Page 96 of Iced Out

“Can I ask you something?”

His hand pauses its dance over my skin as he looks at me, a crease lining his forehead from my tone of voice. “Okay.”

“How much of that night—the one back in high school—do you remember?” I pause, choosing my words carefully. “Some of the shit you were saying…it sounded delusional. About my dad paying off the refs so we would win?”

He lets out a heavy sigh, sinking back into the leather cushions. “I know it probably seemed like I was having some sort of psychotic break right in front of you—”

“Understatement of the century.” I smile and reach up to his face, my thumb smoothing out the frown lines. “But continue.”

Teeth scrape over his bottom lip. “You have to understand…I come from a world where people lie and cheat and backstab for sport. They control everyone and everything around them, always have. Me included. And if I don’t comply, then he threatens to cut me off.”

“That’s…”

I don’t have words for what that is.

“Yep. And he let the hammer fall with that fucking ultimatum at Christmas.” He drags in a deep breath through his nose before letting out a long, slow exhale. Something I’ve realized is a method of keeping calm. “So I have to go home every week for Monday night dinners under their premise of looking like decent parents when it’s really an excuse for my father to grill me some more about giving up hockey,or else, and my mother to set me up with another high-society girl I can’t stand. All so I can be a little carbon copy of him in another fifteen years.”

My nose wrinkles, appalled by what he’s saying. “Seriously?”

He lets out a long sigh and glances over at me. “I wish I was kidding.”

I blow out a long breath and sink back into the couch, the gravity of his situation sinking in. I just can’t believe he waited until now to tell me about his dad’s threats.

I hate that he’s been carrying the weight of it himself for almost two months now.

“What a bunch of bullshit.”

His expression is thoughtful for a moment, a small little crease between his brows. “Look, I know I’ve told you a lot of awful shit about my parents, but I don’t want what I say about them to shape your opinion of them. They’re my parents at the end of the day, and…”

I get what he’s trying to say, I do. But the things he’s told me paired with the crap I overheard his father spewing at him after our game earlier this season, my opinions are already made. I don’t need to afford them a chance to change my mind.

Because unlike Quinton’s case, some books really can be judged by the cover.

“They’re trying to mold you into something you’re not. And to say he’ll cut you off if you go against his wishes, it’s…disgusting.”

He shrugs, doing his best to act indifferent. “It is what it is though. Can’t exactly change it.”

No, he can’t change who his parents are any more than I can. But wanting to change who people are at their core is different than wishing you had a different last name than them.

“That’s not what my world is like.” I shake my head, hatred for two people I’ve never met threatening to bubble to the surface. “I can see why you might think it, coming from how you grew up. But no matter how successful my father and Coach might’ve been in the NHL, my family…we’re not those things. Cheating and stealing isn’t who we are. Neither is forcing you to be someone you’re not.”

“I know that now.” His eyes soften around the edges.

“Good, because I’d hate to have to deck you all over again.”

Those little divots form deeper in his cheeks. “Duly noted.”

He continues mindlessly coasting his fingers along my skin, attention drawn back to the television screen like he didn’t just break a tiny piece of my heart all over again. The same way he did the day on the Ferris wheel, telling me the closest thing he’s ever had to a parent his entire life is his fucking au pair.

That’s not how it should be.

I want him to know what a real family is like. He deserves it.

He deserves a lot of things. Far more than he’s been given.

“Quinn?”

His attention shifts again, and when he smiles at me, my stomach does a little cartwheel. “Yeah?”

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