So Over You (Chicago Rebels #2)(81)
“He’s helping me with Italian character work. For my improv class.” Violet headed to the counter. “Is this a wine conversation?”
Isobel took a seat at the scratched farmhouse table, marred by splotches of blue and red paint that looked recent. Painting, improv classes, wine for breakfast—Violet definitely led a more fulfilling life than the rest of them. “It’s a two-bottle conversation, but I have to drive to Rebels HQ to work with Burnett, so I’ll stick with coffee.”
While Violet poured, she asked, “So, where is Petrov, exactly?”
“I’ve no idea. If he’s not answering his phone, then he doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”
“And . . .”
Wasn’t this why she’d trekked two hundred feet from the big house? “We broke up. Parted ways. Whatever you want to call it. I found out something, something he did.”
“Freakin’ hockey players. He cheated on you?”
“No. Not that I know of. It’s worse.”
Violet placed two mugs of coffee on the table and took a seat. “You’re on the air, caller.”
She blew out a breath. “So, I tried out for Team USA and I would have made it except Vadim sabotaged it.”
“What?”
She didn’t have far to reach for the indignation still simmering below the surface, so she let it fuel her explanation of what Vadim had done. Once unburdened, she felt supremely vindicated in her decision to kick the manipulative bastard to the curb.
Except Violet had this weird look on her face. Also weird? She had remained uncharacteristically quiet.
Feeling edgy, Isobel plowed onward. “And then he had the nerve to tell me that he did it because he loved me. I mean, who does that? Total dick move, right?” Right?
Violet pursed her lips. Twitched her nose. She opened her mouth to say something. Closed it again.
After two more false starts, she finally spoke in a low voice, like she was summoning it from a deep, dark place. “Are you seriously telling me that you were going to play hockey again—real hockey with checks and knocks and all that shit—even after the doctors told you one bad hit or fall and it might be kaput, bye-bye, Isobel?”
Isobel squirmed in her seat. “Doctors always err on the side of caution. That’s their job. But my job is to skate. I know what I’m capable of, what my body can handle.”
Athletes are consummate liars.
Women in love often are, too.
“Oh really?” Exasperated, Violet waved at an empty chair at the table. “What does Harper think? How does she feel about you lacing up your skates so you can go off and—and—and—” She pointed to some far-off point. An imaginary ice rink of doom, Isobel supposed. “And die?”
There was a reason Isobel hadn’t told anyone but Vadim, and it wasn’t only because she didn’t want to jinx it.
“Stop being so dramatic. I haven’t told her and I’m not going to because it’s not happening now anyway. I’m done, no more pro hockey for me!”
Flustered, Isobel shot up, then sank to her chair again. She needed to explain it better. Violet had gone through her own rotten year with her breast cancer and had embraced her second chance with more zest than a bowl of lemons. Surely she would understand.
“You don’t know what it’s like to lose the thing that defines you, Vi. This has been everything to me since I was yea high. Dad would take me out and practically fling me across the rink. On the ice I danced. I was free. This is what I was supposed to do. It’s what Dad wanted, and now . . .” She knuckled her eyes. Some of her happiest memories were of Clifford teaching her to skate. “I’ve let him down. I’ve let the old bastard down.”
Her heart shriveled into a tiny lump, coal-like and blackened, incapable of sustaining life and love and happiness.
Violet was still scowling. She didn’t get it, because she had never cared for hockey. The only person who understood was the same person who snatched it away from her—for her own good. Turdweasel!
“First, Harper almost fucks her life up trying to impress a dead man, and now you’re doing the same,” Violet said. “Jesus H. Christ on a bike, Clifford was an asshole. He screwed around, left his baby mamas high and dry, and then thought he could twist you all up in knots from the grave with his legal shenanigans. And I bought into it. I said I’d hang with you for the season and not take the cut I had coming in the will until later, so your Rebels dreams wouldn’t die. But I didn’t sign on for this crap.”
Isobel opened her mouth to protest but shut it when Violet made a zip-it gesture with her hand. “And now you’re using this thing the Russian did for you because he loves you as an excuse to push him away. It’s like you desperately want to please old Cliffie-boy, yet you’re terrified that any guy you meet will be like him.”
That made no sense, except she guessed it did. “Well, you have to admit the Russian is out of my league.”
“Yes, he is! He has a brain and you don’t. The man doesn’t want you to die playing a stupid game with sticks and a ball—and yes, I know it’s called a puck but I’m making a point. He doesn’t want you to end your days getting your head bashed in. I can’t believe your selfishness. Sounds like Vadim is better off without you.”
This was outrageous. Isobel was the one suffering through a breakup and mourning the death of her career, and Violet was acting like this was a crime against her. Why the hell did she care how Isobel lived her life? If she ended up on a stretcher or in a coffin, it’d be no skin off Violet’s nose. They hardly knew each other.