Page 95 of Bad Wolf

“I know.”

“I don’t remember my drive out there, or the first few days. The only things that stand out to me are my first practice and my coach slapping me on the shoulder and welcoming me to the team. Then spewing my guts up after running suicides. That’s it. Mom and Dad arrived a few days later. She fussed around to no end and then when it was time for her to leave, she cried her eyes out. Told my dad to go on without her and get back to work. She wanted to stay and try to coax me out of the hell I was stuck in.”

I can’t help the small chuckle I release. “For just a minute she actually forgot Jason even existed. She was in fixer mode and couldn’t stand her baby was hurting, until dad reminded her she still had a son at home. One who was pulling his hair out over some assignment that was worth a third of his grade.

“After that, it just got worse. Everything except for partying and hockey took a backseat and as you know, they don’t exactly pair well. My grades slipped into the danger zone and the drinking and late nights affected my performance on the ice. I really fucked it up. Scotty, Theo, and Troy started showing up after my coach called my parents to inform them I was gonna get kicked off the team after I tanked my grades.”

The food comes, and when the waiter places it all carefully in front of us, I thank him. But Wren doesn’t pick up her knife and fork and neither do I.

Her hand finds mine again, and I hold on to her for dear life. This next part will be the blow she’s been waiting for, but when I look up from our joined hands to see her patient stare, I tell the truth.

“I was so angry and so lost I just wanted it to stop. I got to the point where I began wishing we’d never met. That I could have somehow saved myself the pain if you’d never existed. I wanted to go back in time and just walk straight past you that day in the quad never having asked you out.”

Yes, that first year was rough. I’ll admit I handled myself badly, just like I have been since the All-Star weekend.

But I got through it with the help of my brothers and some handy work of my own, erecting scaffolding around my heart and carrying on.

A tear falls over her bottom lashes and I watch it track down her smooth cheek, immobilized as she nods.

“That would have solved everything. Maybe we both could have been spared.”

“Hey,” I take her face in my hands and kiss her softly.

“That was how I felt at eighteen. That’s not how I feel now. Now I feel thankful that I get to sit next to you in a restaurant in New York and talk this out. It’s like a house reno, yeah? We knock it all down and build it all back up again. Piece by piece, brick by brick, memory by memory. Until all that’s left is a shiny new re-model. We got the blueprints babe, and the footings in place. We just need a little time, and if you ask me, that son of a bitch owes us big.”

* * *

WREN

Ismile even though it’s a watery one. Knox sits beside me in the overpriced, upmarket restaurant and I’m trying so hard to keep my shit together. I don’t want to relive any of our time apart. Worse than reliving my own past is having to hear his side of things.

Even in my darkest, loneliest days, I don’t think I ever wished we’d never met.

I hate this for us. That this is what will make us stronger in the end. Hate that we have to sit here in this beautiful restaurant while our food gets cold because I can’t even face it. Stomach it.

The next tear that falls, he catches. Carefully grazing his lips above my cheek, his hand finding my neck again. His thumb strokes the delicate skin where his tattoo is inked, and I wonder if he knows he’s doing it, wonder if he knows he’s caressing his brand.

“We’ll get through this, right, Knox?”

He nods, “If it’s the last thing we do.”

Love has to be enough. We can’t get all the way here and have it not work out.

“Things got better for me though. My brothers and hockey saved me. My dad too. Even on deployment, he found a way to be there. Sometimes his whole unit would give me pearls of wisdom, sometimes it would just be him, staring into a computer or phone screen talking to me about anything and everything. He always found a way, you know?”

I nod. I’m glad he had a support system so robust.

Just then, before I can voice that to him the waiter politely interrupts, “Excuse me, Sir. Is everything okay with your meal?”

Knox nods automatically. “Yes, thank you.”

The waiter frowns, “Would you like me to refresh your plates? That food is no good now.”

This time I speak, “Yes please, if you wouldn’t mind. That would be lovely.”

He dutifully takes away the cold food and Knox adjusts his position so he’s no longer facing me, although he stays sitting beside me so he can still look at me.

“So there you have it. It was a shitty situation that broke both our hearts and now it’s time to mend them. What do you say, baby? You wanna rebuild this bad boy with me block by block?”

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