Page 93 of Goalie and the Girl Next Door
I start with the easy part. “It was nice.”
Scotty raises his eyebrows. “Nice?”
I exhale. “Okay. Great. Better than I imagined, actually. I’m still processing, but there’s something there.”
He nods like he expected that, but then his eyes narrow a little. “And?”
I shrug. “And I don’t know. He left kind of fast this morning. Like, fast-fast.”
That earns a slow, knowing nod. “This sounds like a conversation for the porch swing, yeah?”
“Porch swing, it is.”
We settle into the porch swing at the main ranch house, and I launch into the Cliff Notes version of the night, complete with sharing parts of our soul, the sunrise, the kiss, and the sudden disappearance that followed. At first, I’m breezy. A sunrise kiss with the most distractingly handsome French goalie in the league? Totally typical Saturday night.
Scotty doesn’t interrupt. He leans back, hands laced behind his head, letting the porch swing do its lazy arc back and forth. He nods in all the right places—sunrise, puzzle, kiss—and smirks when I mention Clément carrying four different outfit options “just in case.”
But when I get to the part about him leaving, how he kissed me like that and then disappeared, my voice gets smaller. I don’t mean for it to, but it does. I fumble with the rim of my mug, looking for answers in the swirling steam.
“I mean, I guess he had to get to practice?” I say. “Or maybe he didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. This is Maple Falls, after all. People love a good story and they love it even more if it’s none of their business.”
Scotty waits for me to go on without a word.
“He just left so fast. Not in a rude way. There was this look in his eyes. Like he was somewhere else already.” I pause. “Something must be going on with him.”
Scotty’s jaw tics and he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Look, people think they’ve got hockey players all figured out. Brash. Loud. Party animals with egos bigger than their sticks. And some of them are, sure. I played with more than my fair share of those guys.”
He rubs a hand across his face like he’s sorting through years of memories. “But most of them are just guys trying to survive in a career that eats you alive if you’re not always at the top of your game. One bad hit, one slump, one bad concussion… and it’s over.”
Those are high stakes and I glance at Scotty, startled by the thought. He nods. “It’s a short window. The job becomes your whole identity because it has to. You wear confidence like armor, because if you don’t, someone else will skate right over you.”
He turns to me. “But love? That shakes things loose. Makes you drop the armor without even realizing it. That’s what Clément’s doing right now. Whether he meant to or not, that’s what last night was.”
With the mug at my lips, I let the steam warm my face. “He looked scared.”
“Because he is,” Scotty says gently. “He’s a guy who’s lived his life at full speed. And then he met someone who made him stop.”
I’m not required to attend Town Council Meetings, but I feel it’s part of my job as the person who keeps the numbers from falling into a pit of doom. But tonight’s meeting haspopcorn.
Not in the literal sense, in the people-watching sense.
I sit three rows back, hemmed in by townspeople, and the air is abuzz. They’ve added an emergency item to the docket and based on the whispers flying faster than Edgar on a sugar high,something big is about to drop.
I crane my neck toward the back doors, scanning every new arrival.
Not Clément.
I shift in my seat, annoyed at myself for noticing and look at his text again.
Clément: Dear incredible woman, I must prepare for tomorrow’s game.
Of course he wouldn’t come to a town council meeting. That’s about as romantic as an audit. Still, my stomach dips.
Council members are assembled at the front and somehow call the meeting to order. “We have one item of emergency business. Ms. Bailey Porter, the floor is yours.”
Bailey steps up with a metal box like she’s just unearthed the Arc of the Covenant. Behind her is Carson Crane, her boyfriend and apparent partner in archaeological crime.
She opens the box and begins pulling out yellowed newspaper clippings, black-and-white photographs, and what looks suspiciously like a property deed. Her voice rings clear, full of conviction.
