Drenched in sweat once again, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. We stepped off the ice with a score of 4-5, a friendly game.

“Next time, you guys need to let me run the warm-up.” Heath’s blue eyes twinkled with the maniacal mischief of a man intent on torturing his friends.

A sweaty towel sailed through the air and smacked him right in the face.

Declan laughed and stepped off the ice. “Never again. I swear, I’d rather do two pro workouts back to back than be subjected to you again.” We grabbed our gear and lumbered toward the locker room; walking on skates always felt like teetering on a tightrope. My season was over, so the trip to Philly had been on a whim. Everyone on my team fled LA the second the season was over, heading back home to their families and friends. The town got way too quiet to handle for more than a few weeks.

“Taylor.” A stern but delicate voice echoed in the nearly empty rink—not exactly what we were used to on the ice. It was a small, blonde woman, zipped up in a winter coat.

Heath whipped his head around to her.

“Watch how you’re heading into the boards hard on that knee. You’re going to blow it out before the season starts.” She smiled at him and rocked back on her heels.

Heath nodded. “Will do.”

“You should look into that too, number 15.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder with her brownie batter gaze pointed right at Colm as he tugged his helmet off. His skunk stripe, as we all called it, stuck straight up in the air. That white streak right in the center of his hair had been our only ammo against him back in high school, the only imperfection in his white-knight appearance. It was a genetic trait, though, lucky for her, his sister’s was at the back of her head—not that his had lost him the pick of women.

Colm stopped short and turned around. “Who the hell are you?” His nostrils flared.

“You’re not one of mine, so I should probably keep my mouth shut, but I thought you could use a little friendly advice. If you want to play past your next injury, you’ve gotta watch the force on that.” She twirled her key ring and smirked before sauntering off with her hands shoved into her jacket pockets.

“Thanks, Bailey,” Heath called out after her.

“Who was that?” Colm craned his neck as she climbed the stairs between two sections and went out one of the tunnels.

“Bailey Grisom. Head physio. Might want to look into it.” Heath nodded toward Colm’s knee.

“I’ve been playing my way since I stepped onto the ice. My body hasn’t let me down yet. Not a single freaking injury.”

Heath shrugged and we headed into the locker room with Colm grumbling the entire way. Ford shook his head and grabbed the rest of his gear.

I stepped under the spray of the shower, letting the water wash away the sweat and grime from our hour on the ice. It had been weird walking into the rink. Our last game there had been with Preston, the UPhil team captain and teammate of Declan and Heath. He’d been the best guy, awesome skills on the ice, and then in a blink he was gone—car accident, hit by a drunk driver. He’d managed to swerve to protect his girlfriend, Imogen, but he hadn’t been so lucky. It had looked like he’d make a full recovery and then bam, gone. It had been a hard way to end the season.

It was strange how a place could look, smell, and be exactly the same but feel totally different.

“When are you going down the shore?” I tightened my towel around my waist. I’d worked a little magic and snagged us a stellar place steps from the beach. This late in the season, it was usually impossible to get a house like that, but money talked.

“Kara and I are driving down on the Saturday after the Rittenhouse graduation. When are you guys going?” Heath grabbed his shoes out of a locker.

“Mak wants to go down midweek. She knows shore traffic will be killer on a Saturday.” A towel whipped by my head as I stepped out of the shower. Declan stifled a smile and went back to tying his shoes.

“I’m sure Kara and I will find a way to keep ourselves occupied on the long drive.” Heath waggled his eyebrows. The guys were pairing off: first Declan, who I’d thought would hold out until the end, and now Heath. It was only a matter of time before Colm and Ford jumped ship too. And then what? I’d be on the outside looking in, a ninth wheel with a new spare at my side every few months.

“I can arrange for cars to drive everyone down so no one has to worry about traffic.”

A collective groan filled the locker room, and someone threw another towel at my head.

“Dude, how many times do we have to tell you? Stop trying to buy us shit. Better watch out or people are going to start to think you’re our sugar daddy.” Heath shook his head and zipped his duffle.

“While we’re down there, we’ll do a party in July, around the Fourth—and by we, I mean we.” Colm gestured at everyone else in the room other than me.

“But—” I tried to cut in, but Declan barreled right over me.

“Sounds good to me.” He slid on his sneakers.

“You guys want to get some drinks?” I rubbed the towel through my damp hair.

“I can’t. I’m meeting Mak for an early dinner before we go visit her parents.” Declan dropped his foot off the bench and picked up his duffle.

“Heath?”

“I’m going by the greenhouse to pick up the last of my plants and then I’m meeting Kara to sign the lease on our new place.” He tugged his bag on over his shoulder.

“Colm?”

He straightened his tie and slid on a navy blazer. “Can’t. I have to take Liv for some freshman orientation thing. Sorry, man.”

“Ford?” I turned to him as he stepped out of the shower room in his shorts and t-shirt. We’d stopped giving him shit about it long ago. He was the only one who went into and came out of the shower stall fully dressed.

“What?” His eyes were wide like someone had asked him if he wanted to rob a bank, not merely said his name.

“Drinks?”

He visibly relaxed. “Uh, sure. I’m starving. What about the rest?” He pointed at Declan and Heath, who were practically already out the door.

“They’re losers. We don’t need them. They’re already whipped.” I gestured as if cracking a whip as they left the room with one-finger salutes.

“Everyone else turn you down?” He ran his fingers through his wet hair with a smile tugging on his lips. Striding across the room, he dumped his towel in the laundry bin.

I shrugged. “It’s not like you wouldn’t have gotten an invite anyway.”

“Okay.”

We got dressed and headed out to the bar. It was still early, so it wasn’t too full, which was good. Even though we were in Philly, every so often someone would recognize us. I didn’t miss the looks we got when we stepped into the place, but thankfully no one came up to us or I was ninety percent sure Ford would have spontaneously combusted from embarrassment. It was a quick couple of drinks and some bar snacks, made even shorter by the monosyllabic Ford. If Colm wasn’t around, he didn’t really have too much to say.

“One of these days someone other than Colm is going to pry more than five words out of you.”

His fingers tightened around the beer bottle in front of him at Colm’s name. What was that about?

He relaxed his grip and leaned back. “What do you mean? I’m a regular fucking chatterbox.” His lips tilted up in a sideways smirk.

“You’re right. My ears are falling off from all your quips and non-stop stories.”

“I’m a perpetual laugh riot.” His words were so dry they sucked the moisture out of my mouth.

The laugh that burst free from my lips turned more than a few heads. I grabbed for a napkin and dabbed at the corners of my eyes.

“Dude, I swear one of these days the shyness or introspection or whatever it is will finally fall away and we’ll all drop dead of shock.”

“Some people love to say every word that pops into their head.” He shrugged and drained his beer.

“You’re definitely coming to the shore, right?”

“Even I’ve gotten sick of hanging out with only Colm all the time. It’ll be great to all be back together for a while.”

“Hell yeah it will.”

The server dropped off the check, and I grabbed it to slide my card inside.

Ford snatched it away, stuck his card in, and handed it back to the server while staring me down. “We’re not in high school anymore. We don’t need you to keep picking up all the tabs.”

“I know. It’s a force of habit,” I grumbled and shoved my wallet back into my pocket. We got up from our table, and the eyes followed us as we left. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I thumped Ford on the back and answered the call without looking at my screen.

“Hello.”

Ford pulled his hood up over his head and did his best to disappear into the sidewalk crowd. It wasn’t working.

“Hello, Emmett.”

“Dad?” I stopped in my tracks, causing someone to slam into my back and bite out a curse. I glared, pushing my phone against my ear.

“Yes. Who else would it be?”

I scrunched my eyebrows and tried to think of the last time he’d called me…one—no, two months ago. This was the third call in six months, so that was a new record.

“Pretty much any other person on the planet who knows me. I still get happy birthday messages from the lunch lady at Rittenhouse Prep.”

“Ah, well, speaking of Rittenhouse, the graduation is in a couple weeks. I wanted to make sure you’ll be there.” The discomfort in his voice ratcheted up a notch.

“I’m there every year.”

He cleared his throat. “Yes, but I do like to ensure you’ve remembered since you’re all the way across the country.” I’d been across the country for the last three, hadn’t missed one yet. Also, how sad was it that he didn’t even know I was currently in the same city as him?

“Right, excellent. Well, we have more than pleasantries to discuss once you’re there. Perhaps we’ll have to arrange for something to get away from all the distractions. You know, two months ago with my heart attack—”

“You had a heart attack?!” His words barely made sense to me. My stoic, detached father lying in a hospital bed—the image didn’t compute in my mind.

“Yes. Didn’t your mother tell you?”

“No, I—no. If she’d told me, I would have come home.” How could she have kept that from me?

“Don’t be silly. There’s no need for that. I’m fine.”

“Dad, you could have died.”

“I…could have, but I’m fine now. No need to worry.”

They’d always been distant. My parents hadn’t come to my high school championship game, hadn’t even called when I was drafted. They’d been to a handful of my games since I joined the NHL, usually bringing a client along if they thought it would impress them. Their worlds revolved around only them. They’d never given me the slightest hint that they cared. A sharp pang hit me in the chest. My dad could have died, but why did I care? What evidence did I have that they cared about me? A phone call every few months? Why did I still let them get to me?

“Right,” I mumbled, trying to rein in my emotions.

“Excellent. We will see you for the graduation. It will be good to see you. Goodbye, Emmett.” The silence on the other end rang in my ears until a blaring horn snapped me out of my stupor. I held up my hand before getting my ass out of the middle of the street.

Just like that, he’d ended the call, like he hadn’t dropped the bomb of all bombs seconds before. I’d stood by while Heath, Declan, and Ford’s parents cheered them on, glancing up at the stands and thinking maybe one day I’d be able to get my parents to notice. That day had never come.

Before Colm’s parents had died, they’d tried to come to as many games as they could. It wasn’t many, but at least they tried. I’d tried to let it roll off my back, but it’s bound to screw you up when the people who were supposed to love you most didn’t give a crap about you.

Growing up, the guys used to always moan about how much it sucked to have to check in with their parents. They’d duck and dodge phone calls and texts when we were up to no good, but they didn’t know how lucky they were. Someone gave a damn about them, cared if they lived or died. I had thought I’d had that with someone who’d become my family, but she’d betrayed me too. Apparently, I sucked at anything other than hockey.

Their distance and inattentiveness hadn’t been completely damaging. The one silver lining of them being such shitty parents was that my hockey career had become what it was. They’d forgotten to enroll me in kindergarten when I was five, which meant I didn’t start until six, and being a year older than everyone else had come in handy when it was time for me to play hockey. My size and dexterity were always an advantage I’d been able to hang on to.

We’d driven past the rink every day on the way home, and one day I’d asked my nanny to stop in. We’d set up lessons, and that had been it. The illustrious hockey career of Emmett Cunning had started when I’d pointed out the window one day leaving elementary school because the thought of going home to a cold, empty house had left me searching for anywhere else to go after school. Once I’d realized a team, a family of sorts, came with the game, I had been sold.

I stepped back into the silence of the penthouse, the quiet like nails on a chalkboard. I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.

It pissed me off more and more that Dad’s health worried me, that our distance bothered me. We’d exchanged a few calls, but that wasn’t enough to undo years of neglect. Why should I have expected a closeness? Caring? But that fear was there.

His death… What if he died? What then? Somehow I’d gotten it in my head that maybe someday things would get better. Maybe his heart attack would change things. He’d said he wanted to talk about more once I was there.

An hour later, the email came in with the Rittenhouse Prep info. The Samuels Scholarship had been in place at the school for as long as I could remember. The valedictorian and salutatorian always won it, which made me being there even more of a nuisance.

The fund had been something important to my grandpa, Samuel Cunning, so I’d be there even if it was a formality. I clicked on the attachments and opened the scholarship applications. Fresh-faced high school seniors smiled back at me, seeming like preschoolers in my estimation. I might have only been four years out of high school, but damn did they look young.

I clicked on the second-to-last application after laughing my way through an essay on the trials and tribulations of a safari trip to Namibia the previous summer. Seems like someone forgot that meant maybe there weren’t going to be five-star showers out in the wilderness. Never change, Rittenhouse Prep. Never change. There were girls back when I’d been in high school who’d seen a broken nail as a major life event, and it seemed it wasn’t much different now.

I flipped past the initial application page without even looking at the name. Taking a sip of my beer, I choked on it. My chest burned like fire as I broke out into a wheezing fit. As if my dreams of her the night before had conjured her, a smiling picture of Avery stared back at me with her arm around a girl.

Scrolling back to the top of the application, I saw the name: Alyson Davis. Aly. Avery’s sister. All the times we’d driven around town with Aly bouncing around in the back seat of my truck hit me hard. She’d jumped up and down when Avery and I would pick her up from school, always angling for a piggyback ride whenever she could get one.

I couldn’t hold back the smile as those memories washed over me. It had always felt like it was our own practice for when Avery and I had a kid of our own. The sharp ache was back, so biting I had to grab the edge of the desk.

Alyson was valedictorian of her class, and her essay was all about her road trip with her sister. They’d driven down to DC to see the fireworks over Fourth of July weekend the previous summer. She talked about her sister taking her to the Smithsonian and the flat tire they got on the way back. My stomach lurched imagining Avery and Alyson sitting on the side of the road, waiting for someone to stop and help them.

And then the fire came, that burning, crackling flame that flared up whenever tender thoughts about Avery came to me. I shouldn’t have cared. It shouldn’t have mattered one bit where she went and who she went with. She’d told me in more ways than one that she didn’t want to be with me forever, though none had been as loud and clear as when I’d walked in on her at my party on her knees in front of another guy. The crack and shattering of the front door as I’d stormed out before I demolished Fischer, the resident dealer at Rittenhouse Prep, had been a perfect reflection of what she’d done to my heart and soul.

It was good my parents hadn’t planned on going to my high school graduation, because I hadn’t either. I’d hopped on a plane to Sydney the first chance I got.

I skimmed through the rest of Alyson’s application. Every chance she had, there was a comment about her sister and how she couldn’t have done it without Avery. Anyone else reading it would have thought her sister was perfect, but I’d experienced that perfection. Avery had weaponized infatuation and love and blown a hole right through my chest.

How long had what I’d walked in on been going on? How long had she been screwing Fischer? Had she been laughing with him behind my back?

So many times I’d held her in my arms or she’d sat on my lap late at night. The way the light always found her to bask her in a honeyed glow…I’d fallen so deep, I hadn’t seen any signs. I’d thought everything she’d said about me going off to college and leaving her behind was based on her insecurities about me dropping her if I left. Joke was on me, because she had been trying to let me down easy, I guess.

I shook my head. Getting sucked into her trap again wasn’t what I needed, but maybe there was something else, a way to finally rid myself of the dreams and nightmares, to prove to myself that I wouldn’t be hung up on her forever. I wouldn’t have a driving need to picture her on top of me with my hands cupped over her soft, sweet breasts, running my fingers up and down her arms as she laughed, resting against me on the couch and stealing all my red Skittles.

This thing with Avery needed to be over once and for all. I was sick of letting thoughts of her chase me out of the city where my real family was.