Page 95 of The Worst Kind of Promise
“Uh-huh. Very perceptive.”
“You can’t feed someone a sandwich.”
I do my best to tear the sandwich evenly down the middle, dollops of pesto oozing out from the sides and a slab of turkey skewing slightly beneath the top piece of sourdough bread.
“Jesus, woman. Just let me take care of you,” I grumble, realizing just how messy of a decision I made. But it’s too late to turn back, and I’m not giving her the satisfaction of being right.
I finally get the long-awaited laugh I was searching for, and it’s as delicate and sweet as spun sugar, serenading my ears.
It hasn’t completely dawned on me that this is how incredible the rest of my life is going to be. I’m going to marry this girl one day. I don’t know when, I don’t know where, but it’s going to happen. I want my forever promised, and I want it promised with her. If I have to fight tooth and nail to get it, I gladly will. I can’t imagine not waking up beside her in the morning, not kissing her as many times a day as possible, not seeing her rooting for me in the stands at my games, not ending the night with her in my arms as we fall asleep together. A future without her just doesn’t exist.
And the only thing that would make this future better is having Hayes in it too.
36
POT, MEET KETTLE
KIT
It’s weird not having fifty pounds of hockey gear weighing me down this morning. I don’t remember the last time I visited the rink outside of practice. I wish I was visiting it under better circumstances, but I’m on a mission to speak to Hayes today.
Faye’s doing better, but if Hayes continues to ignore her, I’m afraid that she’ll start to spiral again. It’s time he pulls his head out of his ass and talks to her. I’ve given him space to cool down (enough, if I say so myself). This is about Faye, not about our relationship. I don’t give a rat’s ass if he forgives me or not. He just needs to make things right with her.
He’s a lot more stubborn than I thought, which is a quality I never realized ran so deep within the Hollings’ genes, but here we are. If I have to drag him all the way to the house by his ear, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
When I step into the rink, the cold isn’t the only thing creeping up my spine. There’s a writhing mess of anxiety crowning inside me, weighing down my steps as I make my way over to the ice. I see Hayes’ figure through the plexiglass, chucking pucks violently into the goal’s net, billowing back the latticed nylon with vigor. Thankfully, we’re the only two people in the rink.
He’s red in the face, his anger tangible within the frosted atmosphere. There’s a good handful of pucks studded across the rink from his previous failures, which means he must’ve been going at this for the past hour or so.
Hesitantly, and fearing for my face, I step onto the ice in my shoes, unsure if I should grab his attention or wait for him to notice me. I feel like I’ve just walked into the lion’s den. A den that belongs to a starving, bloodthirsty lion that’ll have no problem sucking the skin off my bone and leaving my carcass to rot.
I’m doing this for Faye. I need this to work. I need to make things right.
As I wait by the rink’s entrance in silence, one of Hayes’ stray pucks comes blasting toward me, narrowly missing my face and slamming against the plexiglass right beside my head. The transparent surface—now fashioned with a new grid of scratches—shakes from the collision, and my heart nearly falls out of my ass.
“You missed,” I say, hoping that my breathlessness isn’t noticeable.
“I’m aware,” Hayes growls, his narrowed gaze scrolling over me, his bright blue eyes darkened to a dusk-like shade.
Cool, cool. It’s going great so far.
I decide to keep my distance—in case he feels the need to shoot at me again, and because I don’t want to piss him off more than he already is. With a heavy sigh, I try my best to ignore the spawn of guilty butterflies thrashing around in my gut.
“I know you’re mad…”
“Mad is an understatement, Kit.”
It’s like there are goddamn bear traps hidden beneath overgrown grass, and I can’t see where I’m going. With each step forward, I risk getting my ankle gnawed off by metal teeth.
I grit my molars, and a muscle in my jaw jumps. “You have every right to be mad at me, Hayes. But you shouldn’t be mad at Faye.”
His hand tenses around the shaft of his stick, as if that’s the only thing keeping him from using his fists to talk to me instead of his tongue. Alarmingly white and home to a topography of bluish veins, his knuckles have seen more action than anyone else’s on our team, making him more than qualified to beat me to a bloody pulp. He’s ditched his usual hockey gear for his regular clothes, and I can’t tell if that makes him more or less intimidating.
The side of his lips quirk into a snarl. “Oh, so you’re just going to walk in here and tell me I can’t be mad at my sister? Who kept twohugesecrets from me?”
“No—I—I’m just saying that maybe you should try and put yourself in her position,” I reply (surprisingly) calmly, wishing he could see how terrible Faye’s been doing—how much this fight has absolutely destroyed her.
“So you’re trying to make me feel bad for her?”
