“I asked,” I remind him with a reassuring smile. “Plus I’m a good listener. Dump anything you want to. I’m here for you.”
He pauses to turn to me and raise an eyebrow. My attention catches on his eyes. They’re the prettiest shade of brown I’ve ever seen. A little bit golden and mesmerizing. I blink, forcing myself not to stare at him awkwardly.
“In a professional capacity?” Chad asks with a little bit of a smirk.
It takes me a second to remember what we’re talking about. Dang his eyes for distracting me. “Uh…” I force out a laugh to cover my belated response. “As a friend. But because of my profession, I’m a super good friend.”
He skates forward again, catching us up with Scarlett and Zoey, who have gotten ahead of us as we paused. I follow, forcing myself not to linger too long in that embarrassing moment when I was staring into Chad’s eyes. I’m a human. I’m a woman, and Chad is very attractive. Also, it was a single moment, not something to get stuck on when he didn’t even seem to notice. Breathe and move on, Ivy.
“Shelby was a runner,” he says when I move back to his side.His gaze is on the girls as he talks, watching them hold each other’s hands and do a simple sway-from-side-to-side dancing move. “She continued running through both pregnancies. But when she was six months along with Zoey, she fell during a run and injured her knee. After she had Zoey, she ended up needing surgery to repair a tear in her ACL.”
I catch on immediately. “And she needed pain meds after the surgery.” It must have spiraled from there. It’s a far too common problem.
He nods, skating forward again just enough to keep up with the girls, and I match his pace. “It’s easy for me to connect those dots. We weren’t going to have another baby after Scarlett. Shelby was too unhappy. But she got pregnant even though she had an IUD, and she was so upset. Then the injury and … the addiction.”
“I can see how you might feel guilty when you put it like that.” I nod. “But that doesn’t make it your fault. People get pregnant even with IUDs. It’s a risk. It could have happened even if you didn’t want another baby either.”
He holds out his hands, stopping on his skates to face me. “She was miserable, and I was happy we were going to have Zoey, and I shouldn’t have been. I probably wasn’t supportive enough because I was trying to convince her to see the bright side or something.”
I want to take Chad’s hands in mine and make him look at me, but I amjusta friend. Not his life coach. Not anything more. I respond in a gentle voice. “Saying the wrong things didn’t make her a drug addict. If you could make her choices, I know you would have made very different ones for her than the ones she made for herself. Don’t blame yourself for the ones shedidmake.”
He nods slowly and looks over to where the girls are still skating near us, then meets my gaze. “I know,” he says, his voice resigned.
I reach up and squeeze his arm again. Caring touch is importantin friendships. That’s the only reason. “Easy to say, harder to convince your brain.”
He chuckles. “Yeah.”
Then I get caught up in staring into his eyes again.
Chad’s gaze shifts slightly to over my shoulder, his eyes widening. Before I can turn, someone smacks me from behind. The skate on my right foot sticks hard into the ice at the impact, and my ankle twists in a way that shouldn’t be possible as I tumble to the ground.
“Ivy!” Chad cries the same time someone says, “I’m so sorry!”
Tears already sting my eyes, and I try to blink them away. It’s pointless. My ankle throbs with every heartbeat. I push myself up, rolling to sit up, and then bite back a yelp at the sharp pain.
“Are you okay?” an unfamiliar guy says from his knees. He must be the one that ran me over.
I try to say yes, but it comes out as, “Mmmm,” and an unconvincing nod. Chad lays a hand gently on my shoulder, and I close my eyes and take a deep breath. It’s comforting to have him right here next to me.
“Miss Ivy! Miss Ivy!” I hear Scarlett cry, and I look up to see her rushing to my side, sliding to a stop next to me on her knees. Zoey is right behind her, eyes wide.
“Ooof, that was a big fall!” I try to keep my voice bright so I don’t scare them. The man who ran into me is apologizing over and over, but I wave at him, focusing on the girls. Someone nearby asks ifhe’salright, maybe to distract him.
“Oh, Miss Ivy, you arecooked!” Scarlett exclaims, looking over me with her eyebrows furrowed.
A startled hiccup of a laugh escapes me. “What?”
“Cooked?” Chad repeats.
Scarlett rolls her eyes, and it’s such a grown-up move that I’m momentarily distracted from the intense situation and the even more intense pain. It’s the first time since I left Houstonthat I’ve gotten a peek at the little girl Scarlett was after her mom first left.
“It means something bad happened.” Scarlett’s tone holds a hefty amount of what might be called “duh” in another era. Then she does a one-eighty, her face softening as she turns back to me. She reaches up to wipe some tears off my cheeks with her glove. “It’s okay to cry when we get hurt, Miss Ivy. That’s how our body tells someone else that something is wrong.”
“You … are exactly … right,” I say, turning to Chad to share a look with him. Maybe to see if I hallucinated that whole “cooked” moment or to feel his steadiness as I start to panic a little more. He models taking a deep breath, and I follow his example.
A crowd is gathering, asking if I’m okay, but Chad shushes them and asks for space. My cheeks are hot at the attention, which is silly. Most of the people here probably just want to help.
“That’s really smart,” Chad says to Scarlett. He puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder and then kneels next to me. “Ivy?” he asks softly, his expression full of concern.
