Page 19 of Frozen Hearts
“I can’t do today,” she states, skipping over my questions.
My stomach plummets. “What? Why?”
“I just can’t, Riley.” Her tone is sharp as a blade. No wavering. No negotiating. However, it doesn’t stop me from arguing.
“Mom!” I plead, tears of desperation lining my lower lids. “I’m already on my way. You can’t do this!” When my protests are met with resolute silence, I continue, growing angry, “You agreed to this. This is the arrangementwecame to. This is our first meeting since I started college and you’re already canceling?”
“Don’t take that tone with me, Riley. There’s always next month.”
“Next month? No, Mom. That’s not fair!”
“Fair?!” My mother shrieks. “Don’t you dare talk to me aboutfair, Riley James! Do you think any of this isfairto me? I am stuck living with the consequences ofyourchildish, attention-seeking actions.”
“Attention seeking?” The accusation stings like a slap to the face, leaving me wide-eyed and dazed as tears stream down my cheeks and my heart cinches in my chest. Gone are the anxious butterflies from this morning, replaced with dying moths, disintegrating with each passing second on the floor of my stomach.
My mother won’t listen to me. She never does.
Desperately grasping for a solution, I plead, “Can we FaceTime instead?”
A deep sigh reverberates down the line before she responds, “Not right now.”
My voice quivers. “Later, then. Tonight.”
“Maybe.”
“Please, Mom. I’m only asking for five minutes.Please. Mom! Mom?!”
Pulling the phone away from my ear, a sob wretches from my throat when I see she hung up on me.
Hurt, angry, and sad, I toss the phone onto the passenger seat and bury my head in my hands.
Unfair. She thinks the life she’s living is unfair. She hasn’t a fucking clue. With my pain stabbing me in the chest like icicles, I rage, screaming out my torment as I bang my fists against the steering wheel until I’m breathing heavily, exhausted, and completely empty inside.
5
RILEY
“We won our game,” Logan says smugly as he drops into the chair beside me at our table in the library on Tuesday and unwittingly shatters through the glass box I’d locked myself in. Dark clouds have been hanging over me since my mom canceled my visit. She still hasn’t agreed to FaceTime, and with each passing day, the clouds grow darker, more threatening. I’m expecting a downpour of misery at any moment.
Or rather, I was…
In a surprising move, the clouds have parted, allowing a rare moment of sun to break through in the form of Logan Astor. Simply staring at his beaming smile is enough to brighten my day. To pull me out of the funk I’ve been stewing in for days now.
Forcing my lips into an upward slant, I look up at him. I haven’t seen him since our Statistics class last Friday, right before his big game. He was surrounded by students, everyone wishing him good luck—exactly as I’d predicted—and more than one girl promising to help him burn off the remaining adrenaline afterward.
He even winked at me, and I had deliberately looked away, picking a seat on the far side of the room to avoid getting dragged into that circus. However, thirty minutes before his game was due to start, I caved and texted himgood luck. Despite the hoards of people surrounding him on game day, it was my good luck he’d asked for.Minethat he wanted. And, well, apparently I’m incapable of saying no to anything Logan Astor asks of me.
Like looking at a solar eclipse, I can’t stare for too long for fear his smile will blind me. Tearing my gaze away, I shuffle the pages in front of me. “I heard,” I state in a bland, uninterested tone, purely because I know it will irk him. I’m not sure I could handle what it would do to his ego if Logan knew I watched his game with rapt fascination before I had to leave for work. “But I’d rather know how you did on your Statistics test.”
If I wasn’t subtly watching him from the corner of my eye, I’d never have believed it, but Logan Astor, the almighty hockey god, blushes.Blushes.
“I, uh, haven’t looked,” he confesses bashfully.
“You what?!” I turn to outright gape at him, studying his expression. It takes a second before I connect the dots, a teasing smirk forming when I do. “Don’t tell me you have no issue going skate-to-skate with some guy broader than you, but you’re afraid of a measly test result?”
He gives me a lopsided, knowing smirk and my ribbing chuckle drops as I realize my error. “Well, well, did Riley James just admit to watching my game?”
“What—” I stutter. “No. Not, all of it.”Dammit, I hadn’t meant to admit that.
