“Hear what?” My stomach is doing flips worthy of a Cirque du Soleil aerialist. “You’re starting to scare me.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to scare you. This is just hard for me to talk about.”
I put my arms around him and pull his head to my chest, stroking his hair like my mother used to do to me when I was younger. He stiffens at first, but after a second he melts into me, and I feel the heat of his cheek through my sweater and the pressure of his arms around my waist.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” I say, continuing to play with his hair. “But if talking would help, I’m here to listen.”
“I transferred to Moo U because someone at my last school said I sexually assaulted them.” He rapid fires the words into the soft cotton of my sweater, like if he doesn’t say them at light speed, he won’t say them at all.
“It wasn’t true,” he adds quickly, before I have a chance to react to the bombshell he’s just dropped. “Chase, the guy who accused me, was one of my teammates. And my best friend. Then, for a while, he was more. Until someone walked in on us in the locker room after practice, and he pretended like he was disgusted and I forced myself on him.”
I don’t swear, but if I was ever going to, now would be the perfect time. “Wow. Your ex is a—”
“Douchebag,” he finishes for me, lifting his head and staring up at me with wide, wary eyes. “I know.”
“So what happened?”
“He tried to have me arrested. Wanted me kicked out of school, too. Fortunately, my dad got me a good lawyer, and his investigator tracked down someone who saw us making out behind the gym, which blew his claim that he was totally straight and totally unwilling right out of the water.”
“Thank fudge.”
“Yeah.” The corners of his lips curve upward at my faux swear, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “But I couldn’t stay there. The school agreed to support my request to the NCAA for a transfer waiver if I promised not to sue.”
“What’s a transfer waiver?”
“It lets me change schools without having to sit out a year before I can play hockey.”
“A whole year on the bench? That would stink.”
He chuckles wryly. “Yeah.”
I lean forward, pressing my forehead to his. I hate that Adam had to go through that. Hate that someone would do that to him. But on the other hand, it brought him here, to Burlington. To me.
“Is it wrong for me to say that your ex’s loss is my gain?” I ask, closing my eyes and breathing him in.
“Everything happens for a reason.” He pauses. “God, I sound like my mother. But maybe it’s true.”
I feel a cool hand cup my cheek and open my eyes to gaze into his.
“She sounds like a smart woman. I can’t wait to meet her.”
He swallows, and his voice gets softer yet stronger at the same time. “So you haven’t changed your mind? You’ll still come home with me for the holiday?”
I turn my face to kiss the palm of his hand. “A herd of stampeding buffalo couldn’t keep me away.”
He laughs again, but this time it’s open and easy and confident. “I’m pretty sure there aren’t any buffalo anywhere from here to Rhode Island, so that’s probably not going to be a problem.”
17
Adam
“Holy shiitake mushrooms. You live here?” Kolby asks, his mouth practically hitting the floorboard of the ancient Honda Civic I borrowed from Lex, who drove to Boston with Kaitlyn to spend Thanksgiving with her dad, a former pro hockey player.
Fortunately for me, Kaitlyn’s father rented them a Land Rover for the trip because—according to Lex—he didn’t want his baby girl riding in “that rat trap.” The rat trap being the car I’m currently seated behind the wheel of. I’m hoping I’ll be able to convince my dad to let me bring my Jeep Wrangler to campus next semester. Upperclassmen can have cars, and there’s plenty of parking at the hockey house.
Kolby lets out a low whistle as we head up the tree-lined driveway to my family’s not-so-modest six-bedroom house on Narragansett Bay. To me, it’s just home. The only one I’ve ever known. But seeing it through Kolby’s eyes—the huge, hundred-year-old oaks, the three-car garage, the imposing hand-carved teak door that’s the main entrance, flanked by tall stone columns—I can understand how he’d find it a little bit overwhelming.
“You didn’t tell me you were loaded,” he says.
