Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(76)

Tess’s chest was tight, and she couldn’t get enough air. Palms flat on her desk, she tried to fill her lungs. Here she was, in the middle of her flower shop, surrounded by so many plants and flowers turning carbon dioxide into oxygen, and she still couldn’t breathe.

She didn’t have what she needed. She didn’t have Cole.

She’d been such an asshole.

Was she projecting everything onto him? Maybe, but her world was off-kilter and not in the Mom-just-dumped-me-at-another-relative’s-house way but something else, something worse. It was as if she was living in that half second between dropping a glass vase and it hitting the floor, that moment when she knew something bad was going to happen and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. But what if she could? What if it wasn’t too late?

“I have to fix this,” she said, never so sure of something in her life.

All three of them gave her knowing looks. They should—they’d been in this exact same spot before. “Tell us what you need,” they said as a unit.

If she knew, she would have asked, but the truth of it was that she had absolutely no idea.

…

Cole took the ice at practice and got to work. Over the past few days, he’d spent every waking minute walking through the new offensive system and going through the movements on his driveway until his muscle memory kicked in and everything flowed like it should have months ago. Now all of that was paying off as they took the ice in their practice jerseys and got to work.

His playing was clean.

His moves unhesitating.

His insides burned and roiled as the one person he’d been practicing to forget stayed with him on every stride, pass, and check.

No matter how hard he pushed himself, no matter how exhausted he was when he crashed at night, he hadn’t been able to forget Tess, and it was eating away at him.

“Phillips!” Coach hollered from the bench. “Come see me when you get changed out.”

Cole finished his practice shift and made his way off the ice, ditched his skates in the locker room, and walked into Coach’s office still in his pads.

“You wanted to see me?” Cole asked, his gut doing spins even though he knew he’d had a great practice and that the new plays had finally clicked.

“You were looking good out there,” Coach said, standing up in front of his bookshelves and putting one of the many trophies back on the shelf.

Cole let out the breath he’d been holding. “I’ve been working.”

“Good.” Coach nodded, mumbling something to himself under his breath that sounded a little like at least you’re doing something. “I’m glad you put the past few days to good use. I’m moving you back up to the first line for the next game. That gives you forty-eight hours to work out whatever kinks are left. Don’t make me regret it.”

It took some work, but Cole managed not to shout out a loud holler of celebration right then. “You won’t, Coach.”

He was on a high all the way back to the locker room, right until he realized that the person he most wanted to tell wasn’t there. And she didn’t want to see him.

Guilt about the shitty things he’d said to her and the crappy way they’d left things sucked all the joy out of what should have been his best moment in months. By the time he walked into the locker room, he was spoiling for a fight.

Blackburn was waiting by Cole’s locker, standing with his arms crossed and his usual perma-glare on his face.

“I talked with Fallon, and she told me Tess is back at her place,” Blackburn said, an almost smile of approval curling up one side of his mouth. “You probably made the right call there, judging by what you’ve been showing on the ice. I shouldn’t have pushed you to let Tess move in. Now that she’s gone, you have your life the way you want it again. Everything is in its place. Your schedule is yours, and you don’t have to worry about anyone else. Sure, you’ll see your kid on the weekends and holidays, you’ll be involved, but it won’t change anything. It’s not like Tess is actually important to you.”

“Could you imagine?” Petrov asked with an exaggerated shiver. “I mean, she’s not like a puck bunny who rolled the dice and hit the jackpot, but you still dodged a bullet.”

Heat blasted through Cole, and he was across the locker room before he realized it, pressing a forearm against Petrov’s chest and backing him up against the wall. “Don’t talk about Tess that way.”

Petrov snorted, seemingly totally unperturbed by Cole’s move. Blackburn didn’t even flinch, just watched with a look of genuine amusement on his face.

“What way?” Petrov asked. “The truth?”

“That’s not the truth.” Pulse pounding in his ears, red seeping into his vision, Cole held down on the last thread of his control like a man who knew he was about to lose it. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Tess is amazing and smart and determined and she’s going to be the greatest mom.”

“What makes you say that?” Snark. Derision. Cynicism. It was all there in Petrov’s tone, laid on as thick as mayo on a BLT. “Do you really know her?”

Images of Tess flashed in his head. The way she’d protected the rookie players she barely knew. How she was with Kahn. The way she managed to get moving forward when life had dealt her enough body blows to take most people down. And the way she looked at him in her apartment the other day when she came, it had filled him with such hope, such optimism for what could be that he almost couldn’t handle it. All he wanted to do was stay down on his knees and beg her to come home, but he couldn’t because he was afraid—of rejection, of change, of all the things that would shake up his very orderly world.