Page 11

ELEVEN

Brian

I got to the arena and, no surprise, Rebel’s Bronco sat in the players’ parking lot.

Guess we were finally going to confront the elephant in the arena.

Grabbing my gear out of the back of my truck, I headed through the service entrance, expecting him to be waiting for me in the locker room. Except he wasn’t. Guess we were going to settle this on the ice.

Five minutes later, I skated onto the ice, where Rebel was taking shots at the net from center ice. I knew from the parking lot that no one else was here.

I skated over to him, sticking a puck from the pile and getting off a wrister before Rebel turned his attention back to me.

The Lawrence brothers all had the same color hair, but while Rowdy let his grow, Rebel kept his short. And all the siblings had the Colonel’s blue eyes, but Rebel’s were a shade lighter, which made them seem colder. Or maybe that cold stare was just for me.

“We gonna talk this out?” I figured why beat around the bush. “Or are you just going to continue to freeze me out?”

Rebel didn’t say anything immediately, just kept staring until I thought he was going to continue to hate me for the rest of our lives. And that would fucking suck. Because at one point in our lives, we’d been good friends.

“I don’t trust you,” he finally said. “I don’t think I’m ever going to trust you again. And I don’t want you anywhere near my sister.”

Yep, that’s pretty much what I’d expected, right down to the reference to Rain.

I shook my head, leaning on my stick. “You were out of control, Reb. You needed help.”

His jaw clenched, the muscles shifting under his skin. “You went behind my back. After I specifically asked you to keep my issues between us. I was handling it.”

“No, you weren’t. You needed help, Reb. You wouldn’t talk to anyone. I was fucking worried about you. I saw you heading down a hole I have fucking intimate knowledge of, and I didn’t want you to disappear down it.”

“You should have fucking talked to me first before you went to my dad.”

“I fucking tried talking to you! You wouldn’t fucking listen. You had your fucking head in a bottle. The only reason you managed to hide it from everyone else is because you were at college. And your default personality is grumpy, moody bitch so even the people who thought they were your friends didn’t notice. And the ones who did were right there with you, fucking their futures to hell. I could see you getting farther and farther out of reach, and I couldn’t fucking stand it. I could see the goddamn wall you were about to hit. Was I just supposed to let you crash and burn?”

Rebel’s eyes had gotten narrower the longer I ranted, but he kept his mouth shut and let me go. When I finally stopped, sucking in air, I waited for him to hit back.

And waited.

“You didn’t trust me.”

No, I hadn’t, because I knew from experience that people didn’t just get through or get over a drinking problem.

“You needed help.” I wasn’t backing down on this. “I wasn’t going to wait until you were in too deep to get back out.”

“You didn’t fucking trust me to figure it out for myself. You went to my dad. To the one person you knew I wouldn’t want to know.”

“Because he was the only one I thought would be able to help.”

“You went to him because you wanted him to think you cared.”

Okay, that was a fucking low blow, and I was getting pissed. “I did fucking care. I do care. Don’t give me that shit. I know you’re pissed at me, and I get it. But I know how hard it is to dig out of that hole. I know most people who fall down that hole can’t get themselves out of it. They need help.”

“Did you even stop to think that I was getting help in my own way? You never even gave me the benefit of the doubt that I could turn myself around.”

“You were gonna lose your place on the team. You know that, right?”

Rebel’s chin lifted in defiance. “I wouldn’t have let that happen.”

I wanted to throw my stick on the ice, grab him by the shoulders, and shake him. “Jesus, you’re still so damn stubborn. You know what? I don’t give a shit if you still hate me. You’re still fucking here and that’s all I fucking care about. You can hold your fucking grudge, Reb. Because it doesn’t matter. You’re still here. You didn’t fucking end up dead in a ditch somewhere. Hate me all you want.”

He shook his head, eyes still so cold. “I don’t hate you. I just don’t fucking trust you. And I don’t want my sister to get burned by you next. So whatever relationship you think you’re going to have with her, you’re not.”

It stung. It shouldn’t have, because I’d known exactly what he was going to say about me and Rain. But it still felt like he’d stuck a knife in my side. And my anger continued to rise.

“There’s nothing going on with me and Rain. She’s been great with Maddy, and Maddy seems to like her. Maddy’s my focus right now. You know her mom’s in rehab, right? She’s gonna be there for weeks. Maddy won’t have her mom for more than a month. She needs all the help she can get. Every friend she can find. Your sister’s amazing with her.”

Rebel’s expression finally showed cracks, but only for a couple seconds. “Rain doesn’t need you fucking up her life like you fucked up mine.”

Okay, now I was fucking pissed. “Your life doesn’t seem very fucked up. In fact, you’ve got a pretty fucking sweet deal here. You don’t have to worry if you’re going to be traded or get a contract for the next season. You have a safety net a lot of people don’t.”

“So you were jealous? That’s why you ratted me out to my dad?”

I wanted to scream in his face but managed, just barely, to keep it together. “I didn’t fucking rat you out.”

“No, you betrayed my trust.”

“Are you sober?”

His expression didn’t change. “I didn’t have a problem with alcohol, asshole. But you didn’t see anything other than what you wanted to see.”

“Reb, I was there. You were practically drinking yourself into a coma every night.”

“No, you weren’t there. You were already gone. You had no idea what was really going on.”

“We were friends. I fucking cared about what happened to you.”

“I wasn’t fucking drinking myself to death! I had a nervous fucking breakdown, which you would’ve known if you’d been able to see past your own damn drama!”

The words rang out across the empty arena, almost slapping me in the face. Rebel’s cheeks burned with an angry red tinge, and his eyes blazed. And the knot in my gut twisted until I could barely breathe.

“I was drowning,” he continued, “but not for the reasons you thought. And I was getting help, but when you went to my dad, everything blew up again.”

A strange buzz sounded in my ears. “Jesus, Reb, why didn’t you?—”

“Say anything to you? Because you’d already fucked me over. I didn’t think you deserved anything else that I could say. I had my own shit going on. So no, I didn’t fucking explain myself. And when it was my turn to join this team, you fucking left.”

“Because you wouldn’t want me to be here. You would’ve frozen me out, it would’ve affected everyone else around us.”

“Again, maybe you should’ve fucking asked.”

We were both breathing hard, but Rebel’s last statement hadn’t been shouted. It’d been said so calmly, it felt like another knife in my gut. I didn’t know what to say. Because he was right. I’d been blinded by my own shit, and I hadn’t seen the situation as I should have.

Jesus, I was the asshole.

“I’m—”

“Don’t.”

Rebel stopped me with a hand held out in front of him, which I guess I should be glad wasn’t connecting hard with my face. My world had been rocked once again, but this one felt more like a kick to the head instead of the gut.

“Just fucking don’t. I’m trying my damnedest not to combust every time you’re around. But it’s fucking hard. And yeah, I know the reason you’re here. And…” he took a deep breath, “I’m working on getting over my shit with you. My therapist told me you’re a trigger I could never deal with because you weren’t around. I didn’t want to fucking deal with you. And I still don’t. But I’m not that much of an asshole to not know that that little girl needs a safe space right now and this is it. So I’m going to put my shit away and deal with you being here. But we’re not friends. Not anymore. And I’m not sure we can ever be.”

Those words dug into my gut and made them twist until I thought I wouldn’t be able to breathe. He sounded so final. In the back of my mind, I’d hoped, believed , we could clear this shit out between us. But once again, I’d been mistaken about what that shit had been.

So I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to make it worse.

Except, “I’m sorry. Jesus, Reb, I’m sorry, and I know it’s not enough?—”

“It isn’t.” Reb shook his head and took a deep breath. “At least, not now. We just need to steer clear of each other off the ice. And don’t insert yourself into my sister’s life and then think you’re just gonna say ‘see you’ and leave at the end of the season or whenever you don’t need us anymore. Ice is all yours.”

He turned his back on me and skated to the open gate to the locker room.

And I shot pucks at an empty net until my shoulders ached.