Page 165 of Like a Power Play
“Do you want me to give you some space?” Peyton’s voice snaps me out of it, and I turn to face her.
“No,” I answer quickly. Maybe too quickly. Quick enough to imply the truth:
That I want her here. That I trust her with this. That somehow, even without fully knowing what I’m going through, she makes me feel understood. She doesn’t ignore my limits. But somehow, she makes me see what I can still do in spite of them. And being around her doesn’t just make me miss who I was before all this. It makes me want more for who I am now.
“I want you to stay.”
The corners of her full, pink lips pull up. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll stay.”
Her eyes fall back to my phone, and her hand slips from mine, thumbs moving dynamically across the screen. A furrow creeps into my brow.
“What are you doing?” I question.
She glances up. “Research.”
“For?”
“This is a part of you,” she says simply, those soft golden eyes flicking back and forth between mine. “I want to know everything about it. How it works. How I can help. You need physical therapy? Cool, I’ll drive you. Your ankles hurt? I’m going to find the best compression socks on the market. Send me your grocery list, and your favorite scent of Epsom salts. I’ll get you one of those sponges on a stick.”
A laugh spills out of me, and I stare at her as she keeps rambling.
“I want to understand what causes flare-ups. I want to know what ‘no spoons’ means and why people tweet about it at 2 a.m. I want to know all of it—because it’s you. And no, it’s not all of you. It’s not even close. It’s the least interesting part. But if I learn this, I get more time to learn the rest.”
Still smiling, I shake my head. “All of that, and you still cant pronounce the damn word.”
She scrunches her nose. “Ican.Rheumah—roo… no. You know what, spell it for me again. Slowly.”
Thirty Four
Peyton
“Expecting a call?”
I glance up from my phone to find Harlowe hauling two inflatable sleds behind her, round cheeks flushed, her purple beanie slipping over her snow-dusted brows. Those ocean eyes squint at me as we trudge up the Snoqualmie Summit.
I slip my phone back into my bra, adjusting my grip on the rope of my sled. “No.”
Behind us, Bailey gives an amused huff, dragging her mittens to brush the dark hair out of her eyes as Mr. Bubbles plods beside her. It’s been like this since we were kids. Bailey loves theideaof anything outdoorsy, as long as someone else is doing the work and she doesn’t get dirty.
Picnics? Great, until she has to carry the basket. Paddleboarding? Absolutely, until it’s time to inflate the board. She’s our little royal pain, but she cooks us breakfast every morning so it’s a pretty fair trade.
“That’s like, thethirtieth timeyou’ve checked your phone since we got here,” she says, hand propped on her hip. She’s wearing these soft pink earmuffs, almost identical to the ones Darcy had on the first night we kissed. It’s ridiculous how something so small can pull her right back into my head.
Not that she ever really leaves.
She has infiltrated every inch of my brain. Every atom in my mind has her name engraved on it.
I’m not normally someone who does the feelings thing. And now, I’m…feeling. Relentlessly.
February’s been a blur of training and her.
With the LNHLs around the corner, my focus should be locked on the Sabertooths. On getting us to the finals. On securing a shot at the NCAAs.
For most of the season, that’s been the only thing that mattered.
It’s just, lately, nothing feels more important than her.
I don’t know when that shifted. Maybe it was Pineview, when I kissed her. Maybe it was when I opened up about my dad and Avery. I didn’t fully realize it until we were dancing in that diner, but now I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been falling since the beginning, and now I’m scraping my knees for just a shred of her attention, because hers is the only kind that ever made me feel like I deserved it.
