Page 9 of As You Ice It

Every muscle in my body tenses with shock. Because I know this face. And it belongs to a kid who absolutely shouldn’t be anywhere near Harvest Hollow and definitely not here on my rink.

CHAPTER3

Camden

I’m still standingstock-still when the older boy skates away, giving me a little nod I can’t return. Hell, I can hardly breathe.

“Hey, Mr. Cam,” Liam says. His tone is funeral solemn, and I know that’s my fault. Same with the flat look in his eyes.

“Hello, Liam.”

He’s grown since last summer and has the look of a kid who hit a growth spurt and is still trying to figure out how to manage newly longer limbs. Still shorter than the other two boys who were picking on him, but they also were a few years older, I think.

How old is Liam, again—ten? Nine? Eleven?

Has he had a birthday since I left?

A sudden tightness clutches my chest at the mental image of Liam and Naomi sitting at a table with a cake and birthday candles. Just the two of them.

But no—she would have her whole horde of extended family from Oakley Island with her. I met most of them, then promptly forgot everyone's name. Except for Jake, her lawyer brother who looked at me like he’d find a way to either murder me or sue me into bankruptcy if I hurt Naomi or Liam.

I can feel the searing heat of that gaze now, a few states and a few hundred miles away. Jake is probably plotting my demise right now.

“Mr. Cam? Or should I call you Coach Cam now?” Liam asks, his face so bright and open.

“Yo! Cammie! Get your skates on, bro!” Eli calls. He’s overrun with little kids who look like they’re trying to fell him like a tree. Stuffed animals litter the ice around him. “A little help here?”

“Is that your group?” I ask, remembering what the one kid said about pucks versus stuffed animals.

Liam’s head dips, but not before I see color rise in his cheeks. “Yeah.”

He’s at least five years older and six inches taller than everyone else in the group. Apparently, he’s the only kid his age who truly looks like he’s never been on skates before.

“I’m taking this one!” I call to Eli, whose face falls.

Liam’s head snaps up, but he looks away again so quickly I can’t read the expression on his face. I ignore the voice of protest in my head telling me this is a bad idea—a very bad idea. Because if Liam is here, his mom can’t be too far away. I don’t allow myself to scan the groups of parents who stayed to watch. Not yet. “You’ve got it!”

I’m not so sure that’s true, though, as a moment later, the kids take Eli down and swarm over his body like locusts on a fresh crop.

He’ll live.

“I’ve got my gear over on the bench,” I tell Liam, not meeting his eyes. In truth, I’m ashamed to look straight at him.

I don’t know what his mom told him about everything that happened. Or how he processed our last conversation, the one I wonder if he told Naomi about. But considering the way he rode his bike to my hotel on his own without permission, I suspect not.

And more than anything—more than what I said to Naomi in our last conversation, more than the way I packed and left the island so quickly, severing any and all ties—I feel terrible about how I left things with Liam. I hate remembering the look of disappointment on his face. I know what it’s like to have adults let you down. To be crushed by their choices.

At the time, standing in my hotel doorway, my bags halfway packed and Liam staring expectantly up at me, I told myself I was doing him a favor. Making a difficult choice now to save him from more heartache later. I blamed the distance, an easy thing to blame.

“I have to go home,” I told him. “My whole life is there.”

Before the words left my mouth, they seemed like a pretty basic explanation. Toothless. But once I saw the way Liam’s face fell and then how he tried to draw himself up, absorbing the words and pretending they didn’t crush him, I realized how they must have sounded to him, what he might have heard.

My whole life is there; you and your mom are not part of my whole life.

But he was gone before I could repair the damage. Not that I would have had any idea how to begin fixing the hurt I caused. My last view was of him pedaling away, back stiff and legs pumping as fast as they could go.

I wouldn’t blame the kid for hating me.

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