“Ari, I—”
A heavy knock on the door made both of us jump, and just as we retreated into our own space again, the door swung open to reveal my husband.
“Ah! I knew it. Hard at work already.” He grinned wide, sweeping into the room without care and bending to press a kiss to my cheek, which flamed when my eyes skirted to Shane. “I was chatting with our rookies, making sure they felt good going into today’s practice. And I remembered you were here, darling, so I came to take you to lunch.”
“We were just finishing, anyway,” I said, stacking up all the pages and slipping them into a folder. My neck was on fire, like I’d been caught with my tongue down my ex’s throat rather than just sitting in a room with him. “Shane, thank you again for your help. Do you think you can get with the players, get a feel for who we can depend on, and we can discuss at the next meeting?”
“Oh, I’m sure all the players will be more than happy to help,” Nathan answered for him. “And Coach here will thwomp them if they give you any grief. Isn’t that right, McCabe?”
Nathan squeezed Shane’s shoulders and shook him hard, all with a loud laugh that had always charmed everyone around him.
“I’m sure we won’t run into any trouble,” Shane answered carefully, and then he shrugged out of Nathan’s grasp to stand, gathering his things. “I better get to it. Enjoy your lunch.”
His gaze slid to me only briefly, enough for me to see there were still a thousand things left unsaid.
I hoped he could read my unspoken reply.
Leave it in the past, Shane.
Please, just leave it in the past.
Because I knew that was the only way I could survive being in his vicinity again.
Suspicious Circumstances
Shane
2008
On a sunny day in late April of 2008, one year after we’d made things official, the little safe haven Ariana and I had built came crashing down.
I thought nothing could be worse than BC losing the championship yet again in the final game against Michigan, but even that had the silver lining of knowing I’d be starting my career in the NHL soon. There were still games to play, still titles to chase.
But the day we got the call that Ariana’s mother had died, there was no silver lining in sight.
Everything happened like a car crash in a dream — painful and horrifying, yet blurry and hard to grasp. There were funeral arrangements and legal counsel, a girl in college who should have been thinking about her future forced instead to grieve the death of a mother she’d never quite known how to love.
And worse, it wasn’t that her mother had been sick.
The police used careful language with us at first, choosing words like incident and investigation, as if they were afraid of saying too much. But it didn’t take long for the truth to sharpen.
Ariana’s stepfather told them he’d found her deceased. He said they’d argued, that he’d left to cool his temper while she stayed home.
He said she’d hung herself.
And the coroner confirmed asphyxiation — but there was more to it.
Bruising to the neck. Signs of a struggle.
Everywhere around us, there were two whispered words.
Suspicious circumstances.
There was no time to process it. One day, we received the call, and the next, I was watching the way Ariana’s hands shook as she signed forms, collected her brother’s backpack, and walked out of that courthouse as his temporary guardian.
I sat beside her through it all, but it felt like standing in the middle of a hurricane, holding onto someone who was already being pulled away.
I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling. I couldn’t even begin to try. All I knew was that the girl who had once leaned into me, who had filled our tiny apartment with laughter and light, was retreating into herself. She still let me hold her at night, but it was different now. Her eyes weren’t on the future anymore. They were on survival.
