Kane (Arizona Vengeance 8)

I stay silent, not feeling the need to defend my crappy play. Shit happens sometimes.

“Your head isn’t in the game, and since I’ve never seen your head not in the game, I’m going to assume something bad has happened in your life.”

He’s astute, but I don’t acknowledge how close he is to figuring me out right now. I haven’t told a single member of the team what happened with Mollie. We had a light skate yesterday. I came to the arena, did my job—not all that well, I admit—then went straight back to my empty condo in the vain hope Mollie had decided to come back and tell me she was wrong.

“Did something happen with Mollie?” Jim asks in a low voice.

I flinch so visibly that Jim asks, “What happened?”

Fuck it. I raise my head, look around to make sure no one else is listening, and admit, “We broke up.”

“Jesus,” he mutters. “I’m sorry, man.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Mind me asking what happened?” he ventures. “Because if there were ever a couple destined to make it, given your history and long-standing friendship, it was you two.”

I let out a sigh. With that, I release the burden of how things played out. I tell him about the proposal and her job offer. Our fight and the fact we both drew lines in the sand, neither willing to budge. And then I explained how Mollie had left without a backward glance and nothing more than a “goodbye.”

Jim is my teammate.

My linemate.

He’s probably my closest friend on the team.

I open myself up to the sage advice and comfort I know he’ll bestow upon me, hoping it will get my head back straight so I can go out and be an asset to this team.

Instead, I feel his hand slap me upside the back of my head and him state, “You’re a goddamn idiot, Kane.”

Whipping his way, I glare. “What the fuck?”

“You’re a goddamn idiot,” he repeats. “You let your relationship go over something that inconsequential?”

I blink, trying to process his words. “Inconsequential?” I growl. “A year apart is not inconsequential.”

“You got poor grades in math in high school and college, didn’t you?” he asks.

I frown. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Because if you figure that you and Mollie could say… I don’t know… have a fantastic forty to fifty years together, my math skills tell me that’s far greater than one measly year apart.”

Jesus fucking Christ.

When he puts it like that, I look like an absolute idiot—feeling that way now, too.

Which makes me feel like I need to defend myself. “I offered her a middle ground,” I protest. “Shorter trips during the season and said I would travel with her the entire summer.”

Jim just shakes his head for a long moment. So long, I start to sweat a little. He finally asks, “Does that make you feel better about the situation? That you offered her a middle ground?”

“No,” I grumble, head hanging low.

Was I just so caught up in the need to be right, and so confident Mollie would bend to my wishes instead of chasing her dreams, that I missed something so simple?

That in the long run, it doesn’t matter if we’re apart for the next year because what we have is strong enough to last through it? I know that with absolute certainty because I have ten years of best-friend history to back it up.

“Christ, I’m an idiot,” I mutter.

“Exactly what I said,” Jim retorts with a smirk. “But I’m confident with a fair amount of groveling, you can make things right.”

I sure as fuck hope so. Because if Mollie doesn’t forgive me, then I’ve lost the best thing that has ever happened to me. I’m not sure if I could ever move on from that.CHAPTER 29Mollie“He’s playing like crap,” my father says, pointing out the obvious from his recliner.

I’m sitting in front of the TV in the family room of my parents’ house, cross-legged with Samson’s head on my lap. My eyes have been glued to the screen every time Kane’s line takes the ice.

“Clearly, his head isn’t in the game,” my mother adds. She’s knitting on the couch but watching the game, because she’s so good she doesn’t need to keep her eyes on what she’s doing.

I don’t need their observations to make me feel any worse than I already do. My head hangs low as I pet Samson for comfort. I’m pretty sure the main reason for Kane’s horrible gameplay is our breakup. And this is an important game. The Flash were Cup contenders last year, and they are stronger than ever. While the rest of the team is making up for Kane’s slack, there’s still a lot of game left as it’s only the first period.

“Oh, breakaway,” my dad yells as he wrestles his recliner back into a sitting position.