Page 59 of Two Minutes for Holding

Instead of staying back in Vancouver, I immediately booked a flight to come out here to help Peyton pack up the rest of thethings and get ready for the movers. I’d been here two days, we’d accomplished a lot, but we still didn’t have any word on how Aurora was.

I went back up the stairs, grabbing two more boxes Peyton had packed, and was about to head down the stairs when I heard a knock at the front door.

“I’ll be back for these,” I said, heading down the stairs.

I was about to pull the door open when it burst open, and Lorelai walked in. Her hair was pulled back, and she wore the pink jogging suit she loved.

“Hey, more help is here!” she said, smiling, only I noticed it didn’t reach her eyes.

“We weren’t expecting you,” I said, shutting the front door, but when I felt resistance, I stopped.

Knox came in behind her, an irritated look on his face. He walked past Lorelai and headed straight for the kitchen. Then he turned and looked in my direction.

“You weren’t expecting us because we weren’t going to come, but Lorelai forced me,” he mumbled, looking at the boxes that were piled in the hallway.

“Peyton!” Lorelai called from the base of the stairs.

Peyton came around the corner and glanced down at us, a look of shock quickly replaced with a smile as she saw Lorelai.

“What are you doing… here?”

“Well, we thought you could use some help. So, we flew in first thing this morning. “What can I do?” she said, shedding her jacket and placing her hands on her hips.

“Well, if you want to come up and help me here, I am just about done with the last bedroom, and then we can get started in the kitchen. This may go faster than I thought,” Peyton said, sounding excited to almost be finished.

“Outstanding,” Lorelai said as she climbed the stairs two by two. “Don’t you two kill one another. Hear me, Knox?”

Knox muttered something under his breath as he looked in my direction, shaking his head. I chuckled and took off to grab the two boxes I’d left at the top of the stairs and made my way back down and into the kitchen.

“The moving pod should be here any minute. We can get some boxes loaded and out of the way as soon as it arrives, which will make it easier to move around,” I said, pulling two beers from the fridge, handing one to Knox. “Let’s go out back, shall we?” I said, opening the back door. “I can use a quick break.”

“How big of a bin is coming?” Knox questioned, taking a swig of beer, closing the door behind him.

“Well, I ordered it based on how many rooms this place had, so they assured me everything should fit into one.”

“When will it be on its way to Vancouver?”

“The day we head back to Vancouver, Saturday morning. It’s scheduled to be picked up at eight in the morning. We fly at three. What about you guys?”

“Same. It was the only flight Lorelai could get, apparently.”

I could feel the tension between us. The same tension I’d felt that night at dinner, on the ice, even during our last game. It was different, though, from that day in the locker room when he’d hit me. Yet I was still tired of the tension. I knew he was angry, but this had to blow over, and it needed to blow over now.

“Any news on Aurora and Dylan?”

Knox shook his head. “Nope, Lorelai messaged before we got on the plane this morning. Still nothing.”

I nodded, taking another swig of my beer. Tension continued to build, and we stood in the backyard like we were strangers instead of friends.

“Look, can we just clear the air? I can’t take this anymore, this barely speaking to one another.”

Knox sat there, arms resting on his knees, hands wrapped around the bottle he was drinking from, looking down at the ground.

“I don’t want this to ruin our friendship. You guys are all I have,” I said.

“Look, I’ve had time to think things through, and I will admit, I flew off the handle a little and didn’t keep a rational, levelheaded mind. Peyton hasn’t made sound choices lately, you know that. The guys that she’s dated have always used her, some doing an awful lot of damage I’m sure, even though she hasn’t seen it. I was afraid when I found out that she was pregnant that you too would eventually just walk, that maybe you had been using her.”

“I get that, and I can certainly see where you are coming from. Most guys would bail.”

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