Page 80 of Sexting the Coach
Sacrifice.
Love.
“Fuck,” I mutter, abandoning my packing.
“Fuck, indeed,” Karlee says, watching me as I make for the door. “Fuck,indeed.”
Chapter 35
Elsie
“Ican’t believe you’re coming.”
“Well, Dad would kill me if I skipped.”
“Would that really be the worst thing?”
“My counselor says suicidal ideation isn’t productive.”
“It’s not suicidal,” Drew says, smirking at me from the back of the Uber. “It’smurderousideation.”
I roll my eyes at him, shifting in my dress and glancing down at my stomach for the hundredth time. I keep expecting it to be bigger than it is, for my secret to be so obvious. Like my own little tell-tale heart, right in my belly.
“Relax,” Drew says, “Mom always said she didn’t show until right up at the end.”
“Yeah, but I’m half-Dad,” I say, knowing as we turn the street that we’re getting closer to our destination. “And he seems like the kind of guy to have a huge belly.”
Drew is the only person, other than Mabel and Hattie—who are still pissed at me for leaving—who knows about the baby. For the past five days, we hunkered down in our childhood home, playing Mario Kart and talking about our lives. Mom and Dad saw us both arrive on the cameras, and were surprisingly chill with us hanging out for the week before the ceremony.
Me wanting to work with kids. Drew’s art, and the fact that his career has been so much more successful than he ever would have imagined. When Mom did text me, asking what I was doing at home, I told her that they hadn’t selected me to go on with the program in San Francisco, and that it was okay with me.
She was surprisingly quiet with her disappointment.
The car comes to a stop, and Drew, properly raised by my parents, circles around the car and opens the door for me, reaching out a hand and helping me to my feet. The wind whips around us, just as cold—if not colder—than back in Denver.
We’re in Canada for our father’s induction to the NHL Hall of Fame. People mill around us, lots of them seeming like the cold doesn’t bother them in the slightest.
Occupational hazard of spending half your life on top of a block of ice.
“You good?” Drew asks, tapping the back of my elbow as we walk up to the door. I suck in a deep breath of the frigid air and nod at him. Yes, I’m good.
As good as I can be right now, in this in-between place. Realizing that all this time, I thought my brother was furious with me, though that wasn’t true. Avoiding the issue to the point of completely misconstruing it myself, and living inside that false reality.
Weston was right all along.
That all I needed to do was talk to Drew. Trust him to tell me the truth and take it from there. Now, I can’t stop thinking about how that advice worked out.
And how it might be what I need to do with Weston himself.
“Elsie!”
It’s the sound of my father’s voice booming through the large antechamber—somehow louder and more boisterous than even all the other hockey players in this room—that jolts me out of my thoughts.
There they are, my parents. My dad, with his gleaming bald head, his thick arm looped through my mother’s. She’s radiant, as always, in a blush pink dress that hugs her body perfectly. Her gaze zeros in on me instantly.
The room itself is breath-taking, a large domed ceiling with stained glass, letting in the dim light from the moon above us and the stars twinkling through the clear night. Candles—I hope not with real flames—twinkle throughout the room, and waiters dance between the guests, offering up chutes of champagne.
“Don’t worry,” Drew whispers, taking a glass of the stuff for himself. “We’ve got this.”
