Page 74 of The Puck Stops Here

‘Do you like hockey, Astrid?’

‘I can’t say I know hockey enough to like it or dislike it.’

Astrid stripped her clothes as she listened to the replay of her interview with Blake, catching up on all he had said after Aiden’s interruption and realising it had mostly been him asking, her talking – some journalist!

But she’d been lured in by his bad boy blues and his recounted truth. Listening and sharing because he’d done the same. And she was as caught up in his voice now as she had been then. Only vaguely aware of the candle-lit room – the scent of soothing spice on the air, the steam rising from the bath she was pouring, the soft music playing in the adjoining bedroom – as everything about her stayed attuned to him.

‘Hockey saved me from the worst in my life, what saved you?’

‘Me?’

‘I had hockey, you had…?’

‘Books. Games. Whichever worked best…’

‘What kind of books?’

‘Fact or fiction, I wasn’t fussy. The written word always fascinated me.’

‘Andgames?’

She recalled how he’d cocked a brow with that one.

‘Console games. A bit of role-play action and adventure, one vs one… Sometimes it was easier to lose myself being someone else when Mum was going through a particularly bad spell.’

‘Because of your father?’

‘No, not always…’

She heard the way her voice faltered in the recordingand her heart did a little flutter now as she listened to herself admit, ‘Mum has PMDD.’

‘What’s that?’

She stared at her phone on the side of the bath, shocked she’d said it. Shocked even more that she’d sat and explained it. How it dictated her mother’s moods and affected her childhood growing up.

She’d stopped before confessing that it had become a part of her too as she’d got older, driving her into the deepest, darkest of places. Though she’d never been as bad as Mum, probably because she’d developed well-ingrained coping strategies by that point. Plus, she had Mum.

But she had days, days where she’d rather hide under the duvet. And those days she’d drag herself out of bed and run. Or throw herself into a beastly hot yoga session. Ring Mum for a mindless chat. Lose herself in a gaming session when reading wouldn’t cut it. Anything to get outside her own head. And it worked.

The day it didn’t, then she’d worry.

‘That must have been hard. Her a single parent and you an only child.’

‘It was. After Dad, the men who came and went… they never stuck around through the worst of it. Never took the time to understand it –hell,webarely understand it, but we have to live with it…’

She shook her head at her brutal honesty and picked up her glass of red. Taking it to the bath, she turned off the taps and slid beneath the water. A sigh escaping as the warmth cocooned her, soothing every bump and bruise already making itself known after her session with Aiden. Not one blackened spot was his fault. He was a great teacher, an attentive one. A great brother and son too. A hero?

Gah. How could she seek karma on a man who at the age of eighteen, became the head of his family, desperate to save them, so desperate he’d run and blocked his past from view. And Sissi with it.

She sipped her wine, hoping it would ease the chill so deeply rooted with the tale Blake had shared. Of Aiden’s control. Blake’s loss of it.

She hadn’t been Bambi on the ice because of her twinkle toes, she’d been useless because her head had been elsewhere. Going over the interview, the interview that hadn’t been an interview at all, it had been a conversation. Because every other question, he’d brought it back to her, had her sharing things she hadn’t shared with anyone before.

She closed her eyes and his own shone back at her, sparkling with compassion and understanding as his voice filled her ears:

‘Distraction is a powerful thing.’

‘Far better than any medication.’

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