Page 38 of Slapshot Bride

The phone vibrates in my hand in one long, relentless wave. The number keeps climbing.

Forty.

Sixty.

Eighty.

A hundred and fourteen.

A hundred and twenty-six.

The notifications keep pouring in, the device buzzing so continuously it barely pauses for breath. For a second, I'm tempted to set down the phone and walk away.

But anxiety roots me to the spot.

I expected a lot of messages and calls. But not this much, and the reality dawns on me that while hiding in this house in the hills, I’ve somehow forgotten the real world, and the chaos unfolding from Preston’s press release.

The notifications settle at one hundred and forty-eight.

I sit very still. I drag in a deep breath, and my thumb slides across the screen, unlocking the device.

I scroll past the missed calls first.

Dad. Mom. Preston. Mason. Dad. Preston. Preston. Preston. Mom. Preston. Mason. Dad.

I count Preston’s name nineteen times before I stop counting.

I read Mom’s text first, because she's the easiest.

Mom:

Riley, dear, please call your father. He's beside himself. Honey, the family is here at the house and we are all just trying to understand. Preston has been with us all afternoon. Please come home. Honey, you have to give us something. I love you. I love you so much. Please.

The last one comes through at four in the morning.

She's up at four in the morning typing texts to my locked phone, and somewhere underneath the engineered language about the family is here I can hear her, my actual mother. The Preston-and-the-family scaffolding is what she has built around the fear to make it manageable. I know her, and I can tell she’s worried sick.

I scroll to Dad.

Dad:

Riley, your mother is in pieces. Call her.

Then, another one follows an hour later.

Dad:

Riley, who is the sports man we are seeing in these photos? You can't do this to our family. You had everything with Preston. Whoever this is, you have settled. Tell me where you are. Tell me you have not made a permanent decision about your life on a bad day.

The photo. The man at the parking lot. My heart sinks. The phone almost drops from my hands but I hold on with shaky hands.

I press the heel of my hand into my eye. They took photos of Easton and I. Easton is being pulled into my mess…

The reality hits me squared in the face, and the regret follows a second later.

I shouldn’t have stepped out. Not yesterday, not the way we did. Now Preston has more stories to tell.

My shaky hands click on Preston’s text.