Page 103 of My Merry Mistake
I shake my head. “Nah, it’s all good.” I pick up a different photo, this one of my whole family, and hand it to her. “My people.”
She takes it. “I don’t know anyone who actually wears a cowboy hat.” She grins. “Quite the crew. Is that your parents’ house? The porch is amazing.”
“Yep,” I say, suddenly aware of the ache of missing home. “Grew up there.” I pull out my phone, open the photo app, and scroll until I find the photos I’m looking for. I turn it around and show her the screen. “That’s the view.”
Her eyes go wide. “Oh my gosh.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty spectacular.” I scroll to a drone shot of the house and stables.
“Your family owns all of this land?” She looks at me.
“And more,” I say. “It’s one of the biggest ranches in the state.”
“But here you are in the heart of a city.” She studies me. “You must miss it.”
I nod. “I do. One day I’ll get back home. I just . . . like to seize the day and all that crap.”
She laughs. “‘Seize the day and all that crap.’ You should put that on a T-shirt.”
I smile and put the photo back, the one of me and Hunter catching my eye. “That’s my older brother, uh, Hunter.” I’m surprised I say this. I don’t talk about him. Ever.
“One of the four?” she asks with a smile.
“Uh, no,” I say. “He was the fifth.” I look at her.
The second she understands, her smile fades.
In the photo, we’re out on the homemade ice rink Pop built after a hockey scout sought him out to talk about my brother. Said Hunter had real potential, and that encouragement lit a fire under him like I’d never seen before. Hockey became his whole life.
Our dad said he wanted to support this big dream, so he built the rink as a way to do that. And I became his practice buddy, not because I loved hockey, but because I loved my brother.
Raya puts a hand on my arm, and I realize I zoned out for a second. I pull my hand back from the frame. “Sorry—I don’t really . . .”
“It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to talk about it.” A pause. “Unless you want to.”
I nod. “Yeah. Thanks.”
She presses her lips together, and we stand there, silent, for a long moment.
I look around the apartment, searching for something—anything—to say. “Do you want to go walk around the city? Some of the Christmas decorations are already up. Have you seen the Macy’s windows?”
She shakes her head.
“Of course, you haven’t because you don’t do fun things.” I grin, aware that I’m forcing a lightness I absolutely do not feel. It shouldn’t be this difficult to talk about Hunter after all these years, but it is. I don’t like dredging it up—it makes me angry. And helpless. “We could go check them out? Or that German market is open—we could get hot chocolate.”
She hesitates for a beat, then relents. “Fine.”
“Fine?” I exaggerate, blinking in disbelief. “We really are friends now, aren’t we?”
She levels my gaze. “Don’t make me regret it.”
As I grab my shoes, Raya walks over to the wall of windows overlooking the lake. “They said on TV that you make your teammates better.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, they love to say that.”
“Is it true?”
I finish tying one shoe and pull on the other. “I mean, that’s the goal, right? We’re a team, and I can set up the other guys, keep things clean, and apparently get in the way of an oncoming freight train just so your sister’s boyfriend doesn’t get his teeth knocked out”
