Tanner flinches like I threw a puck at him.
“Minnesota is handing you the keys,” I continue. “You don’t say no to the NHL, Sinc. Not when they’re offering to make you their number one guy at twenty-three.”
“I don’t care about beingthe guyright now,” he snaps, stepping closer to the island.
“You should,” I shoot back. “Because if you stay here, you’re riding the bench, kid. What if I can play until I’m forty? Is that what you want? To waste your prime years watching me play?” I harden my expression. “Don’t settle for being a backup because it’s comfortable.”
Tanner looks stunned. He stands on the other side of the kitchen island across from me, gripping the edge of the counter so hard his knuckles are white.
“It’s not about beingcomfortable,” he rasps. “It’s about the last four days. I thought—”
He cuts himself off. “Were the last four days justcomfortablefor you?” he spits out. His eyes are wide, pleading for me to deny it.
My stomach rolls over as bile rises in the back of my throat. I have to look him in the eye and minimize the most meaningful week of my life. I have to make him believe the last few days were nothing more than a distraction.
I lean back against the cabinets, putting a few more inches of distance between us.
“It was a break, Sinc,” I say. I force a shrug, which sends a spike of agony through my shoulder, but I don’t let it show. “It was a good time. I enjoyed it, but we knew this was going to have to end at some point.”
Tanner goes completely still.
“It was fun,” I say, the words bitter on my tongue. “But it’s not real life. Real life is that contract Minnesota is offering you.”
He absorbs the hit, and before my eyes, the vulnerability he allowed me to see, the softness he woke up with this morning, disappears. He pulls it inside and slams the doors shut. His posture straightens, his jaw locks, and his bright blue eyes turn to gray ice.
He gives me a sharp, jerky nod. Like a mechanical acknowledgment of data received.
“Right,” he says, his voice flat and emotionless. “Okay. I get it. Just, uh, wanted to check.”
He turns to the door, and I brace myself for him to look back. To tell me I’m full of shit. To fight for us. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t. He walks to the door, opens it, and walks out into the hallway without breaking stride.
The door clicks shut behind him with a final thud.
I hold it together for exactly one second before my legs give out. I slide down the front of the cabinets until I hit the floor. The impact jars my shoulder, and a white-hot stab of pain tears through my chest, but it’s nothing compared to the hollow ache in the center of my ribcage.
I let my head fall back against the cabinet door, squeezing my eyes shut as the suffocating, lonely silence rushes back in.
From across the room, there’s a frantic rustling sound. Cookie is scrabbling around in his terrarium. When I lift my head to look at him, he stops, looking back at me and tilting his head as if to say,You’re a damn fool.
I let out a breath that turns into a shudder.
“Go be great, kid,” I whisper.
Chapter 20
Tanner
Iclose my apartment door behind me, and the lock clicks shut with a heavy, expensivethud, shutting out rain and the city. I wish it could shut out the noise and chaos in my head, but it doesn’t.
But I keep going. I don’t collapse. I don’t slide down the door like a character in a movie who just got his heart broken. I don’t have time for that. I have a system.
I toe off my sneakers and place them on the rubber mat, the heels perfectly aligned with the edge. I peel off my soaked hoodie. The fabric is heavy, and it smells like wet pavement. I take it to the bathroom and hang it over the shower rod to drip. Then I grab a towel and rub it roughly over my short hair.
Look at the math.
Louis’s voice is a loop in my head.
You don’t say no to the NHL.
