Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(73)

Then the light bulb went off and he got it, felt his muscles moving as if he’d been making this play his entire life, and he saw it, what Coach had been talking about—this was the thing he’d been missing. This was something new, something fresh, something as unexpected as getting weddinged with the wrong woman who turned out to be right in every single way. That was it. That was the truth he’d never scheduled time to consider. He stopped dead in the middle of the play, sucking in air and feeling like his spine had just been ripped out of him.

“I fucked it up,” he said, looking from Petrov to Christensen. “All of it. Hockey. Tess. The baby. I ruined it all.”

And just like that, all the energy blasting through him disappeared without warning. His entire life, he’d been able to fight back the chaos by controlling the game. This time, however, he saw what a lie that had been. He hadn’t been in charge of anything; he’d been hiding from everything, and it was too late now to do anything about it.

…

The flower shop had always been Tess’s refuge. The oxygen levels were higher thanks to all that photosynthesis, it was colorful and cheery, plus there was the fact that everyone—with the exceptions of when it came to funerals—was buying flowers as a happy occasion. It was hard to be down in that kind of environment, yet somehow she was managing to be a moping, sighing, eyes-watering-up-for-absolutely-no-reason sad sack today.

It sure wasn’t because of Cole. She didn’t need him—or anyone.

Yeah. Keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll stop tearing up.

Obviously she had developed some kind of pregnancy-related allergy, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she was listening to her voicemails on loop as the soundtrack to her heartbreak.

“Hey, Tess, we just landed in Denver,” started one message.

Another began with, “How are you and the peanut doing? Did you manage to talk anyone with shit taste out of buying roses today?”

The voicemail after that started with the sound of men yelling and singing in the locker room after a win as Cole ineffectually tried to get them to “let me make this damn phone call already.”

If she wasn’t crying so hard, that one would have made her laugh. Instead she was reordering roses because she’d failed to talk a single person out of buying at least a half dozen of the damn things. For some reason, her customers seemed opposed to taking the advice of a woman who couldn’t stop sniffling or wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.

The bell attached to the shop door ding-a-linged a second before the unmistakable sound of her girls filled the shop. She set her phone down—yeah, she’d been listening to Cole’s voicemails one after the other on loop for most of the afternoon. What could she say? She wanted even if she couldn’t have.

“You can’t just go straight at it, Fallon,” Gina said, her voice carrying across the shop’s showroom floor and to the back room where Tess was. “Some things take a little gentle touch.”

“I’m still gonna cut off his balls,” Fallon said.

The smack of two people high-fiving sounded and Lucy said, “He better hope I don’t see him at the practice rink tomorrow or he’s in for a world of hurt. I spent most of last night awake staring at my ceiling and imagining the shitty stories I could plant about him.”

Gina gasped. “That’s unethical.”

Tess peeked her head out of the back room at her trio of best friends who stood next to the stand of orchids and next to the cooler filled with every shade of roses it was possible to get. They were here even though she hadn’t called them and had actively been avoiding them since everything happened with Cole. She’d sent one text of explanation and then ignored every one of their follow-ups. She had to. Her heart hurt too much already. She couldn’t take any more walking away. This time, she needed to be the one to leave.

“It’s Tess,” Lucy said, giving the other women a who-are-we-kidding face. “Who wouldn’t cross a few lines for her? It’s not like I’m saying we stuff him in my trunk and take a drive out to the swamps outside Waterbury.”

“I think that’s the perfect plan.” Fallon’s grin looked like she had completely forgotten that as a nurse, her duty was to help people, not whack them.

“Okay,” Gina said, smoothing her palm over her pink skirt. “You might have converted me. I can reach out to a cousin of mine who knows a guy—just to give Cole a scare.”

Whatever battle Tess had been waging to keep her cheeks dry ended with a rush of tears that immediately stuffed up her nose. Despite everything she’d done over the past few days to push them away, her girls, the very people she’d been worrying about for months that she was losing, were plotting to avenge her. They weren’t going anywhere. They were her girls, and she had been being too much of a paranoid weirdo to realize it.

She walked out of the back room, wiping her hands across her cheeks and trying desperately for a sense of cool. “Did you know the highest bail amount ever set was $100 million for a guy accused in a $20 million insider trading scheme?” Tess gave her girls a wobbly smile. “I love you guys, but none of us has bail money tucked aside.”

“We really should,” Lucy said, as always thinking six steps ahead. “It seems prudent.”

“Are you okay?” Gina rushed over to her and enveloped her in a solid hug. “You wouldn’t return any of my calls, and I was so worried about you.”