28. Dylan

Chapter 28

Dylan

Roommate Group Chat

Dylan : Any more brilliant ideas?

Bret : You rejected my singing idea. It makes me wonder how committed you are to this fake relationship.

Dylan : I’m committed to not running her off so…

Gage : Because you’re into her.

Dylan : Not relevant.

Bret : There is NOTHING MORE relevant.

Bret : Dylan

Bret : Bruh.

Gage : I think you should kiss her senseless. Just make sure the other guy is around to see it. If that’s still your objective.

Dylan : I’m not staying in Winterhaven. Remember the four-step plan we made?

Bret : Plans are overrated.

It had totally been a ten.

I scrubbed a hand down my face as I stared in the mirror later that night. What was I doing? Taking Rosie to my favorite spot in Winterhaven? Kissing her? Teasing her? Wishing I could sneak her right back to that spot and kiss her again?

I was having fun, but I needed to focus on getting back on the team.

Still, I couldn’t get the feel of Rosie’s pliant lips out of my head, how she’d so readily let me pull her close. How my pulse had thumped so hard I was sure she’d hear it. I’d never had a kiss like that before.

I went into the bedroom and grabbed my phone.

Dylan: What do you know about Rosie’s dad?

While I waited for Hudson to respond, I looked at the team’s schedule for the rest of the season, even though I had it memorized. We had one more playoff game this week, and if we won, we’d get into the finals.

A text from Rosie popped up on my phone. “Post this and caption it with something funny.”

She’d attached a picture of me covered in paint in front of the library. I was smiling at her—my eyes soft and sparkling, revealing all my secrets.

Dylan : Funny? I’m sorry. You have me mistaken for someone else.

Dylan : Besides, won’t it look like I’m having so much fun I don’t care about the team?

Rosie : Nope. Not if you do another post right after with this picture.

She sent one of me that I hadn’t realized she’d taken. It was the night I’d been at the restaurant, watching the Peak’s hockey game. I was literally on the edge of my seat, my hands gripping the table, my attention riveted on the screen with longing.

It made my stomach ache to look at.

Dylan : This is too much.

Rosie : You have to let yourself be vulnerable.

I didn’t want to be, though. My opponents had to see me as someone formidable. The game started long before they got onto the ice, and they needed to believe Beast was more than just a moniker. It’s who I was—someone to fear on the ice.

I’d skipped photo shoots with puppies for more private ice time in order to bring my best to the team. I didn’t come home to Winterhaven on breaks, I’d spent every spare cent on the best equipment and help money could buy, and I’d worked myself to the bone so I could be a winning player.

And yet no one saw that. They’d turned my focus into villainy.

A villainy I’d leaned into after Shiloh died. It had been easier to be angry than to let anyone know I was hurting.

I’d gone too far and lost the one thing I’d always worked so hard for. So perhaps Rosie was right.

I posted the picture of me watching the game with the simple caption: I may not be on the ice, but I’m with you guys. GO PEAKS!

Immediately, Rosie hearted my post and commented: They’re lucky to have you. She then left a second comment: a kiss emoji with the number 10.

It surprised a laugh out of me, and I found if I was really quiet, I could hear Rosie humming as she worked on the painting on the other side of the wall. For the first time in months, I didn’t struggle to fall asleep.

I walked into Icy Asps for the semi-final PHL game, not surprised this time to find the restaurant completely full. The entryway was stacked with umbrellas, and I added mine to the pile. A steady rain this evening was promising to become a full downpour.

Rosie waved me over to the bar where she’d saved a seat with a folded up towel. “I had to fight off three people for this seat.”

“Thank you.” I sat gratefully. My family was probably somewhere in here, too, watching the game—most of the town seemed to be—but I wanted to be alone for this.

The big screen in the restaurant was broadcasting the pre-game talk show. The nerves that zinged through me before a game were present, even though I was nowhere near the rink. In fact, they were worse. At least when I was heading out to the ice, I had some control of the outcome.

Here, all the way in Alaska, anything could happen, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. Win or lose, it was up to them.

Rosie set an ice water in front of me, and her hand brushed along my shoulders and back as she rushed onto her next table. The next time she came by, she did it again, and this time I snatched her hand and pulled her close to me.

“I was promised public kissing,” I murmured quietly to her.

Her cheeks were flushed from running around for the last fifteen minutes I’d been here, but she stepped between my legs and rested her forearms on my shoulders. Of course Rosie would match my energy. My heart rate sped up as she leaned down and put her mouth right by my ear. “You don’t think we need more practice before we make our PDA debut?”

I swallowed hard as her lips brushed my ear, the whisper of her words sending a shiver to my core. “I’m sure you’re at least a five now.”

She lightly bit my ear lobe and then pushed away from me, shaking her head with a mirthful smirk. “You’re going to get me fired.”

She raced off again, and I only saw her in spurts as she ran around taking pizza orders. Mine arrived just as the game began. It was a meat pizza, just as I liked, except someone had spelled out the number 10 in pineapple chunks on the top.

I laughed and looked around for Rosie. When she met my eyes, she gave me a wicked grin.

Just a month ago, I never thought I could be smiling, having a good time, on the night of the semi-finals of a game I wasn’t going to be at. That was the magic of Rosie.

The magic of Winterhaven.

I rearranged all the pineapples on one side of the pizza and went to town on the rest. It was only seconds to face off, and I glanced around to see who had shown up. My family was there, sitting at a table next to Shiloh’s parents. I’d run into them a few times since Hudson and I had talked last week. It wasn’t as awkward as I’d worried it would be. They’d both hugged me, and neither of them accused me of living when their son had died.

Hudson caught my eye and waved his phone at me. He’d texted me back several days ago that he didn’t know much about Rosie’s dad, but he was going to ask around discretely. I pulled out my phone.

Hudson : He’s a deadbeat. Bennett says he often left the family for months at a time to go on adventures and took off completely once their mom got sick. They haven’t seen or heard from him in over ten years.

I frowned. Why would he come back here now, after all this time?

“I have a five-minute break,” Rosie said. I stuffed my phone into my pocket as she leaned over me to grab a slice of pineapple-filled pizza. She paused when she saw that I’d made them into a heart.

I tensed, wondering if it was too much. It wasn’t like I was confessing my love or anything, but she wasn’t moving. Maybe she just hated that I’d touched all her pineapple pieces. But when she turned to me, she smiled. “You’re a secret softie.”

I scoffed. “Lies. I’m the villain, remember?”

She stood just behind me, eating her slice, her eyes on the game. I grabbed her hips and navigated her between my legs so she could lean against me while she ate. I tried to keep my attention on the game—no one had scored yet, so it was still anyone’s win—but the soft skin of Rosie’s neck was distracting. She had her hair pulled up, something I’d only seen her do a few times before.

I blew gently against her neck and watched the fine hairs stir. She shivered, and goosebumps popped up along her skin. So I did it again. She didn’t move an inch, her eyes set on the game like it was the most riveting thing she’d ever watched.

I leaned close this time and pressed my lips to the juncture between her neck and shoulder. She caught her breath, and this time she did turn to look at me. Or, more accurately, over my shoulder.

“Max is watching,” she whispered, barely moving her lips.

And with three words, I was plunged right back into the freezing cold reality of what we were doing here. Rosie and I weren’t in an actual relationship. No matter how much I was starting to wish we were. We couldn’t. Not with me leaving. Not with her in love with someone else.

I cleared my throat and backed up a fraction. “Then I guess it’s working.”

“I guess so,” she said. She stared at me for a beat, then stepped out of my loose embrace. “I’d better get back to it.”

I tried to keep my attention on the game, but it was hard with Rosie moving around in the edges of my vision, flitting from table to table like a hummingbird going from flower to flower.

At the first period the score was still zero, and tensions were increasing on the ice. Bret had spent several minutes in the penalty box, and Gage—normally one of the more easy-going players—had already gotten into two fights.

Semi-finals could be like this, and this one was more charged with emotion and energy than usual. To have come this far after losing Shiloh was nothing short of miraculous.

The game started back up again, but the Peaks’ energy had changed. They weren’t as full of fire as they’d been in the beginning, and it didn’t take long for the Snow Hares to get a goal past us. Someone in the restaurant yelled, “No!” and it was exactly what I was thinking.

The rest of my pizza turned cold as I remained riveted on the game, watching a trade of points, until in the last few seconds of the game, the Snow Hares hit the final goal, winning by one.

I watched their team celebrate on the screen as the Peaks skated out to the locker room with rounded shoulders. One of the reporters grabbed Bret before he could skate past him, and asked, “Do you think the Peaks would have won with Shiloh and Dylan?”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we would have won,” Bret said. He stared straight into the camera, right at me, as if he knew I’d be watching. I sat rooted in the spot, cemented to the chair with a million pounds of weight on my shoulders. One more loss. When would the losses end?

The reporter nodded and began to move the mic away, but Bret took his arm to stop him. The reporter’s eyes widened with surprise as Bret brought the mic close. “But there’s more to life than hockey.”

My phone buzzed with message after message, but I ignored them all, feeling as though I was in a haze. All the sound around me was muffled, and my vision tunneled to the small space of counter in front of me. I needed to skate. Desperately. I just needed to skate.

I didn’t realize my hands were shaking until two soft hands surrounded them. “Let’s go,” she whispered.

I followed Rosie out of the restaurant, holding her hand like it was a lifeline. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. The Peaks had lost before. We’d lost championship games before. But it felt like this time, we’d failed Shiloh. I’d failed Shiloh. By letting my actions get me kicked out of the game, I’d let my best friend down.

We walked in silence, my brain a whirl of regret and sadness. When we finally stopped, I looked up to see that we were at the rec center. Rosie set the umbrella down that I hadn’t even realized she’d been holding over us and pulled a set of keys from her pocket to unlock the door.

“You have keys to the rec center?”

“Another one of my secrets,” she whispered with her finger over her mouth in a shushing motion.

“I thought I knew them all,” I said, the words feeling like they came from far away.

“Secrets are like a field of weeds. You pull one, and several more pop up in their place. Luckily, mine are harmless.”

Were they, though? I thought of her dad, but even that couldn’t push past the wall of numbness in front of me. The air grew colder as we walked through a back hallway I’d never been in before, and then she opened a door.

An ice rink.

This hadn’t been here when I was a kid. I didn’t realize they’d built one. I blinked and the world came into a little more focus. Rosie left my side to approach a closet. It took a few more keys, but she managed to find one to unlock shelves of skates. The familiar scent of leather and sweat met my nose, and I closed my eyes. This here was my childhood in one snapshot.

“It’s named after Shiloh. He donated the money to build it a few years back.” She ran her hand over the counter, where Blaire Ice Rink was etched into the glossy wood.

I felt frozen in place as I stared at his name. His legacy.

Rosie tugged on my arm. “I know it’s not the quality you’re used to, but…” She motioned toward the skates. In my daze, it took me a minute to locate my size. The laces were short, like they’d been skated over a few times and severed the cloth. The leather on the sides was scuffed and peeling from having hundreds of different feet inside of them.

I took my shoes off and put the skates on, feeling like I was finally home. I shot onto the ice and skated back and forth, back and forth, letting the rest of the world disappear in the motion. The cold pricked my arms, and I increased my pace.

Nothing mattered but me and the ice. Me and the sliding motion of my legs carrying me from one side to the other. When I got going fast enough, it almost felt like soaring. Shiloh and I used to close our eyes while we skated and then land unceremoniously in snow piles at the edges of the pond. One of my earliest memories was giggling as I picked myself up from a faceplant, only to see Shiloh land right beside me in his own pile of snow. Our faces had been red with cold, but we did it again and again, finding joy in something so simple.

Shiloh had always been the best at finding joy in the small things. The obvious things like friendship and puppies and donating money to our high school, in his wife and daughter. In making me laugh by doing something ridiculous or daring me and Hudson to do things to get us out of our heads. But he also found joy in the overlooked parts of life too—one of my mom’s cookies fresh from the oven, the handshake we’d taken two weeks to memorize when we were kids and had done before every game, the fresh scent of the first snowfall of winter.

He hadn’t been perfect. He’d been moody and his dares went too far and he’d been so obtuse about the most obvious things. But he’d been my best friend. And I’d wanted us to win this game for him. But we hadn’t. We couldn’t. We needed him still.

My skates skidded to a stop, and tears ran down my cheeks for the first time since Shiloh died. The cold wetness stung my skin, but I let them fall. Even when I felt the warm body of Rosie behind me, holding me tight, as if she had the power to keep all the pieces of me from shattering.

I turned into her arms and held her close, breathing in her comforting and familiar scent. She didn’t say anything, but just her presence was enough to loosen my chest and help me take a full breath.

She stepped back and cupped my cheeks in her hands. Her hands were cool, but warmer than my face, as she brushed some of the tears away. I should be embarrassed, probably, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t be with Rosie.

“I left the keys on the bench.” She nodded her head to the side where I saw a glint of silver. “You’ve got the place to yourself all night.”

Gratitude filled me, and I pulled her back into my arms for an embrace that lifted her off her feet. I buried my face into her neck. “Thank you,” I whispered.

Then as she walked away and I heard the door closing behind her, I started to skate again, slower this time. And I let every memory of Shiloh come.