Page 65 of Puck My Life

“Why can’t you stay, Vae?” I almost whisper.

She huffs. “Its complicated. There are a lot of reasons, and I just can’t stay. It would ruin everything.”

She backs away from me, and I feel reality bleeding into the magic that has been this night.

“You can’t run away and pretend to be Cinderella. I know where you live.”

She laughs atme. “No, you don’t.”

I catch her back into my arms, but, this time, I try to find the friendship that we used to have. I push the attraction away, and I try to remember that she is Vae.

It doesn’t work.

Apparently, once opened, this Pandora’s box can’t be closed.

I take her hand and drag her inside.

“Time to turn back into a pumpkin.”

She snickers, but when I get to the door, we end up chest-to-chest. The moment stretches out for a long time. I want to kiss her. I want to make her feel good or just babble out all these new thoughts and see if there’s any miracle chance she feels the same.

She ducks her head and breaks our locked gazes first and squeezes through the back door.

I watch her walk away and press a hand to my chest again.

I need time to assess the situation, to figure out a game plan, because it’s not my decision alone.

There’s the pack to consider.

But watching Vae get in a taxi and drive away is almost as painful as seeing her in that alpha’s arms.

Deacon

PAST

The pressure to be perfect pushes at me. Maria being gone is a hole in our lives that we can’t fill. She took up so much space in our world. Her perfume, the sound of her shuffling around the kitchen, her gruff, smoke-ruined voice. The food that Vae has not managed to replicate.

Maria wasn’t the heart of our home; she was the foundation.

Her late-night talks with me are the reason I found the ice and why I aimed so high. I didn’t believe in myself, but she said to me, “What makes all those kids so much more special than you, Pan? Why can’t you be the one to achieve greatness?”

I didn’t have an answer for her then, and I don’t now.

I skate aimlessly around the ice, wishing she was here so I could tell her how much we miss her.

They are depending on me to keep things the same. To keep having fun, to keep us still laughing.

That’s what Maria would have wanted.

PRESENT

I explode onto the ice, trying to shove all thoughts of her out of my head, but it’s impossible. The puck is the one she bought me for my birthday; my stick is the one I taught her to play with. The ice is the frosty way she gets mad at me.

“Get your fucking head in the game, Katz!”

I snarl and refocus. The ice is blindingly white; the roar of the crowd is too loud. Every skate that cuts up the ice is in a volume that I can hear in stereo. Everyone is moving so fast, but I’m standing still, furious and frustrated. I’m not getting anywhere, and I have never felt this disconnected to the game I love.

The Knotted Wolves are running circles around us. I slam back into gear and chase after their centre. He sends the puck spinning away, but they don’t have anyone to pass it to, so it comes back to him. I line him up, put on an extra burst of speed, and when the puck comes his way, I shove him into the boards, holding him there, while one of my team steals it.