Page 67 of Your Sharpest Edge
I huffed out a laugh. “I do work. I’m a dispatcher. He...” I looked over at Damien, who was happily chasing after another ball. “Damien is able to call his dad every month, but that’s all.”
“I have so many questions.”
“Mommy,” Damien shouted. “Come play catch.”
I got up, feeling the walls closing in again on me. I was the one with questions. I wanted to ask abouthim. I wanted to know if Dirks knew where he was or if he was okay.
Dirks reached up and grabbed my hand. “Do you want to get dinner sometime?”
I furrowed my brows at him. I didn’t date, and I certainly didn’t want to date anyone who played hockey.
“No.” He threw his hands up as he jumped off the bench and backed away from me. “No. No. Not like that. As friends. To catch up.” He spoke in frantic, short sentences, and I only narrowed my eyes at him again.
“What do you mean?” I asked, knowing damn well we were never really friends.
“Friends?” he repeated.
“Where have I heard that before?”
He shoved his hands in his pocket and chuckled. “Alright. I’ll give you that, but I promise. I want to take you out while I live here.”
It felt like a bad idea. Dinner with Dirks was bound to bring up memories I’d spent years burying. Everything in my body was telling me not to go. I had worked so hard to remove myself from the world of hockey, and going to dinner with Dirks meant reopening old wounds.
But curiosity gnawed at me. What hadhebeen up to? Where washenow? Washeokay? Those questions circled my mindrelentlessly. I was so curious, so, so curious, to know what my one true friend had been doing all these years.
“Just a dinner or drinks.” Dirks shuffled his feet.
A part of me wanted to say no, to keep the past firmly in the past. But another part of me was desperate for answers, for closure.
“I don’t know, Dirks. It’s been a long time, and I’ve worked hard to move on.” My voice wavered.
“I get it. I really do. We don’t even have to talk about him.” He insisted, his eyes earnest and hopeful.
Against my better judgment, I found myself nodding. “Alright. As friends. To catch up. Let’s go.”
As I agreed, a wave of anxiety washed over me. Memories of my ex-husband and the life I had left behind threatened to surface. But alongside that fear was a flicker of intrigue and hope. Maybe dinner with Dirks would bring some answers. Maybe it would help me finally make peace with the past.
I stood from the bench, and the low, deep, familiar voice that had haunted my dreams cut through the air. It was rich and smooth, laced with an unmistakable hint of seduction, and wrapped around me like a warm, velvety cloak.
“Where are we going?”
25
alex
I begged Dirks not to go over there, but he told me nothing was going to stop him. He wanted to right his wrongs, and it was then I realized how much guilt he carried about the whole situation.
So I let him go, but I threw a tantrum and refused to join him. Instead, I stayed behind, throwing balls to little kids. When I saw them move from the field to the bench, anxiety built. It felt like an itch deep inside, urging me to go over there and stop him from touching her. She was mine. Every bone in my body raged, but I focused on throwing balls with the kids. From my vantage point, their facial expressions were hard to make out, but the itching grew stronger as they sat and talked.
My eyes flicked to the group next to me. I wanted so badly to run over to the curly-haired boy playing catch and hug him, tell him how much I missed him, but I couldn’t because that would make me a certified weirdo, and I’d probably get thrown out of here.
Truthfully, it wasn’t until Ledger told me to stop being a wuss that I finally gathered enough courage to get over there. As I gotcloser, I heard Dirks ask to take her out, and every part of me was screaming.
No. You cannot take her out. She is mine.
At that moment, a fierce sense of possessiveness surged through me, a feeling I had never known before. Determined to appear ten times cooler and calmer than I felt, I marched right over to her, pushing my anxiety away.
She was breathtakingly beautiful. Her long blonde hair was tied up in the familiar ponytail she always wore. Her legs had thinned, likely from the injury, but otherwise, she looked as I’d imagined she would. She was everything right in this world.
