Page 32 of Sexting the Coach (Pucking Daddies #6)

Elsie

The last time I cried this hard was the day that Drew was injured.

Or, actually, not right after finding out.

When Dad came through the door, finding me alone in the living room, he informed me like we were business colleagues that Drew would be staying overnight in the hospital.

That he was going to need surgery, and that Mom was still there with him while Dad came home to get a few things.

He couldn’t look me in the eye when he told me, and I knew him well enough to see the anger bubbling just there under the surface of his expression. Anger at me. For ruining Drew’s life.

My entire body had gone numb, still, and I’d nodded, staring unseeing at the TV until Dad eventually stomped away and into Drew’s room, opening and shutting the dresser, clearly getting him some clothes. Then, ten minutes later, with bags packed, Dad walked back out into the living room.

“They’re moving him to the big hospital,” he said, staring at a spot just over my head. “Mom and I are getting a hotel room.”

I’d never been left home alone before. Not overnight—not for a lack of trust, but because I was terrified of it. Anytime I was home when it started to get dark, I’d invent antagonists coming after me, jump every time the refrigerator released a set of ice into the tray.

“Okay,” I’d said, clearing my throat and looking at him, feeling my heartbeat in my throat. “Drive safe.”

When he finally did look at me, it was like he didn’t know me at all.

The moment the door shut behind him, I’d risen to my feet like a zombie, shuffling to my bedroom and collapsing into my pillows, the sobs rising up and over me like an ocean of sorrow and panic.

I cried for Drew.

I cried for myself, too. The fact that I’d been told to stay behind while they went to the emergency room. It was never said out loud, but the hidden truth there was ear-splitting loud—you’ve done enough.

Drew didn’t want me around. I didn’t even want myself around.

I’d packed a bag that night and called Karlee, still hiccupping and snotting all over myself, and gone to stay with her until Drew came home from surgery.

And I spent most of the spring and summer after that at Karlee’s place, avoiding my brother and my family until Drew finally went off to college.

Just a normal student, without a scholarship and without a team. Thanks to me.

So that night, when my dad couldn’t look at me—that was the last time I cried like this.

Now, Hattie hovers around me, her hands up like she might be able to shush me into not crying. Mabel sits in the corner of the room, her dark eyes resting on me.

Hattie keeps shooting her concerned looks. Mabel keeps staring at me.

“Elsie,” Hattie says, not for the first time. “You don’t have to do this.”

My hands shake. I’m right in the middle of packing up my things, my suitcase clam-shelled open in the middle of my room. Normally, I’m a meticulous packer, but now I don’t even bother to fold the things as I drop them in. Underwear, socks.

“She’s right,” Mabel says, crossing her arms. “Just because you lost your spot on the team doesn’t mean you need to flee the country.”

“I’m not—fleeing the country,” I manage to say through the hiccupping sobs. “I’m going to Denver.”

“Which doesn’t make any sense,” Hattie says, glancing at Mabel again. “Since you hate it there.”

I do hate it there. But right now, I hate it here more, and I can’t deny the comfort of going home. Even if after Drew’s accident, it never really felt fully like home.

“We’ll talk to them,” Mabel says, her voice lowering further. “I’ll threaten to quit if they don’t take you back.”

I have to bite my tongue to keep from telling my friends the truth.

Of course, when I burst through the front door, already shaking with sobs, barely getting it out that I no longer had a job with the Squids, they’d thought I was fired. That would make sense.

But it’s not the truth.

The truth is that I couldn’t let Weston lose his spot. That I couldn’t risk his coaching career. Not after how hard he’s worked to get here, not with everything he’s had to give up. Not after dealing with Fincher and working through his injury.

Not with the way I feel about him. I couldn’t watch him lose it, just because of me.

“Does Weston know?” Hattie prompts, her voice an octave higher than normal. “Did you tell him about…?”

“No,” I manage. The crying comes and goes, and right now it’s pretty shallow, the shaking surface level and the tears running silently down my face. My cheeks and eyes feel raw to the touch, and I try not to wipe the tears away, since there will just be more later.

I’m not looking at them, but I can sense Hattie and Mabel communicating something silently. Probably that they should encourage me to tell Weston the truth. Or that they should ask me what I’m planning to do about the baby.

I have no idea. But it’s not like I can tell Weston about it—he doesn’t want kids. He made that clear. I’ve already thought it over and over in my head—involving Weston is the last thing I should do.

It doesn’t help that every time I allow myself to think about it, I oscillate between various scenarios. The one I know is most realistic is that Weston would take full responsibility for the baby, regardless of how he feels about me. That we would split custody, and he would pay child support.

But in some moments, I find myself thinking of the worst case scenarios, my recent distance from him allowing me to transpose thoughts and feelings on to him that don’t make sense with what I know about him.

I do it anyway, hurting myself with the false reality of him being dismissive, telling me it doesn’t matter. Or accusing me of being with someone else.

Deep down, I know that he wouldn’t do something like that, but my emotions are all over the place. Everything feels out of my control, and it’s like running through these nightmare scenarios at least allows me to feel sorry for myself.

It’s an old habit, running the worst through my head again and again. It’s what I did after Drew’s injury.

The memory comes back to me crystal clear and well-preserved, though I haven’t visited it in a while.

The day he came back from surgery, Dad under his arm, practically holding him up as they walked him to the guest room.

Drew couldn’t even go to this own bedroom, because he couldn’t make it up the stairs.

And despite the absurdity of our house, we at least had the presence not to have an elevator.

Mom and Dad had doted over him, hovering around him and barking orders at me. Ice, food, water. Run out and get him a smoothie. And I did it all, thinking that if I just blindly gave in to the demands, I could work off my debt. I could make up for it by being the world’s best nurse.

It was like when we were kids, and one of us would lose a bet, becoming the other’s servant for a day. Except now I’d done something much worse than losing a bet.

Three days after his return, I’d been going to the bathroom in the middle of the night when I heard something from the guest room. Without thinking, I’d peeked in through the crack in the door, realizing it was Drew.

Crying.

The sight of it—of my big brother, who hadn’t cried in years—made my body feel impossibly cold. I’d gone to the kitchen and returned with a cool cloth and mug of tea for him, pushing open the door without thinking.

“Here,” I’d whispered, startling him, which startled me and made me jump, some of the tea sloshing out of the mug and onto my hand, already leaving an angry red welt. “I brought you—”

“Get out,” he said, his voice not like an ax, not like something drawn back and applied with force, but more like something wielded with precision.

An X-ACTO knife, razer blade. A scalpel.

Going on, his eyes-tinged red with a sadness that quickly hardened into hatred, he spat, “Do you really think I want to see you right now, Elsie?”

“It was an accident—”

“No.” His voice was hard. “It was careless. Just like you. Always careless, not thinking about other people. The only person you care about is yourself, which is why your future is still intact. I told you to stop fucking around.”

I set down the tea with shaking fingers, the amber liquid sloshing up around the rim of the mug and puddling on the dresser when I did. I knew better than to leave a wet cloth on the wood, but I couldn’t stand to hold it in my hands.

“I didn’t think—”

“No. You never do. You let everyone else around you do the thinking for you.”

“Drew,” I’d taken a deep breath, steadied myself. This was my brother, and no matter how angry he was with me, it would eventually get better. I would find a way to make it up to him. “I know you’re angry—”

“You have no idea what I’m feeling.” He was staring at me like he could burn a hole through my face.

“And you never will. You want to make this up to me, Elsie? Leave me the fuck alone. Go away. You can’t give hockey back to me.

You can’t go back in time and change this, and even if you could, I doubt that you would be able to.

You’re too fucking selfish to ever make a different decision. ”

I knew he was trying to hurt me. And it was working.

The thing about being so close to someone else is that you know exactly what to say, exactly what will hurt them the most.

“Elsie,” Hattie says gently, pulling me out of the memory, reaching over, and putting her hand on my arm.

The San Francisco apartment comes rushing back to me, my childhood home fading away into the background.

Even though I’m not actively thinking about it, I can still feel the weight of Drew’s stare.

“Can we just—can we slow down for a second?” Hattie goes on, dipping her head to catch my gaze. “Maybe it would be a good idea for you to talk to—”

But she doesn’t get to finish that thought, because at that moment, there’s an insistent knock on the door.

“Ugh,” Mabel says, unfolding herself from her spot in the corner of the room. The introduction of a new person seems to strike straight through my nervous system, calming me. “I told the guy to leave it at the door.”

“Leave what?” Hattie asks.

“Curry,” Mabel says, glancing at me. “Figured we should try and get some food in her.”

My stomach growls loudly, and when I laugh, Hattie and Mabel look like they’ve managed to diffuse a bomb. Hattie takes my hand and pulls me up to my feet, walking with me into the kitchen as Mabel goes to the door.

“I’m coming!” Mabel calls in response to another rapid-fire knock. “Don’t you people read the—”

But when she opens the door, it’s not a disgruntled Doordasher standing there.

It’s Weston Wolfe, his chest heaving, his wild eyes landing right on me.