But instead, it knocks the air out of me.
He’s down there free and alive, in the middle of the thing he was built for, having the night of his life, and I’m up here being blamed that he is throwing his whole future in the trash, and the thing he’s throwing it away for is me.
I don’t react. I can’t make my face do anything at all. I just stare at him, and I watch the grin flicker — watch him catch that something’s wrong, watch his eyes drop to the phone in my hand — and then the linesman is moving him along, and he’s gone, back to the game.
Blue’s in the box, and we’re a man down. Stanley does not play worse for it. He plays like something set on fire. He’s everywhere, he covers the whole sheet, he’s brilliant, and the building loves him for it.
The Wolves win. Stanley has a hand in all of it, and the horn goes, and the place comes up roaring. Gianna’s screaming and hugging me. I hug her back, and somewhere in the noise, behind my working face, I make the decision the whole spiral has been marching me toward since the second I opened that text. I have to end it. Not because I stopped wanting him. God, no — I want him more than I have ever wanted anything in my life, and that’s the whole tragedy of it, that’s the knife. I have to end it because I want him. Because as long as I’m in his orbit, I’m a variable in his career I can’t rule out, and I’m not gambling his whole future on my read being the right one. The only thing I can control is whether I’m in the equation at all. So I take myself out of it. I don’t know yet what I’ll tell my father, or his, or any of them. I can’t think that far. There’s no version of the rest of it that isn’t a mess, and the mess can wait. The only thing I can hold onto, the only clean thing left, is to get out of his orbit.
My phone lights up against my knee.
Stanley:You still here?
Stanley:Coming to find you.
Two messages, the dots, then nothing — he's waiting on me to answer. I look at it until the screen dims. I can’t make my thumbs do it. There’s nothing to type that isn’t either a lie or the end, and I’m not ready to type the end in a text, so I type nothing, and I let him think I just didn’t see it.
Stanley finds me in the hallway off the family entrance. His hair is still wet from his shower, the adrenaline coming off him in waves, and the wink still somewhere in his face — a man walking toward his girl after a really good night.
“Aspen.” His grin starts to fall. “What—”
“You should have taken the offer,” I say, truthfully.
He stops dead in his tracks. “What?”
“Halifax. You should have signed. You should have taken it without hesitation.” My voice is level. “You’re being an idiot, Stanley. You’re throwing away the NHL to finish a college season, and everyone in your life can see it but you.”
“Where is this—” He’s blinking at me, the joy draining out of his face, and I make myself watch it go, because I’m the one doing it to him. “Aspen, what happened, what’s—”
“This happened.” I gesture between us, at the whole impossible space of it. “This. Us. Whatever this — it was never real. We made it up. In a kitchen. Because I needed to get away from Gavin, and it was fake. It was supposed to stay fake, and I let it turn into—” My throat shuts. I force it open. “My father thinks you’re throwing it away. That part of it is because of me. And I don’t think he’s right, Stanley. I know what you told me. I believe what you said, but I can’t be sure he's wrong, and I don’t want to be a thing you have to weigh, so I’m taking myself off the board.”
“Your dad—” He’s shaking his head, and the worst part, the part that is going to live in me forever, is that he’s reaching for me, still, even now. “Aspen, slow down, I don’t — what does your dad have to do with anything? I had a good night. I won. I came straight here to—”
“I know you did.” And my voice cracks, right there, the one place it cracks, and I hate it. “I know. That’s the whole problem. You’resogood, Stanley.You’re so good.And I’m not going tobe the thing standing in front of it.” I make myself say the rest. “We’re done. The fake thing, the real thing, all of it. It’s over.”
“You don’t mean that, Linwood. Whatever your dad is saying, we can talk about it. I know you. You don’t—”
“It doesn’t matter.” And that’s the truest thing I’ve said all night, the thing that breaks me to say, because it has never once mattered what I want. The only thing that matters is that I don’t make myself a variable. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry. Please take the offer, Stanley. This is your future.”
And I walk away.
I walk away from the only thing I have ever chosen with my own two hands, and I don’t look back.
This time, he doesn’t chase.
Chapter 35
Stanley
I stand in the hallway with a win still up on the scoreboard somewhere behind me, and I watch Aspen Linwood walk away down a corridor that smells like rubber and bleach. Everything in me is built to go after her. I make myself stand still and let her go, and it costs me more than the punch did.
Last week, I knew what I’d done. I had the misread in my hand. I could fix it. This time I’ve got nothing.
You should have taken the offer.
I run it back, and it won’t make sense in any direction.
But if my memory serves me right, I winked, and she’d gone white with her phone in her hands. Coach Linwood must’ve gotten to her, and her father is not a man to reckon with. This much I can put together.
