I will deal with Kirra later.
I will deal with everything later.
I open my laptop and pull up the game tape I need for the report due on Tuesday. I press play. I make it forty seconds before I notice I’ve been staring at the same frozen frame the entire time.
I close the laptop and huff. No, I can’t push this off. I open it again. I press play.
I make it ninety seconds this time, and then a defenseman does something on the screen that has nothing to do with Stanley Ermington, but I find myself thinking about him anyway.
I close the laptop. I lie back. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes.
I pick up my phone, and it’s already ringing in my palm.
Dad.
I sit up so fast that I nearly fall. I look at my screen for one full ring, and my heart is hammering so hard against my ribs that I start to get side pain. I inhale deeply and clear my throat. I pick up on the third ring.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Aspen.”
He says my name once.
I’m in deep shit.
I open my mouth to talk. He doesn’t let me get a word out. My throat tightens.
“I’ve been waiting for this day. When I put that boy in the rink last summer and watched him work harder than anyone I’ve coached in ten years, Aspen, I had a passing thought this could happen.”
“Dad—”
“I’m not finished.”
I close my mouth, staring out my window, horrified.
“I love that boy, Aspen.” I shiver.I knew it.“He’s always been like a son to me. He’s a good kid from a good family, and his father is the closest thing to a brother I’ve got on this earth, and you know exactly what I think of his father.”
I do. I know exactly what he thinks of Robert.
And underneath the warmth of it, something cold is opening in me, because he’s always been like a son to me is not a sentence about a hockey player. This is about Stanley.
“I’m not going to tell you how to live your life,” he says. “You’re twenty-one. You’re smart. You make good decisions. But I want you to hear me say this.” He pauses like he’s taking a breath. “I’m not surprised. I’m not concerned. I am, in fact, relieved. Because I have been watching you turn into the woman your mother is, and your mother is the finest woman walking the earth, and the only thing I have ever wanted for you is the kind of life she and I built — and if that boy is part of how you get there, then I have done my job as your father.”
My heart sinks, and tears prick my eyes. I swallow and close my eyes.This cannot be happening.The room is too quiet. My ears are ringing with it.
I need to tell him that Gavin Carroll is lying.
“Dad.”
He says, “You’re coming to Thanksgiving, and you’re bringing him.”
“What?”
“I want him at my table. This is good, Aspen. It’s just what you need.”
What I need?
I look out the window.
