Page 58 of Knotted Laces

“You have your laptop,” I say dryly. “Work the weekend if you need to. Kill some orcs with me and eat junk food if you don’t. And come Monday, hopefully we’ll be able to get out of here?—”

“Hopefully?” An arch question.

“At the very least, we should be able to get across the river, hitch a ride to town, and rent a car to drive home, yeah? As soon as I get the bridge fixed”—or more likely, buy a prefab replacement bridge and have to pay more than this cabin cost to get it installed, but…that’s life being lifey, especially after this season ended like it did—“I’ll get your car back to you.”

Her expression sobers. “What?”

I frown. “What do you meanwhat?I’ll get you back to the Bay, cupcake.”

“I know you will.” She shifts to fully face me. “But all of a sudden you’ve got shadows in your eyes, Cam. Is this about”—her eyes flick down—“because injury or not, DNA-contributing-ability or not, you were incredible.”

Not gonna lie, that feels good.

Also…not gonna lie, I can’t pretend I don’t know what she’s hinting at.

“I’m…” I sigh. “It’s not that I can’t have kids biologically.” Then add as she opens her mouth, protest in those big brown eyes, “I feel that deeply,” I whisper. “And I know I’m just starting to deal with it. But…” I sigh again. “What’s hard to let go of is Coach’s bullshit and how the end of the season went. I didn’t have my head in the game, and it wasn’t pretty. And I know I’m going to have to start training soon, so it won’t be long before I’m on the ice and dealing with him and Pat and the other assholes again. I need to do better, need to make sure I’m pulling my weight, need to make sure there’s nothing that can rattle me.”

Her brows drag together. “Didn’t you have, like, the most points last season of your entire career?”

I still, something like hope in my veins before I shove it down. “Yeah, but it doesn’t really matter.”

Now her eyebrows flick up. “Gonna clue me in why?”

“We lost in the first round of the playoffs, Ats. And I know I directly caused at least one goal and thus one loss. It’s just fact.”

“And what were the other twenty-odd dudes on the team doing?”

I still.

“Exactly,” she says triumphantly.

I scowl.

“You’re not alone on the ice,” she presses. “And even if you were, sometimes shit happens and things go wrong, and you can’t blame…”

She trails off, probably realizing that this advice should apply to the both of us.

“Damn,” she whispers a moment later.

“It’s good advice,” I say. “But easy to give and hard to accept.”

Her nose wrinkles. “Ugh.”

Grinning, I snag one of the bags of junk food she brought in. “Car Snack?”

“Nowyou’re getting it,” she says reaching inside and pulling out a bag of gummy bears. She tears open the top, starts shoving them by the handful into her mouth.

“Gonna run out of Car Snacks you keep going like that,” I point out.

A shrug. “I’ll call into the office.”

I lift my brows in question.

“Request some drones to deliver us better snacks.”

“Betterthan Car Snacks?”

“Well, these would be Trapped by a Flooded River Snacks, so they’d clearly be superior.”

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