Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 129323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 517(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 517(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
This entire time, he didn’t forget Pippa. At least not entirely. He was keeping money aside for me.
With interest. We’re even now.
I look through the transactions to see that the account was opened almost ten years ago.
Ten years ago was the last time I saw him. He opened it a month after he left. It shows a deposit of only twenty-four dollars.
I open the next one, and there’s no activity other than a deposit of five dollars this time.
The next month shows the same thing. It’s pretty much small deposits every few months. A few dollars here and there.
I keep going. Over the next year and a half, slowly the amount increases.
From five to ten dollars a month to twenty…by the time four more years pass, the amount is now over three hundred until a lump sum was deposited.
A grand total of thirty-six thousand was placed in the account.
I furrow my brow. Why did he deposit so much? I squint my eyes, and then something hits me. That was the year Aiden would have graduated from college.
I google my question: What year did Aiden Slate get drafted to the Redville Saints?
As I suspected, the dates match.
From there on out, every month like clockwork, he deposits five hundred a month. Five hundred dollars every single month to come to a grand total of sixty thousand dollars. The last deposit was only weeks ago.
I had told him to pay me back with interest, and he remembered.
He kept his word.
Even if he didn’t know where to send the money or how it would get to me.
Liquid wells in my eyes, the words on the computer screen becoming blurry with unshed tears.
He never forgot me.
Aiden never forgot me.
Almost every month of every year since he left, he’s been paying back my investment.
I should’ve told him the truth.
Should’ve trusted that our bond was too strong to be that easily forgotten.
I’ve ruined everything.
37
AIDEN
My phone keeps ringing, but I ignore it.
I don’t have to look to know who it is.
It’s her. Cassidy.
She’s been calling for over an hour.
Back in the days when I knew her as Pippa, if she wanted your attention, she stopped at nothing to get it. She’d search until she found me. She was a determined little shit then, and it appears not much has changed in that department.
Despite myself, a small smile spreads across my face before I force it away.
I’m not ready.
To smile.
To answer the phone.
To forgive.
It feels like I’m still spiraling out of control, and I need to rein myself in. I need to be in a better headspace. To think about what I want to say. Nothing good could come from lashing out without thought.
I’m not my mom, and I refuse to act like her.
So instead of calling her back, I go to the one place I can find solace when my brain is a mess.
I take a seat on the small bench outside the local ice rink.
Ever since I was drafted all those years ago, I’ve come here. It’s the closest thing I have to my tree and my lake. I left everything behind, but I kept some of the memories.
That time of my life was a nightmare, but the ice was my solace.
Since as far back as I’ve been able to remember, looking at the ice has calmed me, and even now, years later, it still does.
It all began at the lake.
I found a new home in my college rink, and now, here, this place is my peace. Normally, I’d go in, but I’m not in the mood to see anyone. Right now, this bench outside the building will have to be enough.
Closing my eyes, I can see the ice in my head. I like to watch the kids skate. To see the joy it brings them, just like it did me. Watching them laughing on the ice, surrounded by family and friends, and the enjoyment they find makes my world feel not so empty.
I can’t explain it.
For me, the ice has been a symbol of many things.
Freedom. Skill. Determination.
But it was never about laughter.
When I was young, it was an escape, then it was a means to an end. Now, it’s about the control I yield on the ice.
The longer I sit here, the looser my muscles get.
It’s like I can think because I’m most relaxed.
And the more I think, the more I know I handled things really bad.
She lied, and I have every right to be angry, but I shouldn’t have walked away.
That’s the very thing everyone else has ever done.
It’s what she probably thinks I did back then.
Because you did.
Her voice haunts me.
Promise me you’ll never forget me.
And I did.
I didn’t recognize her the day she walked into my hotel room. Didn’t realize the significance of the moment.
Her wide-eyed gaze had nothing to do with the famous hockey player in front of her. No, when I think back on what she looked like that night, the truth hits me square in the chest. She was a deer in headlights. Her past had come back to haunt her even though she chased it.