So Over You (Chicago Rebels #2)(80)

He held her by the shoulders. “Have I ever treated you as second best? Have I ever told you that your career was secondary to mine? I know what hockey means to you, but you cannot use this need to prove yourself worthy to throw away our chance together, Isobel. We’re not kids anymore. Your father wanted you to be independent, not to rely on anyone, to be second to no man. And perhaps he meant that you should grab life by the balls, but no father would want his daughter to put her life in danger. No father would want his daughter to slap love in the face.”

Then he didn’t know Cliff.

“I can’t do this. I see you on the ice, and my body rages with envy. I want your career, your skills, your resilience after injury. Even if I can get past what you’ve done—and that’s a big if—I’m going to end up resenting you because you have everything I don’t have.”

His look was all pity. “Isobel, that’s crazy.”

Yes, it was. Since her injury, she had been grieving for her lost career like she’d miscarried a child. Seeing Vadim on the ice—this man she loved—was like watching him nurse the child that should have belonged to her. Deep down, she knew this made no sense. It wasn’t as if he had stolen it from her or only one of them could have it. But why did it feel like it? And her bitterness at losing this thing that had defined her for so long would end up destroying them both.

“You took away my last chance, Vadim. I know you think it was for my own good, but all my life I’ve had people telling me that.” Train harder. Study more. No boys. Skate, skate, skate. There had to be something to show for it. There had to be.

Dumb tears were falling now. “This was my decision to make, and you ripped it away from me.”

“Bella.” Two sad little syllables.

She pushed at his chest, absorbing the beat of his big heart, loving and hating the owner. “Go. Please.”

He looked torn, but she checked him again, using the last vestiges of strength in her failure of a body until he stood outside the threshold.

Anger glittered in his shockingly blue eyes. “I will not watch you die on the ice.”

“Instead you’d watch me shrivel to nothing off it.”

Then she shut the door, knowing her heart lay on the other side.

And as she sank to the floor, one thought fought its way out of the tangle of all the others: eventually she’d rise above these setbacks, both her crushed ambitions and her ambitious crush.

It’s what her father would have expected.





TWENTY-SEVEN




Stevie Nicks’s “Gold Dust Woman” increased in volume as Isobel approached the cottage on the Chase Manor estate where Violet had lain her Fedora for the last seven months. Vi’s love of the Fleetwood Mac front woman was a tad obsessive, and knowing that she probably couldn’t hear the knock, Isobel walked right in.

On Dante Moretti, lounging against the kitchen counter and looking very much at home.

“Oh, hi,” Isobel said.

“Morning, Isobel.” Unfazed by her arrival, Dante sipped his coffee from a mug bearing Lionel Richie’s face and the slogan “Hello. Is it tea you’re looking for?”

At a loss for how to proceed, Isobel was immensely grateful when the music stopped and Violet walked in, wearing overalls and a purple T-shirt that matched the streaks in her hair.

“Hey.” Violet looked at Isobel.

Isobel looked at Dante.

Dante looked . . . bored.

So, they were all caught up.

Dante placed the mug down in the sink. “Any idea where Petrov is, Isobel?”

“What do you mean ‘where Petrov is’?”

“He took a personal day. After last night’s loss, we are now in the unenviable position of needing to win the day after tomorrow. Against Philly, the Eastern Conference leader. The last game of the season, and perhaps of all our fucking careers, and your charge decides he needs to go find himself and practice is optional.”

That was not good. Vadim played better when he was happy, and last night he had not played well. In the week since their big fight, the Rebels had blown two chances to earn a top three in the division, leaving it all to ride on the final game. Breaking up with the player you’re banging before you make the play-offs should probably not go in the coach’s manual.

But she wasn’t his keeper. He was a grown man, and if he felt it was perfectly legitimate to make decisions about her career, then he could sure as hell make decisions about his own.

She folded her arms, recalcitrant. “He’s going through some stuff. Family stuff.”

This earned her Moretti’s squint. “Why do I get the impression there’s something you’re not telling me?”

“It’s none of your business, Dante.”

“None of my business? This team is my business! Let me guess. Just another episode in the Chase Family Telenovela.”

“And pray tell, Dante, why are you here?” Isobel snapped. “Getting acquisitions advice from Violet?”

Violet coughed out a laugh, but then assumed a guilty expression when she saw Isobel glaring in her direction.

“Violet, thanks for the coffee,” Dante said, and then he left the building with his three-piece suit and his hot-assed scowl.

“What the hell was he doing here at eight in the morning?” Isobel asked.