while to give him the details of that night and then the events that followed, including my confronting Dad tonight.

  “So when I saw Claire in that parking lot, sprinting away from that dude…” My throat tightens again. I swallow the lump. “And then he picked up the beer bottle and smashed it. It was all so familiar. The dark, the cold, the same pavement, the same glass shattered everywhere.” I use my sleeve to wipe my face. “And all I could think about was how I needed to keep her safe and watch out for her like she watched out for me that night. I needed to get it right.”

  Roger moves closer. His hands land on my arms, gripping them tight. “Look at me, Tate.”

  I make myself look at him.

  “It’s not your responsibility to keep Claire safe. It’s not your fault that she got hurt.”

  “But why couldn’t I stop?” I ask. “You told me to. Sheriff Hammond told me to. He had the guy cuffed already, and I couldn’t stop.”

  Roger releases his hold on my arms but doesn’t scoot away. “I’m not a murderous person, Tate, but if that were your mom or Olivia who got attacked tonight, I sure as hell wouldn’t have stood around waiting for justice to be served. I would have beat the
shit out of him. You saw Davin O’Connor, didn’t you?”

  Vaguely I recall the twisted rage on his face. He would have killed that guy if his muscles had worked properly. Maybe even now, if Claire hadn’t held him back.

  “Claire told me that she kept things from Jody because her dad would have killed mine.”

  “Jody doesn’t know?” Roger asks.

  “No.” I inhale my first non-ragged breath in, like, an hour. “But Claire thinks she needs to know. That’s what we fought about before New Year’s. I just wanted to forget about it. I’m not afraid of him now. I hate him being around here so much now, but I don’t even think he’d attempt to hurt me. It’s the kind of thing you do when you want power over your kid. But now he’s messing with my head about college and messing with my teammates.” I study Roger’s face, trying to decide if he’s keeping anything from me. “Did you know already? About my dad? It just seemed like you knew—”

  “It nearly killed me to stand by and watch you going through something that I knew had to do with him,” Roger says, his jaw tensing. “But I didn’t know any of what you just told me. It was pretty obvious to me that you and Jody had very different relationships with your father. The stuff with Bakowski threw me off a little. I thought maybe he was the one causing the problems.”

  “I don’t understand why my mom doesn’t hate him the way I do.” I sniff again. “Why doesn’t she have the urge to kill him? She looked more afraid of me tonight than she ever was of him.”

  “I’m not gonna lie to you,” Roger says. “Your mom has a lot of things to work out still, but take it from someone whose mother stood by and did nothing—she probably would still be doing nothing if my dad hadn’t died years ago—telling him to leave, being alone, raising two kids alone, that was very brave of her.”

  I finally gain the courage to ask the question I’ve been avoiding for too long. “What about Claire? Did you see her after I took off? Did she look like my mom?”