“No buts! You guys thought you were hiding it, but you weren’t. You thought you were protecting us, butyou weren’t!”
“This is between us,” she repeats. “Me and your father.”
I debate walking right out the door. I’m risking my hockey season by being here, but I need answers.
“How long have you known?” I whisper.
She sighs.
“Since June.”
“Four months, Mom?”
She stands up, walks over to me, and touches my shoulder. She rests her head against my back.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” I say, squeezing her hand, then removing myself from her embrace. “I should go.”
I walk toward the front door, and she follows me. It feels like déjà vu. Like the second I go to close the door, she’s going to blurt out more life-changing evidence.
“Can we talk about this later?” she wonders as I reach for the door. “I don’t like how we’re ending things.”
“Sure, Mom,” I respond before slamming the door behind me.
In about an hour, if Coach even lets me play, I’ll be on the ice for our first game with my head in a whole other universe. And then, the second I’m off the ice, it will come like a wave, crashing into me until I can’t breathe. And once the waves settle, and I finally allow myself to feel the after-effects of all of tonight’s news, I’ll have to do something that will hurt more than all of it combined—
Tell Brinley.
thirteen
Ember
Brinley’s losing her mind. The rest of the team is warming up on the ice, but Declan has yet to make his presence known, even though we’ve looked a hundred times.
It took me five seconds to find Cam, but he’s hard to miss since he’s the goalie, and not just because he’s been number fifty since he started playing.
“He’s not picking up his phone either.” She grumbles, sitting back down next to me. “He wouldn’t miss the first game of the season.”
“I’m sure he’ll show up,” I say, dropping a hand on her shoulder. “He’s put in too much work to just bail.”
“Yeah, but my dad’s here.” She turns around, and I follow her glance. I’ve seen him before, but I would’ve never guessed he was their father. When Brinley and Declan smile, they both have this contagious feeling of excitement, but it lacks that energy when he shows his teeth. Neither of them looks like him. He has green eyes and auburn hair, which according to Declan, contrasts his dark personality.
“And?”
“Which means all of his hard work is for nothing because it’s never good enough for my dad,” she replies, avoiding my gaze. Another thing the Sanderson kids have in common is avoiding your eyes when they say something personal. This is rare for Brinley, though. In the time I’ve known her, nothing seems to make her uncomfortable.
Except for her dad, apparently.
“I don’t think he’d let down the team because of him.”
“Maybe.” She looks at me and then down at her phone, redialing Declan, before pressing the phone back to her ear. “I just wish he’d pick up his damn phone.”
“I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” I say, and her head snaps in my direction before following my finger. Although we can’t see his face, the back of the jersey saysSANDERSON,and under his name is the number71.
From the look on their coach’s face, he doesn’t look too thrilled with Declan, but who can blame him when Declan showed up minutes before the game.
“Thank God.” Brinley’s shoulders slump, and she lets out a huge breath. “Remind me to kill him later.”
