CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dani
“Okay,” Cassie said, “but you really need to listen to me.”
I walked down the hall with Cassie and two of her friends—Liz and Lillie— after school, pleasantly surprised that not only had Cassie yelled my name when she saw me so I could walk with them, but her friends seemed nice.
Like genuinely nice.
And they’d invited me to go with them to Applebee’s for half-price apps later.
It wasn’t in my nature to trust this, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
“I know you know nothing about hockey, but being a manager is so easy.
Sometimes I lm practice, sometimes I keep stats, sometimes I go on a hot dog run if someone’s hungry; anyone can do it.”
“For sure,” Lillie agreed, nodding. “You don’t have to know hockey at all.”
“I’m sure Alec is right, though,” I said, remembering how unhappy he’d looked when she’d suggested it. “It’s probably too late.”
“Yeah, but that’s the thing,” she said as we went past the oce. “First of all, I don’t think that’s true; Coach Osman is super chill. But second of all, you’re friends with Alec.”
I felt like I should correct her—all of them—because that denitely wasn’t true, but I kept my mouth shut.
“Zeus is hockey around here,” Cassie said. “And he’s the captain. So if he brings it up, they will totally let it happen.”
“I get that he’s good, but he’s still just a student, right? He can’t have that much power.”
“Are you serious?” Lillie said, making a face like I was absolutely clueless. “I know you’re new here, but trust me—if Alec Barczewski wants something
related to hockey, he’s going to get it.”
“But I don’t think he—”
“You need to ask him,” Cassie said, cutting me o. “Even if you guys don’t know each other anymore, your parents are still friends, right? I’m sure he’ll happily do you this tiny little favor, because he’s a good guy. I’m positive that if
you ask him, he’ll make it happen.”
Butis he a good guy?
“I don’t know,” I said, dreading the idea of swallowing my pride and going to him for a favor, because if he’d wanted to even be a simple acquaintance, he would have at least smiled at me by now.
But so far he was all cold sarcasm and avoidance.
“Do this for me because I’m sick of doing it by myself and I think we’ll have a blast,” she said. “Pleeeeeeease. Come on.”
“And I won’t have to feel guilty anymore for quitting,” Lillie said. “Do it for me, too.”
“And for me so I don’t have to listen to this ever again,” Liz added.
“Hmmm.” My stomach was heavy with dread as they tried convincing me, because it sounded like a terrible idea. Not only did I know nothing about the sport, but the last thing I wanted was to be around Alec on a daily basis.
In a cold arena.
I was stressed at the mere idea of it.
But I wanted Harvard—so badly.
“How about this: Go with me to practice today,” Cassie said. “They have a game tomorrow, so it’s shorter than usual, just a run-through. Ride over with me, see what I do, and then you can make the call. If you want to do it, you can wait for Zeus and beg him after practice to talk to the coaches.”
“Maybe I should wait—”
“Think about it,” she interrupted, emphasizing her words with hand gestures. “If Harvard said you needed to lick the oor to get in, would you?”
“Eww,” Liz said with a look of disgust.
“Eww, but you would, wouldn’t you?” Lillie said, pointing her nger in my direction. “Wouldn’t you? You might go behind a locker so no one could see
you, but you’d denitely touch your tongue to the tile, right? Don’t lie, you know you would.”
“Gross,” I said around a laugh. “But yeah—I guess I would.”
“So be willing to ask a simple favor, then,” Cassie said. “It’s way less disgusting.”
It was a stupid analogy, but she was right.
Of course I could beg Alec for help if it meant getting into Harvard. Who cares if he’s a dick now? Swallowing my pride and begging him to help me was nothing if it gave me the extracurricular I needed to get in.
Honestly, I probably wouldn’t even have to see him at practice because I’d be too busy doing manager-y things and he’d be… like, hitting pucks with sticks and stu.
“Okay,” I said, nodding and suddenly kind of excited. “I’ll do it.”
“See? This job is so not hard,” Cassie said as we walked around the hockey arena.
“If you can ll water bottles, take skates to get sharpened, and press play on a video recorder, you’ll be ne.”
“I can do all those things,” I said, relaxing a little.
“Of course you can,” she said with a smile. “Let me show you around.”
She showed me the girls’ locker room, the maintenance closet, the equipment room, the snack bar—basically every nook and cranny of the Doug (what everyone called the Douglas Gowo Arena, apparently). She walked me past the huge mural that stretched all the way down the back wall, a photographic history of Southview hockey.
“I think that’s your grandpa, isn’t it?” she asked, pointing at a team from the seventies. I narrowed my eyes and, holy shit, the big guy in the back row was, in fact, Grandpa Mick.
He was grinning—something he rarely did now—but his eyes were exactly the same. He was young and handsome, sweaty, holding up a nger just like everyone else in the picture.
It was shocking, in a way, to see him looking so unabashedly happy, like he’d burst into laughter the second the photo was snapped.
What happened to change him so much?I wondered.
“Yeah,” I said, running my hand over his image, curious if he’d been here when they’d unveiled the mural.
Surely he had, and I wondered how he’d felt.
I knew so little about his life, aside from being my grandpa, and suddenly I
wanted to know more.
“Come on.”
After that, Cassie did a quick tutorial of the skate-sharpening machine—the Sparx—which she talked about like it was the easiest thing in the world to use (but it terried me).
“What if I screw up someone’s skates?” I asked.
“You won’t,” she said with the wave of a hand. “Most of the guys have a specic preference on how they want them sharpened, and the ones who don’t usually go with the average. It’s not a big deal at all.”
It was so a big deal, I suspected.
“Okay, let’s go closer to the ice and I’ll show you how to lm.”
Yes. Filming. That I could handle.
And as I followed her, I knew this was manageable, that this extracurricular was something I could do without screwing up. Every muscle in my body felt more relaxed, less tense, because I could nally check the “nd an activity” box on my whole “make Harvard love me” list.
That wasif Alec would help make it happen.
As if my brain conjured him just by thinking his name, suddenly the guys started coming out of the locker room and onto the ice. I felt… breathless as I watched them warming up, and I wasn’t sure why.
Surely it had everything to do with the impressive speed as they took a few laps and nothing to do with my eyes locating the tallest player as he appeared to sprint down the ice in skates.
Cassie showed me the camera and let me do the lming while she sat down beside me and started her homework, which was apparently what she did at practice a lot of the time.
But my eyes kept wandering to Alec, even as I told myself I didn’t care. I knew nothing about hockey, but it was easy to see he was the leader and insanely
good. In every drill, he seemed to go faster and harder than everyone else.
It was like the rest of the guys were playing a high school game while he put on an exhibition of the sport.
And how did he skate that fast? Backward??
A tiny part of me was proud of him—my little Alec—but it was hard to remember that version of him while watching him be so big and physical.
Those were two characteristics I never would’ve linked to my former best friend.
“So he actually is good, holy shit,” I said to myself, watching as he shouted something to the guys who were doing the drill he’d just nished doing. I couldn’t make out his words, but he was denitely cheering them on or yelling something… athletic.
The job really waspretty easy. And the time went by pretty quickly.
“I think we’re done,” Cassie said after she locked up the camera. “I have to leave to pick up my little brother, but you’re waiting around to talk to Alec, right?”
“Right,” I said with a smile and a nod, even though the word “dread” didn’t begin to cover how I felt about the idea.
“Make sure you’re veryconvincing, okay?” she said, pulling her car keys out of her coat pocket. “I don’t want to do this alone anymore.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“By the way, he’s always the last one out, just FYI,” she said. “He reads scouting reports and does… hockey shit after practice, I don’t know, but he’s usually the last one in there. So don’t feel like you missed him.”
“Got it.”
It was loud for a few minutes while players led out of the locker room, but then it got quiet, as in I was literally the only one left at the rink. For what felt
like hours.
Where is he?
I nearly had a heart attack when my phone started ringing with a FaceTime call, sounding crazy loud in the big empty rink. I was shocked to see it was my dad, because this was the second time he’d FaceTimed me since we’d arrived in Minnesota.
We didn’t usually dothat at all, much less twice.
We’d always been way more into tense telephone calls lled with guilty silences.
“Well, hey,” I said in a perky voice as I answered, smiling when his face appeared on my screen.
“Hi, honey,” he said back, wearing the beige T-shirt that was like a second uniform for him after-hours. He squinted and said, “Where the heck are you?”
It was dumb, but I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to tell him I was at a hockey rink. My dad had always acted like Minnesota, and everything tied into it, was a problem. My grandparents, Sarah, my mom’s childhood… it was all bad in his eyes.
When I was a kid, Southview was something he rolled his eyes about but begrudgingly let my mom run away to for a month every summer. He’d always had zero interest in joining us, but he accepted it for what it was.
His wife wanting to go home.
But the more they argued and didn’t get along, the more he behaved as if it was part of the problem. It was like he was jealous of the things that’d mattered to her before him.
“I’m actually at a hockey rink,” I said, smiling as if I’d never wanted to be anywhere more. “I might be helping out the hockey team just to keep my extracurriculars where they need to be for college.”
“Dear God, there’s not anything better than hockey for you to do?” he said disapprovingly, his dark eyebrows down. “I would think something like math club would be far better, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s a whole thing here where it’s too late for me to join most clubs,” I said.
“So your mother picked a fantastically backward school—got it.”
I didn’t want to have a conversation about his opinions on Southview or my mom, so I said, “How are you doing?”
I wanted to say I miss you, but we didn’t talk to each other like that.
“Everything is going well, Daniella, but something came up that I need to discuss with you. Do you have a minute or should I call when you are notat an ice rink?”
He said it with the same tone he would use if I’d said I was at a circus.
“Actually, I’m waiting around for things to nish, so your timing is perfect.
What’s going on?”
“Well,” he said, “I was in a meeting earlier, discussing my potential next assignment, and as it turns out, there is a very good chance that I might end up at Outt.”
“Really?” Outt Air Force Base was in Omaha, which was only like a ve-
hour drive from where we were.
That would be amazing.
Because I hated the reality that I couldn’tsee him if I needed to. I knew he was hard-edged half the time, but he was my dad and I wanted him around. I wanted him to be able to come to my graduation and I wanted to be able to smell the mix of aftershave and soap that’d always made him seem like the cleanest man on the planet.
So him moving closer was the best news I’d heard in ages. “When will you know?”
“Really it’s less a question of when I’ll know and more a question of when I’ll decide what I want to do.”
“Wait—you get to decide?” I asked with a laugh. “That’s very un–Air Force– like.”
“It’s a complicated situation, but basically there are parties who would really like me in both places, so I kind of have the upper hand. That being said, I want to discuss where you would like me to end up.”
“At Outt for sure,” I said, looking around to make sure nobody heard what an excited little kid I sounded like. “This is the best news!”
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said, sort of smiling but maintaining his composure like the ocer that he was. “Because if it were simply about location, I’d probably stay here; I likeRamstein.”
It was true—he did.
My mom and I, on the other hand, had notliked Ramstein. Germany had been incredible, but on a daily basis we’d felt a million miles away from everything familiar, stuck on a faraway military base.
“But the opportunity to be with youtrumps location,” he said, and warmth shot through me, because my stern father was admitting he missed me. That meant everything.
“Obviously your mother and I will have to carve out the details on how it would work, because it’s too far to do the every-other-weekend type of thing, but I think it’d make sense for you to come live with me at Outt until school ends. It’s ne if she wants to run around up there, but you shouldn’t have to be stuck in the tundra just because she’s reliving her childhood, right?”
I looked at his face on my phone and was confused for a second.
“You can spend the summer with her before you go away to school, once the weather’s nice up there.”
“Wait. What?” I couldn’t be hearing him right.
He wanted me to leave my mom?
“Well, I prefer Germany, but I prefer my daughter’s company more, of course. So if you want to live with me, then I will take the oered assignment. If you want to stay up in Minnesota with your mother, then I will probably re-up my assignment at Ramstein.”
“Those are the only options?” I asked, hating that my voice sounded thick and like I was going to cry. “You’re only coming back to the States if I leave Mom and live with you full-time?”
“There’s no need to get emotional, Daniella; I’m just trying to have a conversation.”
“I’m not emotional,” I said, fully aware of how defensive I sounded. “I’m just trying to understand.”
“It’s simple. I’m happy to leave Ramstein to spend time with you, but if that’s not what you want, I’m probably going to stay here. Does that make sense?”
God, I hated the way my dad always said that. Does that make sense? He never failed to make me feel like a stupid little kid when he threw out those four words.
He was watching me with zero emotion on his face, sternly observing my pathetic attempt at holding mine in. Why couldn’t he ever make things easy? All
I wanted was an easy relationship with him, and it felt like all he wanted was the opposite.
Or that he wanted me to prove my devotion to him by hurting my mom.
“Yes, it does,” I managed, lowering my voice to sound chill while I struggled to keep it together.
He couldn’t really be serious about this, could he?
“I know your mother won’t be thrilled with this plan,” he said, “But I think if she knows it’s what you want, she’ll be okay with it. She’s so determined to live with your grandfather that I don’t think she’s focusing on anything else.”
“Um, when do you need to give an answer?” I asked, forcing my face not to fall, hating how high-strung I sounded.
“I’d prefer to knock this out as quickly as possible,” he said, steepling his ngers under his chin like he was having a business conversation and not asking his daughter to tear out her mother’s heart. “Since you just moved there, the pieces should still be simple to recongure.”
“I don’t think I can do this to Mom,” I admitted in an almost whisper, trying to blink away the tears that were lling my eyes.
“But you found a way, with me,” he said quietly, and I was shocked by his words and how hurt he looked. Colonel Collins didn’t gethurt; he was a robot.
Wasn’t he?
“That’s not—”
“Sometimes choices aren’t easy, Daniella.”
“I know, but…” I turned the phone away from me, pointing it toward the roof so he couldn’t see me wiping away the tears.
“Okay, so now we’re crying,” he said disappointedly, sighing loudly, and I was glad I couldn’t see his face. “I’m sorry if you’re upset, and I’m not going to force you to move. I thought this might be something you’d want.”
My chest was so tight it hurt. “I dowant to—”
“No, I don’t think that you do,” he interrupted.
I couldn’t believe I was crying in the middle of a hockey rink, like full-on crying, but I couldn’t seem to stop the emotions as I listened to his voice. He went back and forth between making me feel guilty and making me feel sad; it was an innite loop that had me in a choke hold.
I kept wiping at my cheeks and trying to get it together, but I felt precariously close to sobbing when I heard him disconnect the call.
And then—shit, shit, shit—I heard voices.
I didn’t have a visual on who was coming or where they were, but I also couldn’t see through my tears. All I knew was that I couldn’t have anyone at this school or on this hockey team see me bawling like a baby at the hockey rink.
I got o the bench and ran for the maintenance closet. I needed to lock myself in a dark room and get my shit together before I saw anyone.
Please be unlocked please be unlocked.
As someone who didn’t cry a lot, I found it alarming how freely the tears were owing. There was no hiding that I was crying, and there was no stopping my eyes from whatever they were doing.
I reached for the handle—thank you for being unlocked—and opened the door, then quickly slipped inside and shut it behind me.
But I immediately knew I’d screwed up when, even through the tears, I could see that the room was big and bright. Not a closet at all. And it smelled like dirty socks in a heater. I wiped at my eyes and realized I was in a locker room, holy
shit.
Thank God no one is in here.
I leaned my forehead against the cold wall and took a big gasping breath, but it came out as a hiccuping sob. I covered my eyes with my hands, giving in to the
despair for a second.
“Dani?”
Fuck!I quickly wiped at my eyes before turning around, hoping somehow I didn’t look as bad as I knew I looked.
But when I turned around, my heart sank to my feet. It was Alec.
Oh God.
Not only was I mortied that he was seeing me bawling, but also—dear Lord —he was naked.
Not completely naked—he was wearing black boxer briefs—but his hair was wet and his muscles were everywhere and I could smell his soap or shampoo; he’d obviously just gotten out of the shower, shit shit shit.
“Oh my God,” I said, hating that I was still crying. I could hear the crying in my voice as I muttered, “I’m so sorry, I did not mean to come in here.”
“Dani?” He took quick steps toward me and grabbed my upper arms in his hands, his voice so serious when he asked, “What’s wrong?”
His dark eyes swept over my face, and it felt like he was holding his breath, waiting to hear what had happened.
And I was mortied that it was nothing. No terrible thing had just happened to me, I was just a sad little girl who couldn’t please her dad.
“Nothing. Really, my dad called and… I mean, I’m ne,” I said, sounding like a frog because my throat was so damn tight.
“You’re not, though,” he said, and something about the concern in his voice did the opposite of helping me get myself together.
His concern made me shatter.
“Collins,” he said, almost with a question mark, pulling me into his arms as the stupid tears wouldn’t stop, wrapping himself around me. His hug felt like home, like something I could count on, and there was nothing I could do but snake my arms around his neck and take refuge.
Anyone else in the world, including my mom, would’ve told me all the ways that it was going to be okay, that it was ne and everything was going to be great.
But Alec knew me and the way I felt about my father.
Or at least he used to.
He just hugged me tighter as I attempted to get myself together.
“I’m s-sorry,” I managed to hiccup out after a few more minutes.
The tears were nally stopping, thank God, so I pulled back, wiping my cheeks, and gave him what I knew was a pathetic smile.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I said, sniing, “but thank you for being cool about my little breakdown.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said, his voice scratchy, his forehead creased.
And as he looked down at me with those dark eyes and that impossibly handsome face, I realized that I was still wrapped around his nearly nude body.
“Sorry—” I managed, but when I tried pulling away, I was jerked forward.
“Your necklace,” he said, and I looked down and saw that his chain was tangled up with my necklace. I literally couldn’t pull away from him because we were tied together by jewelry.
“Oh,” I breathed, incapable of more than that, because it was so absurd that my face was literally right next to his neck, which smelled really freaking good— holy shit—and I could feel his breath on my collarbone.
“Hang on,” he murmured into my neck, and then after a second I felt the necklaces separate as he said, “Got it.”
“Thank you, Alec,” I said, looking up at his face but not letting go of his shoulders. Not yet. I was thanking him for more than the necklace, and I could tell by the way he was looking at me that he understood. “I didn’t mean—”
“Whoa!” I heard from behind me in a deep, growly voice. “What the— Barczewski…?”
We both whipped around, and I wanted to die as I saw not only the hockey coach standing there, scowling at us, but three other grown men beside him who stared like they’d just caught us having sex in the locker room.
“What the hell is going on here?” the coach yelled, and we quickly jumped apart.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” Alec said, and I was amazed at how calm he sounded.
“Really?” the coach said in a near shout. “Because it looks like there’s a girl in
my locker room.”
I said, “I—I accidentally—”
“Dani,” Alec interrupted, his face absent of the kindness I’d seen moments ago. His jaw exed and unexed, like he was ghting to hold it together, before
he said, “You should go.”
“But—”
“Go,” he repeated, his dark eyes on mine.
“He’s right,” the coach agreed. “You shouldn’t be in here, young lady.”
“I’ll explain what happened,” Alec said to me, but he looked volatile, like he was about to lose his shit.
I nodded dumbly, because what else could I do? I was standing in front of four scowling men and my former friend, who I kind of suspected hated me. I
nodded one more time and turned, walking so fast out of the locker room that it was almost a run.
I texted my mom and told her to pick me up as soon as she could, and she said she was on her way, but I felt sick as I realized what I’d done.
The hockey coach was a teacher.
A teacher who’d found me in the boys’ locker room, where one of those boys
was changing.
I was in so much trouble.
