Page 21 of Love Me Like You Do

First was Jaime Dupree, one of his oldest hockey friends.

Jaime: You okay?

Jaime: Saw you weren’t on the ice. Heard you’ve got a concussion?

Even though his closest friends had broken the barrier of silence this past summer when their former coach passed away, he still felt sick to his stomach when he saw Jaime’s name. He’d failed them all so badly.

He wasn’t going to ignore him, so he tapped out a response.

Cole: Yeah, I’m good.

Jaime: Sorry that six-year-old took you out. Need a juice box? Some animal crackers?

Cole chuckled.

Cole: I was saving her. It was a heroic act, asshole.

Cole: Who the fuck told you anyhow?

Jaime: Don’t know if you heard, but I own a team now. Basically, I’m the shit. I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere. But yeah, it was your agent.You really should fire him. He gave up the details way too easily.

Cole: He has his good points.

Grinning, he sent him a GIF of money raining.

The obvious thing was to mention that he was in town, but did he really want to see him? He liked living on the East Coast. Being far away. Keeping too busy to revisit the past.

He moved on to the next message. It was from Declan, another friend in their foursome. Now that Declan had agreed to coach the Renegades, half of them were fully reunited. He got a twist of longing to be part of that.

Declan: I shipped you some Band-Aids for your boo-boo. I know you like the ones with dinosaurs.

Okay, fuck it. He’d just start a group text.

Cole: Listen, fuckwads, I’m out for four games, so can we not make fun of my concussion?

Jaime: Nah.

Declan: Nope.

A powerful wave of nostalgia hit him so hard his chest ached. These guys, they’d been his family. He remembered making rafts out of branches and trying to float down the river (crashing within minutes, of course), racing each other on dirt bikes (that time Booker tried to overtake Jaime on the narrow edge of a mountain path and careened off it), flying them all out to New York City for his dad’s première (where Jaime tried to hook up with a supermodel—though, they still didn’t know whether he’d actually slept with her).

These guys were his brothers. Yeah, he’d fucked it all up, and Booker would never forgive him, but at least he could get these two back.

Cole: I’m in Calamity right now because I got some bad and weird news.

Jaime: Bad first.

Cole: Darren and Lindsay Leeson died.

Declan: No fucking way. Died?

Cole: Yeah. Ten days ago.

Declan: Jesus. That sucks. Don’t they have kids?

Cole: And that brings us to the weird news. Darren named me as guardian.

Jaime: Why’s that weird? You were his closest friend.