Page 172 of Break Away
My chest pulled toward him so hard it felt physical.
Charm’s arm tightened around mine. “Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
Bliss came up on my other side. “He needs to sit with it. So do you.”
“I hate when everyone is emotionally reasonable around me.”
“That’s rich from the woman who called us friendship court,” Charm said.
“I was under duress.”
“You were wearing lip gloss and rage,” Bliss said. “That is not duress. That is Tuesday.”
I let them pull me away from my car, away from the building, away from the man I loved and could not fix with one confession inside a dark apartment. Charm opened the back door of the SUV, and Bliss climbed in first, patting the seat beside her like I was a skittish cat she had lured out from beneath furniture.
I slid in beside her.
Charm paused outside the door and looked at me. “You good if I drive?”
“No, but apparently that’s not tonight’s standard.”
“Excellent.” She shut us inside and climbed into the driver’s seat.
Bliss tucked herself against my side while Charm started the SUV and turned the heat up high enough to fog the windows.
I covered my face with both hands, and for the first time all night, the sound that escaped me was almost a real laugh.
Bliss pulled my hands down and kissed my knuckles. “There she is.”
I narrowed my wet, swollen eyes at her. “Do not say that like you discovered me in a cave.”
Charm looked at us through the rearview mirror. “We did discover you in a parking lot.”
“Barely civilized,” Bliss added.
“Emotionally rabid,” Charm said.
“Still ours,” Bliss finished.
I looked at them both, at the tear tracks on Bliss’s face and the rain in Charm’s hair, at the girls who had hurt me and comeback, at the girls I had hurt and still needed, and something inside me loosened just enough to let air in.
“Still yours,” I whispered.
They both held on tighter.
19
Easton
By Tuesday morning, I had learned there were worse things than getting punched in the ribs by a basketball player who deserved more than he got. One of them was skating with bruised knuckles, a split mouth, and a team full of men pretending they weren’t watching me like I might turn violence into a conditioning drill if someone blinked wrong.
The Furnace was cold enough to make my lungs burn. Early-morning ice always had a different bite to it, cleaner and meaner, the kind that got under your pads and into your bones before your body remembered it loved the pain. The lights overhead bounced off the fresh-cut ice in long white streaks, and the glass still held fog along the edges from the Zamboni’s last pass.
No crowd. No music. No students screaming my name like I was anything worth watching. Just the scrape of blades, the slap of sticks, the snap of pucks against boards, and four idiots I trusted most acting like the entire rink was a group therapy office with better traction.
