Page 43 of Return To You

“Look, guys, you’re gonna make mistakes, on the ice, in life. It’s how it is. The question is—and you know this already—what do you learn from them?”

“So you don’t repeat them,” someone volunteers.

My gaze involuntarily slides to Grace, then back to the fire. “And sometimes, so you can fix them.”

“What mistakes do you regret?” someone asks.

“Those I could have fixed and I didn’t.”

“Aww,” one of the girls coos, while another asks, “Coach! Why aren’t you married yet?”

“Maybe he was, you idiot!” another girl hisses.

“How old are you, five? You don’t ask those questions,” a third one says.

The girls keep pestering me with questions. The boys are watching the girls.

Grace is listening.

“Grace, is it true Coach K was super popular?”

Grace’s deep brown gaze glides over me, her eyes reflecting the light of the embers. She turns her marshmallow, seeming to have to think about it. She twists her mouth. Bends her head this way and that. “You could say that, I suppose. He was really popular with some girls.” Then she giggles like she’s pulling my leg. Like there’s this joke we’re all in on. She even looks at me straight in the eye to drive that point home and fake-laughs harder.

Pretending this is so much fun.

I know she’s pretending. Because I know how she looks when she’s hurting and acting like she’s not. I’ve seen that look on her.

I’ll never forget it.

A whole group of us were here, at the lake, on this very beach. It was daytime. Hot and sunny, like today. It was the summer after my first year of college, and I hadn’t been around a lot that year. I hadn’t seen Grace in months.

She took my breath away. It was her, lovely, adorable Grace, with the confidence of her youth, the life-loving energy that had always been Grace.

But looking at me like a woman looks at a man.

Making me look away, she was so obvious.

That day, the girl I was dating noticed. What was her name again? Anna? Annie? Something like that. Anyway, she started teasing Grace. Not in a fun way. I could tell by Grace’s reaction. Grace was always someone who could take a joke about herself. No, this girl was making fun of Grace in a mean-girl type of way. We were all on a large, flat stone jutting high over the lake, the water deep below us, and the girl just wouldn’t stop picking on Grace.

“Leave her alone,” I finally said, not adding, she’s just a kid, because that would have been flat-out ridiculous. But really—how could she think it was okay to make fun of her that way?

Not-Annie said something else, and it made me angry. So angry. Why did I care? I’d probably say the same sort of stuff to my brothers or Haley.

But I saw Grace’s shiny eyes on me—not on the girl—her gaze going from my face to my arm still wrapped around my sort-of girlfriend laughing wholeheartedly, and her lower lip trembling, and the way she bit on it to make it stop.

“It’s not nice,” I told the girl, and then I did add, but I thought it was to shut her up, and shame her a little, “she’s just a kid.”

What undid me, was the look in Grace’s eyes as her gaze went back to me and the utter despair as she looked at the two of us.

And then the girl shouted something else, and Grace jumped into the water. She didn’t dive. She jumped in and let herself sink like a stone and didn’t resurface.

I jumped after her.

Opened my eyes under water—it hurt like hell—and didn’t see her. Resurfaced, took a breath, and saw her there, looking at me, lip steady. Then she disappeared below the surface again, swimming away from the shore, and this time I followed her, promising myself I wouldn’t lose her.

She dipped under water again, and I dipped with her. Her moving limbs touched mine at times and it was electric. I opened my eyes again, her hair flowed around her, her lush lips moved as if she was talking to me.

And she smiled.

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