“We should probably get out,” Ava murmured eventually. “Before we turn into prunes.”
“Prunes are underrated.”
She laughed, lifting her head to look at me. “You’re ridiculous.”
“You like it.”
“Correction—I tolerate it.”
I kissed her forehead—it was becoming a habit—and then we walked out of the water.
We got dressed in comfortable silence, stealing glances at each other in the moonlight. Every time I’d look at her, her lips would pull up into a smile that had my heart beating a little faster. When we were both clothed again, I reached for her hand, and she laced her fingers through mine without hesitation.
I drove her back home, neither of us talking during the short drive. I parked closer to the barn, so her parents wouldn’t see me if they happened to wake up and look out their bedroom window.
“Thanks again for tonight.”
“Anytime, Sunshine.”
I didn’t leave until she’d made it across the yard and into the house. As I drove toward my mom’s house, I decided I wasn’t going to worry anymore about what would happen once we finished Ava’s bucket list. Instead, I was going to take a note out of her book and choose to live in the moment.
TWENTY-THREE
I’d forgotten how good hockey felt when nobody was keeping score.
Tony, the rink manager at Dunridge Skate, had asked me to run the summer camp back in the spring, and I’d said yes without thinking too hard about it. It was only three days a week, nine to noon, for kids ages six through ten. It covered the basic fundamentals—skating, passing, shooting. Nothing fancy. It was the kind of camp Drew and I had done as kids, back when hockey was just for fun and not tangled up in the pressure of reviving a club team and then being the best.
Turned out, coaching twelve kids who could barely stop without crashing into the boards was becoming one of my favorite parts of my week, only second to my time with Ava.
“Coach Liam! Coach Liam, watch!”
I turned just in time to see Elias—a seven-year-old—attempt a hockey stop and spray ice directly into the face of the kid next to him. The other kid, a skinny redhead named Mack, sputtered and wiped his face with his glove.
“Sorry!” Elias yelled, not sounding sorry at all.
“Nice stop,” I called out, skating over. “But maybe aim the spray at the boards next time, yeah? We’re trying to make friends here, not enemies.”
Elias grinned up at me with a gap-toothed smile. “Drew Dumontier sprays people on purpose. I’ve seen him do it.”
Of course these kids all knew Drew. I’d discovered on day one that most of them were die-hard CFU hockey fans and knew all our names and our stats from last season.
“Drew Dumontier is also a menace. Don’t be like Drew.”
That got a laugh from a few of the parents watching from behind the glass. I caught one dad grinning behind the glass and nodded back before turning to the group.
“Alright, everybody line up on the red line. We’re doing passing drills.”
We were down one kid today, so eleven kids scrambled into something resembling a line, albeit a little haphazard, and I skated backward, watching their form as they paired up. Most of them were decent—Dunridge and the surrounding towns produced solid skaters, even if this was just a recreational camp. But my gaze kept drifting to the end of the line, where a girl named Joelle stood slightly apart from the others.
She was eight, quiet, and had barely spoken a word in the three sessions we’d had so far. She could skate fine—better than fine, actually. Her edges were clean and her balance was solid. But every time I set up a drill that required partnering with another kid, she froze. Everyone seemed nice enough to her, so I couldn’t decide if it was because she was anxious about the kids or something else.
Right now, she was standing with her stick flat on the ice, watching the other kids pair up until everyone had a partner but her.
I skated over to her. “Hey, Joelle. Need a partner?”
She shrugged, which I’d learned was her default response to almost everything.
“Tell you what.” I grabbed a puck from the bucket. “You and me. I’ll go easy on you.”
