Page 26 of At the Edge with You

Bea glances over to her best friend. “And he was okay with it?”

Kitty smiles, her eyes lighting up with the motion. “Yes. I don’t know what happened to our son. Maybe Elena has poisoned him. But JT is an amazing man, and he was an amazing teenager too.”

The three Cook women smile proudly. It wasn’t easy raising Jett, but they did it together and they did it the best they could. Jett holds the door open for Fable, and as she walks through, his eyes travel down her body and back up.

Bea snorts. “Fool man is a goner.”

“Always has been,” Maggie agrees. “But he’s never looked at a girl the way he looks at her.”

“Never,” Kitty agrees, a dreamy sigh leaving her lips. “Just how Phillip looked at me.”

Bea squeezes Kitty’s hand, and they share a knowing smile. On a sigh, Hazel proclaims, “With the tension between them, I give it a week before they’re shacking up.”

Maggie looks offended, but she can’t help her giggle. “No. It’ll be a month, and we’ll be planning a wedding in a year.”

Kitty snorts. “Nope. It’ll take six months for them to give in, and then it’ll take her leaving for him to admit his feelings.”

Bea shakes her head, sitting mighty pretty as she announces, “All of you are wrong.” She has nothing but mischief in her eyes. “They’ll give in to each other in about six weeks. They’ve got tofight first and then decide that hooking up will be way more fun than fighting. Then they’ll be married in nine months.”

“Those are very specific numbers,” Hazel says, eyeing her mother.

Maggie and Kitty are already giggling as Bea waggles her brows. “Because six and nine go together in the most perfect way, just like those two do.”

CHAPTER

TWELVE

Fable

I haven’t seen the Ice Thistle in person in twenty years, and even with the many updates my grandpa sent me, nothing prepared me for how much has changed. Instead of white walls like before, they have been painted an eye-catching sage green, with murals of outdoor scenes of pond hockey placed throughout the building. Of course, the twenty-point buck my grandpa swore he saw when he was younger is in each one, and seeing the animal has my heart seizing in grief.

He may have put me in a tough situation, but I’m going to do everything I can to make him proud.

We have birthday rooms for ice-skating parties or team banquets. The bleachers in the north and east rinks are brand-new, along with LED scoreboards that take up half the wall in the rink. The ones in the west and south haven’t been changed out, and they still have the old scoreboards. The west rink also has a large, old TV showing slides of the three skaters who train at the Thistle. Pathetic. When I was a skater here, we had a huge program.

That’s going to be a reality once more.

Big Buck is somehow still running, but I’m sure he’s been repainted and repaired a time or thirty. The lobby now holds chairs and tables, whereas before, it was just booths to change out of your skates. There are over twenty TVs, some only showing feeds of the rinks, but others show sports, and there’s even a little-kid area with hockey goals. It’s all grown so much, and I’m incredibly proud.

I can see how excited Jett gets when he shows it off, and I can hear the pride in his voice. I’m engrossed in every detail he points out to me, as well as the smirk that plays on his face. And while I have so many questions, I don’t dare ask him. This is his time; I’m only here to observe.

Or maybe I’m speechless and confused because, while everything looks so different, it feels absolutely the same.

Just as walking the halls with Jett does.

He enters a code into the door that leads upstairs. “It’s your birthday,” he says softly so that no one hears. His admission makes my heart ache because I know it was my grandpa’s doing, and once more, I feel a wave of grief as I follow him up the stairs. I know I should be making sure I don’t fall up the stairs, but it’s hard to do anything other than check out the bubble butt this man has. His athletic shorts hide absolutely nothing, and I have the urge to bite his ass like a dog with a piece of meat.

Because that’s a normal thought.

I tear my gaze from his ass to his back, and still, I want to nibble on the tendons and muscles that meet my gaze. As he walks, his shoulders flex, the muscles bunching. When have I been turned on by someone’s back? That’s not my normal. Who am I?

When I decide that looking at the ceiling is my best bet, I, of course, trip because that’s my life. I don’t fall, thankfully, but I scold myself as I continue to follow him up, while he has no clue the turmoil his body is bringing me. We enter a waitingarea, which has four offices to the left. He points to the first one. “Mine, then Phillip’s. Or, I guess, now yours.”

His voice is rough with grief and leaves me breathless as he pushes my grandfather’s office door open for me. I know that Kitty decorated by the soft greens and muted browns of the room. Large bookcases hold different coaching, hockey, and figure skating books. Photos of Kitty and me are everywhere, at all ages, and even us together on the ice when she used to work with me. His hockey equipment is in the corner, his sticks and random gear beside it. Framed cross-stitches of hockey sticks, pucks, and a goal hang on the walls. It’s like a shrine to everything that Phillip loved. The large wooden desk in the middle of the room has been passed down through our family. I can still see him behind the desk, a desk I’ll be sitting behind now.

I know my dad wants it, but he can’t have it. Not yet. Maybe when I leave.

I cross and uncross my fingers, a nervous habit of mine, as I look around my grandfather’s space. It smells like him, all woodsy like cedar. It brings a small smile to my face as I look out the floor-to-ceiling windows that reveal a scenic view of the mountain. It’s a breathtaking vista.

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