Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(63)

“Oh my God,” Fallon said, grabbing her by both shoulders and pulling her in close. “Is he okay? What can I do? What do you need?”

What did she need? She needed Cole, but that wasn’t going to happen. They’d been weddinged, had one amazing night together and a few weeks of playing pretend. It wasn’t real. It was just temporary. How many times had she told him that? If only she’d listened to her own words. She returned Fallon’s hug, took a deep breath, and stepped back, every primal instinct telling her one thing and one thing only—run before she got hurt worse.

“I have to get out of here,” she said, holding on to her control by a frayed thread. “Now. I need to go pack up my things.”

Fallon cocked her head. “But why? I don’t under—”

Tess held up her hand, silencing her friend who she knew only meant well, but each question sliced open a different part of her soft underbelly. “Please.”

No doubt there was more Fallon wanted to say, questions she wanted to ask, but she didn’t, and Tess let out a relieved sigh as they made their way through the back halls and out of the arena. She’d been on borrowed time with Cole and she’d pretended that wasn’t the case. It was past time she stopped.

…

Cole had been an asshole for thinking Tess would show up to check on him. Really, it had been better that she hadn’t. Nothing proved that his routine and standard operating procedures were superior like the double tap of “hey stupid” he’d taken tonight.

First the hit that sent him flying into the boards and out cold because instead of listening to his on-ice awareness warnings that a freight train was coming, he’d stuck to the new plays Coach Peppers had been pushing. And what had it gotten him? A slight concussion and the news that he wouldn’t even get to sit on the bench again until the doc had cleared him.

That had been bad, but the second blow had hit harder because it was delivered via ghosting. After she’d peeked in on him, he’d sent Marti looking for Tess because there was no one he needed to see, to hold onto and remind himself he was still all there than the woman who’d shaken his world right down to its seven-hundred-and-sixty-mile-radius iron core. It was security who told him that she’d left the building. She hadn’t stopped in to check on him first. She hadn’t left a message with the others in the family box. She hadn’t even texted or left a voicemail. Everything—his head, his shoulder, the fucking hole in his chest—had stopped hurting after that because he stopped feeling anything.

“You sure you’re going to be okay?” Marti asked as she stopped her car in front of his house. “You’re not supposed to be alone tonight.”

He glanced over at the VW Beetle in his driveway, the cheerfulness of the long eyelashes on the headlights seeming to mock him. “I’ll be fine.”

“Do you want me to come in?” she asked. “Get you settled?”

Marti was trying to be nice, he knew, but it didn’t change the bone-deep frustration making every one of his words come out like a punch. “I said, I’m fine.”

So why was he still standing on his front porch, door half open when the security gate clicked shut behind Marti’s car? Because he was a giant liar. He wasn’t fine—he wasn’t even close—and it had nothing to do with the concussion.

Man the fuck up, Phillips, and go inside your own damn house.

He took a deep breath and followed his own advice, walking inside and stopping in front of the ugly-ass Bigfoot painting hanging above the table where he always left his keys. Despite everything, the stupid thing made him smile. It always did. There was so much sparkly ridiculousness painted onto the twenty-by-twenty-four-inch canvas that it was nearly impossible not to grin. He’d have to find a new spot for it, somewhere Tess wouldn’t be expecting it, and maybe it would make her smile, too.

“Kahn, here kitty, kitty.” Tess walked out from the kitchen into the hallway, spotted him, and jerked to a stop. “You’re here.”

“It is my house.” And up until she’d told him in his driveway that he was going to be a dad, it had been his refuge. The one place where things always stayed the same and made sense. Chaos ended at his front door—at least it used to.

She clasped her hands, her knuckles turning white as she clamped her jaws together hard enough that it squared the shape of her face. “I thought they’d make you stay overnight at a hospital for observation.”

“I declined.” Which had gone over about as well as expected, but he needed to see Tess more than he needed to be looked after by a nurse.

And now that he had? The gaping invisible hole in his chest was still there, still screaming in agony.

She didn’t move, could barely look at him. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

The fact that she wasn’t offering hit him square in the kidneys. “You going somewhere?”

At that question, she did look up, her eyes bright behind her glasses and her chin angled up a few degrees higher than necessary. “Home.”

“And I take it that’s not here.” Where she’d been living. Where he wanted her to stay living.

“No.” She shook her head, her gold curls swaying with the movement drawing his attention even as the rest of her all but shouted for him to stay away. “This was only—”