Breaking the Ice (23 page)

   At first, my stomach dropped at the news. It was too much to register. But even then, I knew I was overjoyed about it. How could I
not
be?

  My eyes were bugging out of my head and I couldn’t find any words. Julie filled in the dead air. “And I’m getting married. To a great guy. Even if he
is
a Rangers fan.”

   I finally found my voice. “Holy shit, Jules! That’s… fantastic!” My mind was spinning, but we were both wearing the same crazy grin. “Your parents must be flipping out.”

   “They are. I wanted to tell you myself before they had the chance to spill the news to your mom. They’re really happy. Are you?”

   I jumped up from the table and pulled her into a hug. “Are you kidding? I couldn’t be happier.” I wrapped my arms around her and gave her a big squeeze, joyful and astonished, relieved and overwhelmed. I was humbled to find that she missed me, still viewed me as someone important enough to want to share this with. I clutched her a little tighter and gave a kiss to the hair at her ear…

   …just as Avery bounded in the door.

   My face dropped along with hers when I realized what she had walked in on, how easily it could be taken the wrong way.

   Before I could say the words, “Avery, wait!” she was in her car and zooming out of the parking lot.

Chapter Twenty-Six

   There are moments in your life by which you can mark the passage of time. Those events that are so monumental, each milestone becomes a definitive line delineating Before from After. BC to AD. For me, that tick on the timeline was the year 1999. There was no denying that that entire year was fraught with some life-changing moments, and I’ve managed to jumble them all together as one.

   When you’re young, you get behind the wheel and hope you don’t get in an accident, not because you’re worried about getting hurt, but because you don’t want anything to happen to your
car
. At some point in your life, you wake the fuck up and the opposite becomes true. You realize the stupidity of your past outlook, and recognize that a car can always be fixed.

   People sometimes can’t.

   I don’t know where that dividing line is, that point separating a cocky teenager from a realistic adult. In any case, back in ‘99, I was way too old to be straddling it. I still maintained that teenage conceit, that cocksure invincibility. I was a professional fucking hockey player, for godsakes. A physical specimen of the highest ranking—feared on the ice, desired by women.

   Most of them, anyway.

   Julie and I were childhood pals—more like cousins, really—considering that our parents were best friends and we’d known each other since birth. She had two older sisters, so by the time she and I came along, there were seven rugrats under the age of eight for our parents to contend with. We’d grown up in the same neighborhood together, but her family moved upstate about the time she and I started college. I went to BC; she went to some art school in Manhattan. We were separated for a couple of years, but once I got drafted to the Devils, her home base of New York wasn’t so far away.

   We were always pretty close, so it was good that we were able to maintain the friendship, even outside of the family connection. Our shared history solidified our bond and was one of the only things I knew I could always count on. She was a good friend.

   There weren’t too many girls I could say that about. I didn’t particularly know a lot of women I liked enough to keep around for more than a few nights of debauchery, and it’s not like any of them had been able to put up with me for any extended length of time either.

   But Julie was different. She was fun, and unassuming, and cool. There was never any threat of a romantic relationship between us, so she never tried to stake a claim on me, and I was just as content to let her live her own life, too. She’d sometimes come and hang out at Johnny’s with me and the guys whenever she didn’t have something better to do. I relied on her for advice, and she relied on me as her go-to date for weddings or society parties whenever she needed a stand-in.

   So, when I got shipped off to Texas, we both knew we were going to miss one another, but it’s not like either one of us was crying into our pillows every night or anything.

   We stayed in touch, though. One particularly lonesome night in April, I called her out of the blue. I found myself expressing my homesickness to her, which had the unintended effect of her showing up one day after practice. There she was, in all her Julie glory, right there in Dallas for a surprise visit. I couldn’t have been happier to see her.

   We bypassed the night out with the guys, and instead decided to take off for some alone time. It was raining that night, just barely a drizzle; that much I do remember. I was driving her stupid rental car. I must’ve taken a turn a bit too fast, and the weather conditions didn’t help matters any. I swerved, the car fought me, we skidded off the road. Not a drop of booze in either of us; it was just one of those freak things.

   The sickening rip of twisting metal and shattered glass roared through my ears like a freight train as we wrapped around a tree… and then everything went black.

   I awoke to the sounds of sirens and bright, flashing lights… and a blinding white pain in my left leg. Julie was crying, her golden hair tangled with blood, her eyes focused on the red on her hands and shaking in disbelief.

   And the thing that I remember most about that night? It wasn’t the lights or the loud noises or even the pain. The thing I remember most was
not being able to get to Julie
. I couldn’t move from my side of the crumpled car, pinned underneath the dashboard as I was. I had to sit there and watch her go into shock, just shaking like a leaf and staring at her bloody hands, her head matted in red. I tried to use my voice to soothe her, but there was no getting through.

   The whole time the firemen were carving me out of my car, the whole time the cops were trying to keep us calm… I had to listen to Julie’s scared little whimpers; feel her fear and her shock rippling through my broken bones. Every second knowing that
I
was the one that did that to her.

   We were both brought right into the ER, and before I could even ask what was happening, everything went black again. I woke up dry-mouthed in a clean hospital bed, a shitload of tubes and wires sticking out from various parts of my body, a leg raised in a metal contraption, surrounded by a steel cage.

   The first thing I did was ask about Julie, and thank God, it turned out her injuries were pretty minor. A few stitches in her forehead, some scrapes and bruises, but that was all. Not even a concussion. I was so relieved about that that I hardly registered the bad news the doc was giving me. My knee was shattered and there had been some irreversible nerve damage. Most likely a career-ender, the doc told me, but then, he didn’t exactly know me very well, did he? He didn’t know that hockey was my fucking life, and that of course I’d do everything in my power to come back stronger than ever.

   Bash had been sent down to check on us, and he reported back to our parents and Julie’s family with uncharacteristic regularity. At the time, I was confused as to why Bash had been sent down instead of Mom or Dad coming to see me themselves. I remember him looking away uncomfortably when I asked, but I was so drugged up that I didn’t really think much of it until after I went home.

   After a seemingly infinite stay at Parkland Hospital, arrangements were made for my conditional release, provided I continued my rehabilitation back at Kessler, which was a hell of a lot closer to home than anywhere down in Texas. I’ll say one thing for the Stars franchise; they sure knew how to send a guy off in style. Bash and I found ourselves on the corporate jet which had been modified for my transit and outfitted with an on-board nurse. Not too shabby.

   I was still in denial about my inevitable return to the ice, and it was hard to stay in a bad mood whenever Bash was around. Yet, I spent those hours on that private jet in miserable silence, playing the accident over and over in my mind.

   As banged up as I was, I should have been reveling in that plane ride. Because while I was busy beating myself up with guilt and feeling sorry for myself, what I didn’t know is that those were the last moments of peace I was going to have for a very long time.

   Because once we made it home, I found out about my father: The chemo wasn’t working. The cancer had spread. He had six months to live.

   He only needed two.

   Those days are such a blur to me, an endless stream of time divided between my own hospital stays and my dad’s. I kept up the brave face for him, but whenever I was out of his earshot, I’d lash out at anything and everything within my sights. Most of the time, the closest target was Julie. I was such a dick over those months, just a snarly, bitter asshole flying off the handle, ranting about the unfairness of it all. She really tried her best to help me through the pain, but was eventually forced to put some space between us. I can’t say as I blamed her. I was a black hole of bad luck and misery, a time bomb waiting to explode. Who the hell would risk sticking around for that?

   That summer, when the Stars went on to make an appearance in the finals, I hardly even noticed. I was sitting in my father’s hospice room, for godsakes, and couldn’t really give two shits about the game playing out on his TV, much less the fact that we were winning.

   That
they
were winning. I didn’t contribute a goddamn thing to their victory. My father knew how frustrated I’d been during my run with the Stars.

   So, you want to know the kicker of it all? Want to know the last fucking words my old man said to me before he never said another word ever again?

   “We’ll get ‘em next time.”

  
We’ll get ‘em next time.
He had said those same five words after every game I’d ever lost in my life. It used to ease my mind some, take the sting off a devastating loss. Now he was trying to take the sting off a
win
, knowing I felt I had nothing to do with it, reminding me that I’d have another chance someday.

   Problem was, there would never
be
a next time. There was no more “someday.” Not for me… and not for him.

   In the immediate aftermath, there was Dad’s estate to settle, his final arrangements to be made. There was the inevitable squabbling with my brothers about every detail, the collective consoling of our mother to bring an end to it.

   It was decided that I’d take over the bar (considering I had no other career options and I’d essentially purchased the place anyway), but those first months were really a team effort. Since Dad had kept all the pub’s financial records in spiral-bound notebooks, we spent countless hours transferring all that data to the computer. My brothers and I had bought him the thing a year prior, but it was still sitting unopened in its box in the corner of his office. Apparently, he’d been using it as a table to display his scrapbooks, all the newspaper clippings and photos of his sons from over the years. When we flipped through them and saw the pride emanating from every page, the meticulous care with which he cataloged our accomplishments, it broke our fucking hearts.

   That summer was absolutely the lowest point of my entire life. My career was over. My father was dead. But even then, I knew that if I let the events of my present consume me, I wouldn’t have any sort of future at all. And I owed it to my old man to find
something
to salvage from the wreckage.

   I’d been in limbo ever since.

   Until Avery.

   Because of her, I learned that you can’t change the past. Shitty things are going to happen; you’re going to make mistakes; life is going to knock you down at every turn. The important thing is that you
get back up
. The only thing that counts is what you do from here on out.

   You can choose to let the past define you, keep going down a miserable road until you eventually shrivel up and die. Or you can blaze a new trail in life, set your sights on a brighter future, and just keep moving forward until you find out where your happy lies.

   Maybe it’s down a path you never thought to travel. Sometimes, it’s right in front of you. Whether you choose to see it or not is up to you.

   You always have a choice.

  And I knew that I’d made mine.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

   I came down to the floor way too early the next morning. There was a ton of stuff to get done before the wedding, but obviously, I only started my day at such an hour because I was hoping to run into Avery as soon as possible.

   Only, she sent an assistant to precede her arrival.

   I didn’t know where she found the guy or how he knew where to put everything, but the dude was racing around the place as if his nuts were on fire.

   Avery showed up a few hours later to put the finishing touches on the room. I was surprised that she’d waited so long to show up—let’s face it, the girl was obsessed with details—but was happy she was even here at all. There was the smallest part of me that thought she’d back out and not show. 

   I gave her a wave from my post behind the bar, and she waved back before immediately shifting her focus to the task at hand. Seeing as she had a job to do, I left her alone so she could do it. I knew she was stressed out enough about pulling together a proper wedding, and I wasn’t looking to add to her anxiety by cornering her just yet.

   But I wasn’t going to wait one extra minute once she finally finished.

   She’d transformed my modest sports pub into a winter wonderland. She left the white string lights and the paper snowflakes on the ceiling, which, I gotta admit, really worked. Especially since she’d had a dozen potted trees, hanging lanterns, and yards of
tulle
all lit up, too. There were white tablecloths over every table and white slipcovers over every stool. The hightops had been removed to allow access to the dance floor, which had a layer of fake snow scattered across the entire surface.

   I thought all the white would just highlight the crappy brown wood in this place, but Avery managed to strike a great balance between rustic and…
pristine
.

   Oh shit! Shabby chic! I totally got that now.

   The band was warming up with a Fastball tune, and I hummed along as I double-checked my liquor stock. A bunch of my old teammates would be attending the reception today, and if the party back in June was any indication, I figured I’d rather be safe than sorry.

   I took a look at Avery, busily fluffing flower arrangements, going over her lists, ordering her assistant around… and the sight made me smile. She was already dressed in a silver gown, and seeing her in that color surrounded by all this winter white, she looked like an ice princess—in the best possible way, of course.

   A far cry different from the angry business-gal with the huge chip on her shoulder that walked into my bar seven months ago.

   I guess we’d both changed over the past months. Funniest thing was, her transformation was in recalling the dreams of her past, and mine was in learning how to forget them. Somehow, we met in the middle. She helped me become a guy I never even knew I was supposed to be.

   She taught me how to let go.

   She taught me how to give.

   And I got it now. I got why my father spent his life slaving away at this nothing pub. Because when you can bring people together—change their lives, even—you don’t think about the money you could be making somewhere else. You can’t save everyone, but sometimes, you can save
someone
. And when you have the support of the woman you love on top of that, the woman who challenges you to be the best version of yourself that even
you
didn’t think you could be… you’re a success.

   Enough was enough. I pulled a white rose out of a nearby vase and walked right over to the woman in question. “Ave.”

   She turned, seemingly unaffected by my presence as she put her hands to her hips and answered, “Yeah, what’s up?” Her brows were raised, trying to look casual, as if everything was fine.

   “I didn’t know if you were going to come,” I said, holding out the flower. She took it, but she didn’t seem won over by it.

   Despite her attempt to seem impassive, there was no denying the bite in her voice as she said, “I was hired for a job. I know how to stay committed to something.”

   “Me too.” I raised my eyebrows and dipped my head, attempting to meet her eyes.

   No dice.

  “I tried to call you,” I continued. “Numerous times.”

   “I know.”

   “So, you’re just avoiding me?”

   “No,” she lied, crossing her arms over her chest and gnawing on her bottom lip.

   “I think I deserve a chance to explain.”

   She gave out a huff and started picking at the rose petals. “Explain what, exactly? That now that we’ve hooked up, it’s time for you to check out again?”       

   “What you saw yesterday isn’t what it looked like.”

   “Famous last words.”

   I knew she was pissed, but I found myself trying to fight a smile. She thought she wanted to stay mad, but we both knew there was no reason for it. We both knew the truth. “C’mon, Ave. The other night? You and me? You know that was real.”

   She wanted to believe it was true. She had to know that it was. But if she was afraid, if she needed me to convince her, I could do that. After all these years, I owed her at least that much.   

   “
I
know it was real,” I offered, my heart beating out of my goddamn chest. “You know how I know?” I stepped closer and put a palm against her jaw. “I’ve never wanted to give anyone
forever
before.” My thumb was moving on its own, tracing small circles against her cheek as I watched her raise her incredible topaz eyes to mine. “I could give my forever to you.”

   “Zac…”

   “No. Stop fighting it, Ave. We’re in love with each other. I know that now. I may have been an idiot about it for a long time, but I know I love you. You’re it for me.”

   Her head dropped as the tears fell, her shoulders shaking. I pulled her against my chest, wrapped my arms around her, and just let her sob.

   “I was trying to play it cool,” she mumbled against my shirt. “I was trying to pretend that I could handle another one-night-stand with you. I was treating you as the guy you
used
to be, instead of the amazing man you’ve become.” She raised her teary eyes to mine, adding, “And I’m sorry for that.”

   “You didn’t want to leave?”

   “It took everything I had to walk out that door.”

   “Sure didn’t seem like it.”

   She offered a sheepish smile through her tears. “I can be a pretty good actress when it comes to protecting my heart.”

   “Ave,” I scratched out, my voice unrecognizable to my own ears. “I promise you’ll never have to protect your heart from me ever again.” I bent down and stole a soft kiss from her perfect lips, amazed at the incredible woman in my arms. “I’ll protect it for you.”

   My words brought a genuine smile to her beautiful face as she slid a hand up my chest and aimed those gorgeous eyes at mine. “Well, I should hope so. You know, considering it’s yours and all.”

  
She loves me.
Was I the luckiest bastard in the world or what?

   “Dammit, Ave. I can’t even… I love you. God help me, but I do.”