Page 10 of The Love Comeback (Glaciers Hockey #3)

I arrange the paperbacks on one shelf while she brings over a stack of hardcovers. Our hands work in parallel, filling the empty shelves with pieces of her life. It strikes me how intimate this feels—helping someone organize their books is like getting a glimpse of their soul.

A soul I used to know so well…

“You know what I remember?” I say, pulling out a well-worn copy of some advanced mathematics text. “How you always had a book at my games.”

Ella pauses, a small paperback midway to the shelf. “You noticed that?”

“Every time,” I confirm, smiling at the memory. “You’d sit in the stands with a novel propped open, but somehow never miss a play.”

“Multitasking,” she says with a small shrug, but I can see the hint of color in her cheeks. “I had to have something to do during the boring parts.”

“Boring parts? In hockey? I’m wounded, Ella. Truly wounded.” I clutch my chest.

“Sorry, not sorry.” She laughs, and I can’t help but smile at the sound.

“It’s okay, though. I always played better knowing you were there. Even if your nose was buried in a book.”

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and smiles but doesn’t make eye contact.

As I reach back into the box, my hand closes around something heavier, bound in a hard cover with embossed letters. I pull it out and immediately recognize the distinctive blue and gold of our high school colors, the year stamped in gold lettering on the spine.

“Well, well,” I say, holding up the yearbook. “Look what we have here.”

Ella’s eyes widen slightly. “Oh, that.”

“Our senior year,” I confirm, studying the cover. “I think mine’s buried in my parents’ attic somewhere. Can we look at it?” I ask, already turning it over in my hands. “For old times’ sake?”

She hesitates, and for a moment, I think she’s going to refuse. Then her shoulders relax slightly, and she nods. “Sure, why not? It was a lifetime ago, right?”

We both settle on the floor, our backs against the newly constructed bookshelf.

I’m acutely aware of the careful space she leaves between us—not touching, but close enough to share the yearbook.

I place it on my lap and open to the first page, where the inside cover is filled with signatures and short notes from classmates.

“‘Stay cool, don’t change,’” I read aloud. “Profound advice from … who is that? Mike Lewis?”

“Yep,” Ella confirms, leaning slightly closer to see. “Star of the baseball team and master of generic platitudes.”

I turn the page to find more signatures. “Oh, and here’s Miss Edwin wishing you ‘a bright future full of mathematical wonders.’”

“She was my favorite teacher,” Ella says, her finger tracing the neat handwriting. “She’s the reason I became a math teacher, actually.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot we don’t know about each other anymore,” she says softly, but without bitterness.

I turn the pages slowly, moving past the standard school photos and activity shots. We stop at the faculty section, laughing at familiar faces that somehow look both exactly the same and impossibly young in retrospect.

“Mr. Hargrove!” I exclaim, pointing to a stern-looking man with a mustache and bow tie. “Remember how he used to throw chalk at kids who fell asleep in history?”

“Couldn’t get away with that now.” Ella laughs. “He’d be on administrative leave so fast…”

“And there’s Coach Bennett,” I say, my voice softening. “He changed my life, you know.”

Ella nods. “I know. He saw something in you that nobody else did.”

“Not nobody,” I correct her gently. “You saw it too.”

Our eyes meet briefly before she looks back down at the yearbook.

We continue flipping through the pages, finding images of clubs and sports teams, candid shots from school events.

I’m in quite a few—hockey team captain, most likely to become famous, prom king.

But Ella’s there, too, more than she probably realizes—honor society, math league, candid shots in the library or by her locker.

“We look so young,” she murmurs as we reach the senior portraits section. “Like babies playing dress-up.”

“Speak for yourself,” I joke, pointing to my senior photo where I’m sporting what I thought was a very sophisticated goatee. “I was clearly a mature and distinguished gentleman.”

She bursts out laughing, the sound so genuine and uninhibited that it catches me off guard. “Oh my gosh, that terrible facial hair! I’d forgotten about your ‘distinguished gentleman’ phase.”

“Hey, you said you liked it!” I protest, though I’m laughing too.

“I lied,” she admits, eyes twinkling with mischief. “It looked like you glued cat hair to your face. But you were so proud of it, I couldn’t bear to tell you.”

“Betrayal,” I gasp. “All these years, I thought I looked good.”

“You looked good despite it, not because of it,” she clarifies, still chuckling.

We continue turning pages, stopping occasionally to comment on a familiar face or recall a shared memory. It strikes me how many of these moments I’d forgotten—not because they weren’t important, but because remembering them without Ella had been too painful.

But now, sitting beside her on the floor of her new home, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and the bookshelf we built together, those memories don’t hurt anymore. They feel like unearthed treasures.

“We had some good times, didn’t we?” I say, the words slipping out before I can stop them.

She looks up at me, her expression softening. “We did,” she admits, and there’s no hesitation in her voice. “A lot of good times.”

The moment stretches between us, comfortable and warm. Outside, the last light of day is fading, casting the room in a soft golden glow. Inside, something else is happening—not quite rebuilding, but perhaps clearing away the debris to see what foundation still remains.