“You can’t do that!” I say. The rink isn’t exactly close to my house. The three shifts a week he plans to drop me to will barely cover gas and car insurance, and that’s assuming I don’t come in to skate on my days off.
Jeff raises both eyebrows at me from the other side of his desk. “Excuse me?”
“José and I are the only ones who can drive Bertha—the Zamboni—and he’s not coming back after his hip surgery next week.” The words leave my mouth and relief floods me. José had been working at the Polar Ice Rink since it opened in 1965, and he was the only employee who refused to let me ice him out. He’s the one who taught me to drive Bertha, and for the first time since he told me about the surgery and him moving to Tampa to live with his daughter, I feel something besides sadness.
The smile Jeff returns causes mine to falter. “No, that just means I’ll be hiring another driver and maintenance worker.” His smile grows. “Of course, if you’d rather seek employment elsewhere, I won’t bring up the theft situation.”
“But I didn’t steal anything!”
Jeff purses his fat, baby lips in response. I’m not a violent person, but I know in that moment I could slap that look off Jeff’s face and feel nothing but satisfaction pulsing through me.
“I guess you have another choice here, Brooke. What’s it gonna be?”
CHAPTER 8
I’m brushing away an angry tear with the heel of my hand when I step into the muggy night air once again. Three shifts a week, less than thirty hours. It’s a forty-five minute round-trip to the rink. Assuming I don’t drive anywhere else or spend money on anything but gas and car insurance, how many days can I afford to come here? I’m throwing numbers around in my head when Heath walks around the front of his truck.
I slow for a second, then resume my pace. He could have said something to Jeff; a few words in my defense to explain the money and Jeff would have had to let me go. But he didn’t. He watched Jeff accuse and insult me, and he stayed silent.
I keep walking even when I see Heath moving in my direction. I shouldn’t care what he thinks of me. I shouldn’t care what anyone thinks of me, yet my eyes are stinging and the closer he comes the harder it is to keep them from doing more than sting. I reach Daphne a few steps ahead of him. I can’t make it any clearer that I don’t want to talk to him as I fit the key into the lock and turn it. Heath stops barely two feet to my left, watching but saying nothing. He’s not leaving.
“What?” I say, letting him hear the barely leashed anger in my voice. I shake my head a little before looking at him.“What?”
“Did you lose your job?”
I scoff and open the door so it’s between us. The last two times we saw each other, he couldn’t wait to get away from me. Now he’s standing there like I’ll have to hit him with my car to get him to move. I curl my fingers around the doorframe. “Is that what you want to hear? That I got fired?” I abandon my indifference, turning fully to face him. “Why are you still here? Do you need to yell at me more? Do you want to follow me home so you can yell at my family? What? Tell me!” My gaze flicks back and forth between his eyes, almost frantic where his is steady. “What do you want from me, Heath?”
He takes a breath, one so deep it stretches the cotton of his T-shirt. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“No?” I glance down at the hand he has on my doorframe. I don’t think he was aware of putting it there, but he doesn’t remove it. “I didn’t get fired,” I say, watching his face and wondering if it can possibly be relief that crosses it. My stomach twists. I don’t even know why; I know only that I want to get away from the feeling.
“I don’t get you,” I say. “Before you acted like you were in physical pain just from sharing the same air as me. You don’t need a ride, and you’ve already thrown my money back at me. Looking at me makes you mad, and that’s the best-case scenario. Why are you still here? What else do you want? Just tell me, because this hasn’t been a great day for me and I really don’t want to be here when my boss comes back out.” I exhale the remaining air in my lungs, waiting, but all Heath does is stare at me with a frown that he can’t seem to fully hold. “Fine,” I say, starting to get into my car.
“Wait, damn it.”
I freeze in a half crouch, only this time I don’t think his clipped tone is directed at me. When I stand again, I see that his eyes are squeezed shut. I lower my gaze to the hand still resting my doorframe—no, not resting on it, holding it open.
“I should have said something to your boss. Earlier. I’m sorry.”
I’m afraid to breath. Heath Gaines just apologized to me, Jason Covington’s sister. It feels wrong on so many levels. I force myself to hold Heath’s gaze when he opens his eyes, and I say something that feels every bit as wrong as his apology. “Thank you.”
Heath tries to hide his flinch, but I see it. I feel it. After another moment, he lowers his hand from my door and takes a step back. “Did you say anything to your family about talking to me the other day?”
“Yes,” I say, remembering with a twinge of guilt the promise I gave my mom that I’m currently breaking. “Did you?”
“No.”
Smart. Or maybe he’s just kinder than I know how to be. “I shouldn’t have. My family doesn’t talk about...anything.”
“Mine does,” Heath says. “Not the way it is now, just...” He stops for so long that I don’t think he’s going to finish. With a swallow that looks painful, he does. “About before. Like Cal’s not gone.”
“With mine it’s like Jason never was.” My throat constricts painfully at the admission.
Everything about this interaction is strange. My reaction to Heath, and definitely his to me. We’re both still standing there, just a few feet from each other when anyone else in our situation would have already left. I have that desire inside me, the one that longs to throw myself behind Daphne’s wheel and speed as fast and as far away from him as I can. But I also want to stay. I can’t reconcile the two impulses, and yet the one to stay is winning. The only thing that makes me say anything is the knowledge that Jeff could come out at any moment, and I wasn’t kidding about wanting to avoid that.
“I need to go—”
“Where my truck broke down near Hackman’s Pond,” Heath says. “There’s this big live oak just off from the road, down by—”
