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I don’t say anything. I don’t dare to even move.

“That’s what I thought. Sprints. Again.”

I feel sick. Like I’m drowning or suffocating. Part of me wants to rage, to beat every ounce of my year’s supply of anger into him. The other part of me wants to cry.

But I manage to keep it together, to channel it all into my skating, trying to keep my mouth shut so LaBlanc has no cards left to play.

The rest of the practice is just as bad as I remember my solo times always being with him. This pain still doesn’t touch the fathomless pit of it from the memories swirling around me.

• • •

“Everything go well while we were gone?”

Harris looks over at me expectantly, but it’s Mrs. Harris, Sahara, who asked. It’s a Sunday afternoon and the usual events are a morning practice, which we’ve already attended, and then a massive lunch afterward all prepared by Sahara. Today, I was late because LaBlanc had Holden and me do another hour of defensive drills and “partner relationship building”—which was just racing each other until our times were perfectly in sync.

Except, he kept shaving a few seconds off my time, so we’d do it again.

Exhaustion plagues me, enough that I want to crawl to my room and sleep the rest of the day, but I know the house rules.

I’d been in foster care since I was in diapers. Learning new house rules was the only code I had as a kid. And when I realized it didn’t matter what I did, how well I followed the rules, how clean I kept my room, how nice I tried to smile—my life was always going to be that?—things changed.

There’d been only once really where I thought I might be part of it. That I’d managed to prove myself enough to make somewhere my home. But like with everything else, I was very wrong.

“Yeah.” I tap my fingers on the table. “All good.”

She smiles over her shoulder. “Are you still hungry? I brought back some of those apple cider doughnuts you loved last time. Oh! And there’s a gift for you in the fridge.”

It’s wrong, how that makes me flinch. The memory of last fall, the one time Sahara and I had to be alone together. Harris took us both with him to Boston for a meeting with one of the Bruins recruiters. And while I’d met with them both the first day to discover prospects, there was a long afternoon meeting I wasn’t allowed to be privy to.

Anxiety had threaded through me; it was one of the five teams that were still willing to discuss options and I was terrified of losing out on them. Sahara took me to her favorite sweet shop and forced me to try apple cider doughnuts and a “real” Boston cream pie.

But it was the cannoli from Modern Pastry that really stole my heart.

I stand now when Harris glances over at me again, eyebrows raised like he’s waiting to see what I’ll do as he reads whatever book is in his hands—a part of some massive fantasy series that he always has with him.

I’d started reading the first one, borrowing it from the library after seeing how much he liked them.

“You didn’t have to get me anything,” seems to be all I’m capable of saying in thanks, but then I open the fridge to see a white box with red script, my name sketched across it in Sahara’s bubbly writing. Modern Pastry.

“Surprise! You thought I forgot, didn’t you?” She steps up beside me and hip checks my side. “I told Nate you’d think I forgot. But of course I had to get you one because, well, it’s our place, right?” My stomach sinks further, a flush drawing up the back of my neck along with the urge to run.

“Anyway, he didn’t like it as much as we did.” If she says we one more time, I might be sick. “So, yeah . . . I just . . .”

Sahara’s voice trails off and I finally pull my eyes away from the box to see her hands wringing together anxiously. I don’t need to turn my head to know my coach’s eyes are watching us keenly.

“That’s . . . yeah. Thank you.” I nod and swallow harder through the suffocating lump there. Fuck, I hate this. “I should— I have to go.”

Her brow furrows but she nods. She looks hurt and defeated, but trying to hide it. And that only makes me feel worse. It’s not hard to turn away from her and step back into the hall, I’ve been disappointing people for my entire life. But it’s better for her to understand it now.

There’s a confusing burn in my gut. I don’t know what she wants from me, but it doesn’t matter. The truth is I have nothing to offer her.

Still, I linger in the hallway to watch my coach grab hold of his wife from behind and tuck his head into the curve of her neck, moving aside her thick black hair. He whispers something and she shakes her head softly, eyes welling.

I leave the house entirely, before I can fuck it all up even more.

Chapter 25

Lily