Parker (Face-Off 1)

“Do you want to talk about it?”

That seems to make her cry even harder. Her tears soak my T-shirt as she leans her head against my chest and continues to sob.

Ten minutes pass with Charlotte hysterical and me stroking her back, trying to soothe her, before she calms down and mumbles, “I’m so glad you’re here, Alex.”

“I’m here for you, sweetheart.”

She wipes her face with her tank and then nudges me with her elbow with a playful smile. “You know I hate being called that.”

I shake my head and laugh. “Would you prefer I call you honey or darling instead?”

“Coach works for me.”

“How about Charlotte?”

Her nose scrunches together in disapproval. “Nah, Coach is better.”

“Why not Charlotte?”

She shrugs, her eyes focused on the chest of drawers on the opposite side of the room. “Because Charlotte is the person I used to be, if that makes sense.”

“No, not really. Were you a secret agent in a previous life?” I quip.

She doesn’t respond, her face expressionless.

I follow her line of sight and see that she’s not looking at the chest but what’s on top of it. There’s a picture of a young girl in a frilly pink dress, the same long caramel hair as Charlotte, and she’s standing next to a man in a black tuxedo. He must be her father. They have the same hair color and bright blue eyes that practically jump off the picture. But her features are soft and feminine, sort of angelic, where his are hard and intense.

A few seconds pass before she looks up and into my eyes and points at the frame. “Wanna hear a story?”

“Um…okay.”

Charlotte snuggles up against my arm, her eyes trained on mine. She drops her hand onto my forearm. I’m still shaking from the withdrawal, something she doesn’t bother to mention even though I have no doubt she can feel me trembling beneath her fingers.

“Charlotte was innocent. She wore dresses her mother had picked out for her and attended hospital fundraisers with her father. Everything in her perfect little world was exactly that—perfect. Until, one day, Daddy came home and started drinking. He drank himself to sleep every night for months until he turned to drugs. Daddy loved his drugs too much to stop, loved them more than Charlotte. Then, Daddy lost his job, and Mommy started to get high with him. On Charlotte’s thirteenth birthday, Daddy promised to pick her up after school and take her ice-skating. Daddy never showed, and Charlotte went home to find Mommy and Daddy sleeping. Charlotte lay between Mommy and Daddy on the bed in their run-down apartment, trying to wake them up, only to find out they had been dead for hours. That was the day that Charlotte also died.”

My eyes and jaw widen at the same time, and a chill runs through me. I hold her tighter against me, unsure of what to say. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

“Not what you were expecting, huh?”

I’m in complete shock. The fact that she was able to overcome something so tragic and at such a young age makes me want to never let go. If there’s one thing I understand, it’s grief. I’ve drowned my sadness over my father’s death in a bottle of whiskey and puck bunnies for so long that I can’t even remember the last time I was sober. Today was the first day in six months.

“I don’t know how you did it.”

She clamps down on my arm and gives it a quick squeeze. “You have to keep moving. That’s how I did it. Sometimes, life hands you rotten lemons, and you have to slap on a smile and throw enough sugar in the glass until you can drink the funky-ass lemonade.”

Her unusual response makes me smile. “You’re not like other girls.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s because the kind of girls you’re used to wear bra tops and skirts in a freezing cold hockey rink, so they can show you how much they love your hockey stick.”

I laugh because it’s true. “I just meant that you’re different.” I continue to explain when she gives me an evil look, “Not all girls are puck bunnies, ya know. Of course, we have our fair share of them that follow us around like we’re some kind of prize for them to claim, but you…you don’t want anything from me. I can talk to you because you’re different. It’s not an insult; it’s a compliment. I don’t have to be afraid to be myself when I’m around you.”

“Are you okay?” she asks, staring down at my arm that is less shaky than before, but only because she’s clamping down on it. “You need to see this through, Alex.”

Knowing about her family and how her parents died makes me realize why she was so adamant about me living here for the week. I want to try even harder because of it. Because I don’t want to be another person who disappoints her.

“I made it through day one. Practice is only a few hours away. That will take my mind off it for a while. I’ll probably hang out with Kane and Donovan after that. They want to give me a tour of the city.”

She scowls. “That tour had better not involve strip clubs or bars.”