Page 103 of Home Ice

"But you know you have someone else who lives right here in Salt Lake City who would also drop everything for you anytime you need him."

As if I need a reminder about Brant. I look up at the clock. It's been forty-four hours since he left. Forty-three hours since the last time we spoke. He texted to let me know he dropped Chloe off at Bridges and that he made it back home. I wanted to apologize right then. Hell, I wanted to beg him to forgive me and forget that I'd ever said anything, but I couldn't.

Before that Denver game, I never knew what it was like to love someone so much that you would give up everything for them. But when I found out what he did for me, some primitive cavewoman part of my brain lit up in colors I've never experienced before. I had a man who was willing to fight for me. Just like Dad always did. But I saw what that did to Dad. The way his supposed friends and even his own family cut him out of their lives. The way the church he loved excommunicated him just because he dared to love me and defend me. Every time I asked him about it, he told me it was worth it—that my happiness meant more to him than anything else in existence.

I didn't have a choice then. I do now. I love Brant too much to put him through anything like that. Not without giving him the space to make sure it's what he wants.

"Ew, hold on a minute!" Em squirms between my arms until I let her up. "Did you two do it on this couch?"

I laugh. "Are you ten years old?"

"I sat where you two did the dirty? Yuck, yuck, yuck." She makes a show of brushing her pants. "You should really spread a blanket or something so guests don't have to get that all over them."

"Yes, because I have so many people over to sit on my sex couch." Her eyes go wide in mock horror. "We didn't have sex on this couch. It's safe."

She does a slow spin, examining the living room. "Oh, that's the famous painting."

"Yeah, I need to take it back to the storage unit. Wait, how do you know about it?"

"Don't put it back there. It's beautiful."

"It's really not." I chuckle. "He wasn't a painter. Even he would admit that."

Em puts a hand on her hip and shoots me a thousand-degree stare. "It's not the talent that makes it beautiful."

I know. The same reason I want to lock it away in storage forever is the reason I can't bear to take it off the wall now. It reminds me of him. Reminds me that I'll never see him again or hear his voice. I'll never be able to call him and talk for an hour about the most meaningless things that somehow mean the world because it's me and him talking about them.

"You're always so quick to cut people out of your life."

I look up at Em through blurry eyes. Pressure in my chest grows until I feel like an overfilled balloon that's just one bump from bursting. "Because it hurts so much, Em. I just don't want to hurt anymore." My voice is weak and raspy.

"And you're not hurting now?"

The pressure moves up and closes off my throat, making it impossible to say anything, so I flip her off.

"I know, babe." She pulls me into a hug, and it must be more than I can take because a sob shakes me. Then another. And another. Until sobbing replaces breathing. "Oh, look at the time. The game's on, isn't it? We should watch it."

I snort and then drag a hand across my snotty, soggy nose as she pulls away. "Really?"

She wants to watch the Sting? The only reason I could ever get her to even pretend to be interested in baseball when I worked for the Lightning was because she thought some of the players were cute. Then she found out that casually mentioning your friend is a trainer for the team drew interest from all sorts of guys in the bars around the stadium after a game. But if someone would ask her the difference between a ball and a strike, she would look at them the way I would if they asked me to explain my thoughts of an early Chinese dynasty's takeover of what's now Vietnam. Did it ever happen? I have no clue? Is there such a thing as a strike in baseball? She wouldn't know.

"How do I find it on here?"

"Aren't you scared of the big bad sex couch?" I sneer. "And since when do you care about sports? I'd really rather not see it, if you don't mind."

I try to take the remote from her, but she holds it out of my reach as she works through the menus until she finds the game. "There. I want to see what my bestie's been doing. Is that wrong?"

"When watching it makes her feel like she's being stabbed, yeah."

"Just a few minutes. Okay? Then we can turn it off. There's just something I want to see."

I shake my head. "You wouldn't even know what to look for if—" The second period is just about to start, and the announcers are talking about Brant. Hearing his name makes it impossible for me to breathe, but then the camera switches away from the announcer sitting high above the ice and instead moves to a closeup of Brant warming up. That pain that has seemed almost impossible over the last two days hurts even more. It radiates from my chest until it takes every part of me. I watch as he does that silly ritual where he presses his palm on the four corners of his crease. Just after he finishes at the right post, he stands and pulls his helmet down over his head. "Em, what the fuck is this?"

"How would I know? It's not like I have your boyfriend's phone number and have been exchanging texts with him ever since you tried to sabotage yourself by destroying the best thing to ever happen to you. He and I would never plan something to show you just how much you're loved. Not us."

"Emory…" I peel my eyes from the screen just long enough to see the grin threatening to take over her face, and then I look back. At Brant. At the painting of a sego lily airbrushed on the side of his helmet. A helmet which is now pink and white and blue instead of his usual yellow and black. "I need to go."

"Oh?" Em looks so proud of herself that you'd swear she single-handedly built the Celestra Building downtown. "I'll drive you. Sebastian probably misses having someone behind his wheel who actually respects traffic laws."

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