Page 38 of Blindside Me (Cessna U Hockey #3)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Jade
The ink bleeds like a wound. My hands shake, and it spreads, tiny blue veins crawling across the page like the thoughts I can’t say aloud. It’s two-seventeen A.M., and I’m doing what I always do when sleep feels impossible, and my chest won’t stop aching: I write.
Not the stories I show people.
Not the polished poems for class.
Just an ugly, messy truth that nobody else will ever see.
My dorm room feels too small, the walls pressing in.
The desk lamp casts harsh shadows across my sketchbook, illuminating scraps of discarded drafts and half-finished sketches scattered around me.
I haven’t actually drawn anything tonight.
Just words. Messy block letters that look like they’re shouting because maybe I am somewhere inside where no one can hear.
My roommate’s gone for the weekend. Good. I don’t need witnesses for this particular breakdown.
The ballpoint pen digs into the paper as I press harder.
He’s avoiding me. Three days of walking into class at the last possible second. Of bolting the minute when the lecture ends. Of staring at the back of his head while he pretends I’m invisible.
I pause, thumb smudging the fresh ink. Seven fucking days since Barton’s, and Drew Klaas might as well be a ghost. A ghost with excellent time management who knows exactly how to slip through doorways before I can catch him.
I flip to a clean page, needing fresh territory for these thoughts.
Sorry again for assaulting your junk. That wasn’t the impression I wanted to leave you with.
I laugh, a dry, broken sound that doesn’t belong to me.
Our second meeting: me, rushing around a corner in the corridor, stolen recorder in tote; him, heading back to the locker room.
The near collision sent hot coffee directly to his crotch.
His face, that perfect mask, cracked into genuine shock for just a second before he controlled it.
I didn’t know then that those cracks would become my favorite thing about him. The glimpses of real beneath all that discipline.
As I write again, the ink smears under my palm, my handwriting deteriorating with each line.
I wasn’t supposed to fall. You weren’t supposed to see the messy parts. You definitely weren’t supposed to kiss me like I was breakable and still worth holding.
My throat tightens around a swallow. That first kiss, not at the club, but the one in my dorm, after our emotional voiceovers. The way his hands trembled slightly, moving to my waist. How he backed me against the wall, overcome with desire. How I wanted more, but he had enough sense to back away.
I rub my eyes, smearing ink on my cheek without caring. If anyone could see me, I’m sure they would say the shadows under my eyes match my haunted look.
You said I make you feel like you don’t have to be perfect. But now you’re gone. So maybe perfection was easier.
The pen digs deeper, threatening to tear through. I thought we were different. Thought maybe he saw something in me worth staying for. But they never stay, do they? My mother taught me that lesson repeatedly. My uncle reinforced it. And now Drew, with his silence that feels like a scream.
I close the journal, grab my sketchbook, and flip to an empty page. My fingers itch for something tangible, something I can shape and control when everything else feels like it’s slipping away.
The pencil moves almost without thought.
Sharp, precise strokes outline Drew’s hockey skates.
Those worn, frayed skates with scuff marks along the sides and laces he’s knotted and reknotted so many times they’re permanently creased.
The ones he refused to replace, even when Coach Howell insisted, because “they work just fine.”
I shade in the deepest creases, remembering how he methodically laced them before each practice. Those ridiculous rituals: left skate first, three loops through each eyelet, double knot with precisely one inch of lace remaining. Control in every movement.
My pencil hesitates over the right skate. Then, deliberately, decisively, I draw a crack running from the toe up the side. It’s not dramatic or jagged. It’s just a single, clean fracture in the armor.
At the bottom of the page, I label it Klaas’s Armor .
I study the drawing, feeling the weight of what I’ve created. The vulnerability of the object matches my own. We both present hard exteriors, but the cracks show what’s beneath. The difference is I know my cracks are there. I’m not sure Drew’s ready to admit his.
I used to think cracks meant something was broken. But maybe they’re just places light can get in. If you stop pretending, they don’t exist.
The clock reads three twenty-two A.M. now. I should sleep, but my mind keeps churning and replaying the moment he didn’t follow me back into Barton’s. The moment he chose fear over whatever was growing between us.
I flip to the sketch I did last night. The piece is different from the others. It is darker, raw, and vulnerable. It’s him, but in fragments and metaphors.
On a fresh page, in handwriting so small it’s almost a whisper, I write:
I should’ve fought harder for you.
But that’s the lie I always tell myself, isn’t it? They would’ve stayed if I’d just been a little more and done a little more. My mom. My uncle. Now Drew.
I close the sketchbook with a snap and press my palms against my eyes until colors burst behind my lids. The truth sits heavy in my chest: I’m tired of fighting for people who won’t fight for themselves. Tired of being the one who cares and risks more.
I’d open the door if he knocked right now. Even at three-thirty A.M., with ink on my cheek and regret under my nails, I’d let him in.
And that terrifies me more than him walking away. Because I don’t know how many more times I can open the door and still survive the silence that comes after.
The dining room at Uncle Rick’s house reeks of overcooked roast and tension.
Our new norm since he started this weekly ritual.
I stab at a potato, the tines of my fork scraping the plate, while he sits across from me, slicing his meat with the kind of precision that says he’s got something to prove.
The silence is louder than the clatter of cutlery.
“You gonna eat or just murder that potato?” Howell grunts, not looking up from his plate.
I shrug, pushing the food around. “Not hungry.” My stomach’s twisted up, not from the roast, but from years of him not showing up. Postcards instead of visits. Calls that always ended too soon.
He sighs, sets his knife down. “Jade, I’m trying here. You can’t keep shutting me off, acting like you’re all alone. About Klaas?—”
“Don’t,” I snap, my fork clattering against the plate. “You don’t get to play dad now. Not after you bailed when I was eleven.” My voice slices through the quiet, sharper than I mean, and I hate how it shakes, how it gives me away.
Howell’s jaw tightens. His hands freeze. “I took the job at Cessna to build something, Jade. For you, for?—”
“For you,” I cut in, my eyes burning. “You left me with Mom, who was too busy ‘finding herself’ to care. Don’t pretend this was for me.”
He flinches, just barely, but I catch it. “You needed stability,” he says, voice low, almost broken. “And your mom?—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” I shove my plate away. “Stability? You sent birthday cards with twenty bucks inside. That’s not stability. That’s guilt.”
Silence again, heavier than before. He looks at me, eyes dark and heavy with regret. Or maybe shame. I want to scream, to make him feel every year I spent waiting for him to show up, but my throats too tight. I stand, chair scraping, and grab my jacket.
“Where are you going?” he asks, not moving.
“Back to the dorm,” I say, not looking back. “I have a lot of homework to catch up on.”
The door slams behind me, and I take a deep breath as the night air hits my chest. I hate that it still hurts. I’m still that kid on the porch, watching his truck disappear, hoping he’d turn back. He didn’t then, and this dinner just proves he still doesn’t know how.