We barely get our own handshakes and pleasantries completed when more of the Cold Fury team starts to crowd in around us. It’s a bit overwhelming, meeting these stars that I watch on TV, and it’s utterly surreal that they treat me like the closest of friends because I’m here with Rafe. It’s clear by some of the knowing looks that I get that Rafe may have told them something about the history of our relationship, or at the very least that we are lifelong friends.
Regardless, I’m about to lose my shit when the crowd parts again and the incredibly beautiful and insanely intelligent general manager of the Cold Fury, Gray Brannon, starts walking our way. Beside her is one of the best goalies of all time, her husband, Ryker Evans. He retired about a year and a half ago from the Cold Fury, and he’s now the goalie coach for the team.
Talk about hockey royalty.
Rafe is amused when I get tongue-tied during introductions, but I manage to compose myself when Gray asks me what I do for a living. We chat for several moments, and I forget she’s the head of a dynasty. Ultimately, she pulls out her phone, and I get to see pictures of her son, Milo.
“You know,” she says, leaning in to me. My eyes move over to Rafe, who’s busy chatting up Zack Grantham, his second-line teammate. When I look back to Gray, she’s got an understanding smile on her face. “I’ve heard through the grapevine that you’ve been an immense support to Rafe with everything he’s going through.”
“We’ve been friends for a long time,” I tell her, just vague enough to keep things, well...vague.
“I heard there was a time you were a lot more,” she replies. And, yeah...Rafe must have spilled the beans to some of his teammates.
I take stock of how that makes me feel, and I realize it doesn’t make me feel anything one way or the other. It’s the absolute truth. There was a time when we were everything to each other, and then we weren’t. Rafe made a mistake and ended things, believing with a foolhardy nature that he knew what was best for me.
“We’re just friends now,” I hasten to reassure her.
“I think you’re more than that,” she replies with so much surety, I have to wonder if she has magical powers to see the future or something. I want with every fiber of my being to argue with her, but before I can, she continues on. “People make mistakes, and some deserve forgiveness. Others don’t. That’s up to you to decide. Regardless, I think it’s remarkable that you can put that aside and be here for Rafe. You’re the best type of friend a person could have.”
And just like that, Gray is pulled off into another conversation, and I move over to Rafe. I try to join in on the banter he has going with Zack and his wife, Kate, but my mind won’t stay on point. I keep thinking about Gray’s words, trying to figure out if it was wise advice that I should listen to, or just chalk it up to her being a nosy busybody.
Except I have a pretty solid feeling that no one in their entire life has ever thought of or called Gray Brannon a busybody.
Chapter 11
Rafe
My phone vibrates in my pocket—the repetitive buzz that indicates an incoming call. I consider ignoring it, but I’m not doing anything I can’t step away from for just a little bit. I mean, I’m just holding vigil over my dad while my mom is at the grocery store.
I left for Boston five days ago to play games three and four of the second round of the playoffs. We swept them easily, and while it was an excellent respite to be lost in the thrill of playoff competition, I felt like I was missing something big back here in Raleigh.
Sure enough, when I returned late last night, I found that my father had taken a nosedive. I knew this could happen.
Would happen at some point.
Calliope and her medical expertise have been invaluable to me. I’m one of those people who always does better if I know the full, cold, hard painful truth of things. I can deal as long as I know what I’m dealing with, and she hasn’t held back on how bad it can be.
And yet, when I saw my father lying in that hospital bed in the living room, looking a million times frailer than when I left less than a week before, I knew everything had changed.
I knew my dad wouldn’t be able to make it to any more games, and we’d be lucky if he could take meals at the kitchen table with us. I knew that my time with him was limited, and my hands were tied on game days and with travel. I realized there’s a very real chance that I might be gone when he takes his last breath, and I’m still trying to figure out how to reconcile that.
I snap myself back to the present. I have no clue who is calling, but I could use a break. My dad’s been sleeping deeply, aided by a few drops of morphine that I put under his tongue a bit ago. He refuses to ask for it, but I can tell by his shifting and grimacing that he’s in pain, so I strongly encourage him to take it. It felt both weird and right to put my hand behind his head and gently lift it from the pillow so I could give him the medicine.
I snag my phone from my pocket, needing a break from the heavy feelings that seem to be pressing down on me at all times lately. The only respite from them is when I’m deep inside Calliope, but those times are limited by my travel and spending time with my dad.
Not even glancing at the screen to see who it is—because, at this point, it could be a telemarketer, and I’d welcome the break from my thoughts—I answer. “Hello?”
“Just checking in, dude.” It’s Aaron Wylde. He’s been in contact with me nearly every day since I left Phoenix, either by call, text, or email.
“How are you doing?” he asks lightly. I appreciate the tone because he knows how bad it can get, and he doesn’t want to bring me down right off the bat.
“I’m hanging in there, man,” I murmur in a low tone, pushing up from the chair next to my dad’s bed. I doubt he’ll wake up, but I decide to move away in the off chance I might disturb his sleep. I think it’s the only time he’s genuinely comfortable right now.
I head into the kitchen and pull open the sliding door that leads out to the deck. It’s a beautiful day, sunny and in the mid-seventies.
“You’re looking really good in Cold Fury skates,” he remarks, a pointed statement that indicates he’s been watching, as I’m sure many of my teammates have. I got traded from a team that’s heavily favored to make it to the championship round, to a team that won the last two Cups and is heavily favored to make a run at a third. It was a huge risk for the team to let me go, and while I know it was one man’s decision—team owner, Dominik Carlson—I also know he asked some of the team to weigh in on the decision. He specifically asked the first-line players...the big guns, whether or not he should let me go so I could tend to my dying dad. They all unanimously agreed that it was the right thing, even though it could hurt them going forward in the playoffs.
Those are the truest types of friends, and I miss them greatly.
We chat for a bit about the playoffs. The Vengeance is heading into game five of their playoff round against the Vancouver Flash tomorrow night. They’re playing hot, and there are small moments when I regret not being there. All I have to do is look back through the kitchen into the living room and see my father lying in that hospital bed to know that I’d give up a million Cup championships to be here with him right now.
“How’s he doing?” Wylde finally gets around to asking.
“He’s slipping a bit more every day,” I tell him, rubbing my hand over my face. “He sleeps a lot. Taking more of the pain meds. I think he’s done eating.”
Wylde sighs into the phone. “I know it’s hard, buddy. I’m going to give you some advice, okay?”
“Okay,” I readily agree. He’s already given quite a bit, mostly on how to manage hockey and a dying parent. How to keep focused and my head in the game, even though my thoughts are often scattered in a million different directions.
“If there’s anything left that needs to be said,” he says, giving a dramatic pause that makes my ears really tune in, “don’t wait to say it. Don’t let embarrassment or a lack of a foundation hold you back. Don’t let you
rself have any regrets.”
I consider his words. I’ve never been one to have deep discussions with my dad, nor he with me. Our relationship these last few weeks since I’ve been back has been easygoing, as much as it can be with such a dark cloud hanging over us.
“My dad was a horrible drunk,” Wylde tells me, and my body jolts from the proclamation. I didn’t know a lot of the details, only that he had a parent die of cancer and went through many of the things I’m going through. “I hated him for the longest time. We didn’t speak for years, and I was fine with that.”
There’s a long moment of silence, and I wonder if he regrets saying these things to me. But then he continues. “But when I found out he had stomach cancer and was dying, I had a really hard decision to make.”
“To choose to let those feelings go?” I venture a guess.
“That was part of it,” he admits. “I knew my time to do something was limited. I had to not only let my hatred go, I also had to figure out how to love him again in a very short period of time. And that meant I had to talk to him and really communicate my feelings.”
“But I don’t hate my dad.” I may have had some bitter feelings over time that he wasn’t there for me the way my mom was, but that wasn’t important.
“You don’t have to hate your dad to want to make things as right as you can for him so he can transition away from this life with peace.”
His words slam into me so viciously, I almost double over from the pain. I wonder, is there anything that my dad needs from me to make it easier for him to let go?
“Just talk to him as much as you can, Rafe,” Wylde says softly and with a wisdom that I can’t discount. “Do whatever you can to ease his suffering, and I’m not talking about the physical side of things.”
“Thanks, Aaron,” I murmur, more than grateful for the advice. I’m not sure I would have figured that out on my own.
“I’m here for anything you need,” he assures me. “You call anytime, day or night.”
“I will,” I promise, knowing that I’ll take him up on that. He’s the only friend I have that knows exactly what I’m feeling right now, and I’m not above taking advantage of that resource.
“How’s the love-life going?” he asks me with a chuckle. The last time we talked, I filled him in on reconnecting with Calliope, including details of our sordid past. When you bare your soul about a dying parent, talking about your first love is pretty easy.
“It’s complicated,” I reply but don’t offer any more. While Wylde is the best man to talk to about what I’m going through with my dad, he’s absolutely clueless about love and relationships. He’s, without a doubt, the resident playboy on the Vengeance team, and breaking hearts—not mending them—is his specialty.
“I’ll give you the same advice,” he replies, amusement evident in his tone. “Talk to her. Don’t hold back. Tell her how you feel.”
“She’s not dying, though,” I reply drolly, because talking to Calliope is probably harder than talking to my dad.
“She might not be,” he says, and I can’t help but smile at the amusement I hear in his voice, “but you don’t want whatever is between you two to wither away because of lack of communication. Come on, dude...it’s basic communication 101.”
Much later, as I’m sitting by my father’s bed while he continues to sleep, my mom in the kitchen making some sort of chicken casserole, I think about the things I want to say to Calliope. How I’d like to be able to make a go of things with her and put aside this ridiculous notion of hers that we can’t be more than what we are.
But fear holds me back because I know, deep down, she hasn’t forgiven me for what I did, and she thinks I’m going to do the same thing to her again.
She’d be wrong about that, though.
The question is, how to convince her of that? That’s something I need to figure out.
Chapter 12
Calliope
I watch Rafe pick at his meal, worried over his lack of enthusiasm for Beasley’s Chicken and Waffles. It was one of our favorite restaurants to go to together back in the day, and it was his suggestion to come here tonight. I’d stopped by the Simmonses’ house after work and grabbed Rafe. His mom had texted me that she thought he needed to get away for a little bit, and I was happy to oblige.
A little too happy. I missed Rafe the five days he was gone in Boston. He called me when he had some free moments, and we texted regularly, but damn if that isn’t starting to feel inadequate. It worries me to no end that I’m beginning to feel dependent on him for some of my happiness. That definitely breaches the boundaries I set.
Was this inevitable? Taking two former lovers who drifted apart and putting them back into an intimate situation. Feelings will grow, right?
It sounds stupid when I think about it in its simplest form. I also know my refusal to consider the possibilities with Rafe is rooted in fear. Which doesn’t seem so stupid.
Still, I’m worried about Rafe—as I am about Brenda and Jim—and I can’t hold back on him now, despite how concerned I am about the boundaries that seem to be disappearing. “Penny for your thoughts?”
He looks up, his fork stuck in the fried chicken breast sitting atop the waffle. “Sorry...what?”
He looks confused.
Lost.
“Looks like you got a lot on your mind. Want to share?”
For a moment, his face becomes etched with relief, and he even goes so far as to open his mouth to speak, looking as if he might spill his guts to me. I lean a little closer in anticipation.
Then, just as suddenly, his expression clouds, and he shakes his head. He even attempts a confident smile. “I’m good, actually. How about you? How’s work going?”
No, no, no. This isn’t good at all. He’s withholding because he knows that anything he shares with me puts us into murkier water. Would he be sharing as my lover? My friend? The man who hurt me, and yet someone I’ve reopened myself to?
Would sharing mean something past friendship—which is surely hard to quantify?
“Rafe,” I say gently, reaching across the table and taking his hand. “Seriously...how are you doing? Because I’m guessing not good, and I want to help.”
“I’m good,” he says, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest.
My right eyebrow shoots up, the other one flattening. “Come on, Rafe...don’t do this.”
He stares back at me for a moment, his jaw working side to side as he contemplates me. He leans back even farther in his chair. “You want to know how I’m doing?”
I smile at him and prop my chin in my hand, ready to take on his burdens.
His gaze moves to the ceiling as he drawls. “Let’s see...”
Attention back on me, he leans forward, crossing his arms on the edge of the table now as he gives me a pointed look. “Well, for starters, my dad is dying. Every day, he’s slipping a little further away from me, and I’m running out of time. I have so much to talk to him about, but not enough time to do it in.”
My expression turns sympathetic, and I give him an affirming nod, silently motioning for him to continue.
“And when I could be sitting beside his bed, soaking up those last minutes, I’m instead sitting here in a restaurant with a woman I love. And I’m too afraid to tell her that because it’s against the fucking rules.”
My chin jerks inward, and I straighten in my seat. When had his tone gone from bereaved to bitter?
Rafe pushes his plate aside and scoots his chair in closer to the table, which enables him to lean closer to me. “That’s right. I love you, Calliope, and the mere fact that it’s terrifying to admit that to you is fucked up beyond all measure. I remember the first time I told you. I was pushing you on the tire swing over at Kent Mitchell’s house during one of his summer parties. I told you when your back was to me. I pushed you hard, you went flying away from me, and I let those words fly right along with you. The look you gave me over your shoulder as you came back was utter
ly stunned and joyous all at the same time. It was the look I expected because I knew it was the right time to tell you, and I knew you felt the same exact way about me.”
I’m speechless, first and foremost by the memory he just painted so prettily. I remember that day as clearly as if it had happened yesterday, It was truly one of the best moments of my life.
“I love you,” he says again, this time with his eyes laser-locked onto me. There’s no way I can ever doubt how much he means it. “I’ve always loved you. Never stopped. All these years, it’s only ever been you I loved. And I was recently told I shouldn’t hold things like this back because one never knows how short on time you are. I don’t want to go another minute without you knowing that you’re the only woman I’ll ever love, and this friends with benefits thing you cooked up is horseshit. I think you know that, too, Calliope.”
My head moves left to right, then back and forth again, a silent denial of what he just said. “Rafe...”
He holds up his hand, indicating that he doesn’t want to hear whatever I’m about to say based on the tone I just used while saying his name. “Calliope...if what you’re about to say to me is anything other than that you love me in return, I honestly don’t want to hear it. Because if you say anything other than that right now, it’s only because you’re too scared to do it, and I don’t have time in my life right now to deal with those fears. I’ve got a lot more pressing shit on my plate.”
A surge of anger courses through me that he’d actually refuse to listen to my thoughts, as scattered and incoherent as they would probably be because he has me so flustered.
But one thing is clear, and it’s not fair that I’m being silenced. “I have a right to be wary, Rafe. Yes, we may have blurred some friendship lines, and things are totally complicated right now, but I have a right to feel this way.”
“No,” he says with an adamant shake of his head. “You don’t.”
I blink at him, totally shocked speechless.
Rafe: An Arizona Vengeance Novella Page 9