From across the rink, some of my other teammates call out, arriving for practice. “Captain is smiling! Someone get proof!”
“Put your cameras away,” I grumble at them.
Aiden beams at me. “The Aspens are so cool. I wanna be like you someday, Mr. Eli.”
Whoa. My heart fills with pride. When I planned this event, I knew it'd feel great to do some good, but this goes beyond expectations.
When our time is up, I'm not ready for this to be over. Turns out, Aiden's mom is late picking up him and his grandmother. I could grumble about people being inconsiderate with my time, but it's fine. Gives me a few more one-on-one minutes on the ice with Aiden. I show him some basic stick handling, letting him try to shoot a few pucks into the net.
Several minutes later, a woman rushes in. I notice her immediately, and my world grinds to a halt—it could crash into another dimension and I wouldn’t notice, because all I see is her.
From where I'm standing in the middle of the ice, Aiden's mom looks like a redheaded beauty I knew long ago. But damn, that's impossible—I blink away the thought.
“Mom!” Aiden waves frantically. “Look! I’m skating!”
“How fun, buddy,” she calls. Her voice is a slap shot to my chest, a blast from my distant past.
I squint.Stella?Why didn’t I look at the roster Renae sent more closely?
Aiden takes off toward her, and I follow suit, my body moving even though my brain is stuck. His mother starts in, apologizing, as he sits on the bench. She crouches to help him out of the skates.
“I'm so sorry I'm late. I thought I'd go get groceries really quickly, but it started raining and traffic was terrible getting back here and—” She finally glances up at me, doing a double take, and practically chokes on her words, her eyes as round as saucers.
“Fuck me. Itisyou,” I mutter. Stella… but she's older and tired-looking now, hair wildly curly. She wears yoga pants and an oversized sweatshirt and a scarf. Some of the seams of her leather jacket are fraying, but she wears it anyway, like she can't stand to part with the old thing. But, fuck, she's still beautiful… and I know exactly what she looks like and feels like underneath it all.
I've kissed those plump lips. I've watched her face as she came undone for me, riding on my cock, breathless and reckless—and once mine. And her mouth… yeah, that's the same mouth that told me we should break up, that we were two people with futures headed in different directions.
She was the college girl who landed in my life unexpectedly, made me believe in love, and then ripped my heart away without warning. Like a hurricane, hitting my shore, leaving a path of destruction behind her.
“Fuck, you’re really here,” I breathe.
Aiden gasps. “Mom, I told him about the swear jar. I told him. You don’t like swearing.”
“Guess I'll owe the swear jar,” I laugh nervously and scratch my neck with my glove. My entire body shakes from seeing Stella again—from total excitement remembering everything that happened between us in our brief relationship during college. Definitely everything between the sheets, too. I almost groan, thankful my jersey hangs down low enough to hide my growing dick from the situation developing there.
Aiden laughs, too. “Don’t be mad, Mom. Mr. Eli is really cool. I just wish today didn’t have to end.”
“Mr.Eli?” She quirks a brow, finally speaking after staring at me like she’s seen a ghost, her face pale, hands clutching the skates so tight her knuckles are white.
“Stella.” Her name comes out rougher than I mean it to.
“I... I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“This is my foundation handing out gear today.” I don’t know what else to say. How do you talk to someone who forced themselves out of your life long ago? “Surprise.”
“I take it you two know each other?” The grandmother darts her eyes between us, gathering Aiden’s new gear in the bag.
“We, uh, met in college, actually,” I provide, since Stella doesn’t. I don’t recall ever meeting her parents. She never talked bout them.
“Hm. Interesting. I’ll be outside waiting. I need to smoke.”
“You met my mom in college?” Aiden giggles after his grandmother leaves.
Stella inhales a shaky breath. “Oh my God.”
“Small world,” I manage.
This is worse than a nightmare. Because the part of me that never got over her is lighting the fuck up inside. She’s here. Afteralmost nine years of nothing, she’s standing a few feet away, and my heart is doing backflips.
