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And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

“While we were on the plane, you told me you weren’t seeing her tonight, but you didn’t have time to elaborate with all the cameras that were in our faces. Is it because she’s out of town? I know she was the last time we were here.”

Two years had passed since I’d seen Jolie and over six months since we’d last texted.

The time between our texting had been growing, going from monthly to every few and even longer. That didn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about her. Wanting her. Dreaming about tasting her again. The opportunities that presented themselves had just never worked in our favor.

“I don’t know if she’s out of town or if she came to the game,” I said to him. “We don’t talk anymore.”

“You never told me that.”

I took off my jersey and got to work on releasing the clasps on my shoulder pads.

“There was nothing to say. I invited her on my trip to Africa. She blew me off. We didn’t speak again.

” I handed the shoulder pads to the team’s equipment manager.

“She could have declined my offer, and when she didn’t even do that, when she said absolutely nothing, I took that as a sign that she was done. ”

“Check your phone. See if she reached out. Whether she’s here or not, being how big of a fan she is, by now, she knows Boston won. She would probably text you for that reason alone.”

I shook my head, the sweat drips falling to my bare shoulders. “Nah, man.”

“Just do me a favor and look.”

There was no reason to even waste the effort of pulling out my phone. Plus, I was sure there were texts in our family group chat, attempting to make me feel better about the loss, and I didn’t want to read them. It was too early, the loss still too fresh.

But to appease Landon, since I knew he wouldn’t stop nagging me, I reached into the bag behind me and got my phone, watching the screen light up with more notifications than I wanted to deal with.

I went straight to the texts, and aside from the ones from my parents and siblings, there was nothing from Jolie.

“Nope. I was right.” I shut the screen off, too angry to look at it.

With his skates removed, he turned toward me. “I’m not going to lie … I’m finding this strange as hell.”

“Why?”

“From everything you’ve told me, she was into you, Beck. Really fucking into you. And the kicker is that she’s graduating this year, isn’t she?”

I huffed out some air. “Yeah, in May.”

“Which means, in a handful of months, her life will be completely changing, and she won’t have school holding her back.”

“School didn’t hold her back during the summers when I asked her to come to Paris or Africa.”

Even after he rubbed it, his blond hair was too wet to spike the way it normally did when it was dry. “True, but going full-time with her dad, she’s got vacation, I’m sure, and a bit more flexibility since she’ll be giving him so many hours.”

Now I was questioning why I’d told him so much.

Jesus.

“What are you? A fucking closet relationship expert?”

“I’m piecing it all together and coming up with a conclusion.”

“Do you have one?”

He hung his head. “Unfortunately.”

“Which is?”

He squeezed my shoulder. “She’s dating someone.”

Those words shouldn’t hit.

There was absolutely no fucking reason for them to hit.

Two years had passed since I’d touched her, over six months since we’d texted.

At this point, she should have been a faded memory.

But she wasn’t.

That was the impact Jolie had made on me.

The same shoulder he was gripping, he now shook. “I wish you knew that answer instead of a bunch of unknowns. That’s why you should have texted her today.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? You want to see her—it’s obvious. It’s been eating at you since you stepped out onto the ice—that’s why tonight’s game got fucked. I don’t care what you say, she’s the reason we lost. And had you texted her, you wouldn’t be sitting here, guessing.”

“I’m not fucking guessing, Landon.”

But I was guessing.

He nodded toward my lap. “Text her now.”

“Now—”

“Get showered and get dressed,” our coach said as he walked into the locker room, cutting me off.

He stood in the center of the team. “Our plane leaves in less than an hour.” His hands went to his hips.

“If you’re wondering if we’re going to talk about the way Boston crucified us this evening, the answer to that is yes.

We’ll be doing that on the plane, and we have a lot to discuss. ”

I turned to Landon. “Why bother? We’re leaving in less than an hour. Even if she came, I wouldn’t be able to see her.”

He released my shoulder and gave me a smile. “For the second time in your fucking life, just listen to me. You’ve got to admit, I have a solid track record when it comes to this shit, considering the first time you listened to me was when I encouraged you to go talk to Jolie in that bar.”

I glanced down at my phone, my fingers moving on their own—pulling up Jolie’s name in my Contacts and hitting the button for Messages, our texts loading on the screen.

“What the hell do I even say at this point? Want to meet for ten minutes before we leave for our flight ?”

He stuck his hand out. “Give me your phone.”

I chuckled. “Hell no.”

“Give it to me, Beck. I’ll show you the message before I send it.”

Reluctantly, I handed him my phone.

And within a second, he was groaning. “Dude, you’re a fucking idiot.”

“Why do you say that?”

He tilted the screen toward me. “Do you see the last message you sent her? How it’s in green?”

“Yeah.”

“That means it might not have been delivered. Do you notice how the other texts you sent to her have Delivered beneath them? That means they went through. But this last one, not so much.”

My stomach was churning.

“What are you saying, Landon?”

His expression softened—his attempt at being sensitive. “I don’t think Jolie got your invitation to Africa—that’s what I’m fucking saying.” But then he stared at me like he didn’t recognize me. “You really didn’t know that a green message was always questionable?”

I shook my head. “I’m into hockey, not technology. I don’t even go on social media.” I pulled at the strands of my hair. “Do you know how many fucking times I looked at that text and wondered why the hell she hadn’t written me back?”

“Now you have your answer.” He tapped my shoulder and handed me my phone back. He walked to the showers, leaving me alone on our section of the bench.

This whole fucking time, Jolie had no idea that I wanted her to go away with me. She didn’t know that trip, in my head, was the start of something more. And this whole fucking time, I had thought she had blown me off.

But she hadn’t.

It was nothing more than an oversight, like not wiping your face well enough to get off all the barbeque sauce from breakfast.

A goddamn real moment.

And it was … all my fault.