Page 72 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
It makes me dizzy.
I didn’t realize how much the past weighed in my soul. Seventeen years of history hauled like a bag of sand tied to my skates, so constant I’d stopped noticing the drag. And then the bag opened. Last night. The confessions. The moment she said I forgive you and I felt the weight shift into a shape I could carry instead of one compressing my spine.
I’m lighter. That’s the simplest way to say it. Lighter than I was twenty-four hours ago, and the lightness is unfamiliar, like stepping off a treadmill and discovering the ground doesn’t move.
“Bolt cutters should be in the hand-tools section,” Everly says at the entrance to Iron & Oak—arrived at without incident, thankfully. “Ladder, back wall. Let’s grab them and get out of here.”
“What about me?” Cole is behind us, vertical but barely, the haunted look retained.
“You carry the bolt cutters. Consider it penance,” I say.
“For the closet?”
“For everything. But especially the closet.”
I grab the thirty-six-inch bolt cutters. Hand them to Cole. Everly pulls the ladder from the back wall, extends it, tests the locks, retracts it. It’s so E.J. Hartley, testing the plan. It makes me smile.
“So, I think we enter here,” I say, pointing to a corner of the shop near the wall—most likely place to hold weight. “Keep going that way”—my finger draws a line in the air eastward—“sixty feet or so, and we should be able to drop through near the south exit.”
“And I cut the chains,” Cole says, hefting the bolt cutters, seemingly grateful for purpose.
“If we can get to them. They’re on the outside, so we’ll have to get the doors cracked open and slide the bolt cutters through.”
Everly looks up toward the ceiling, something resigned crossing her face. Then she steps back, pulling her laptop bag from her shoulder.
“What are you doing?” I ask, watching as she surveys the inventory on the back wall.
“I’m looking for somewhere to hide my bag. It’s heavy, and I’m going to need my hands free.”
“No way you’re leaving your laptop here. Your work’s on that computer. All your books.” I hold out my hand, sliding my backpack off with the other. “Give it to me. I’ll put it in my backpack.”
She hesitates, her eyes studying mine for a moment. Trusting. She hands it over.
The bag is heavier than expected. “Oof, what have you been carrying all night, dictionaries?”
I try to stuff the laptop bag into the backpack. The front flap falls open.
Something falls out.
An envelope. White. Standard size. It hits the floor with a soft, papery sound. Innocent.
I bend to pick it up on reflex.
Stop.
I see the handwriting. My handwriting.
The world stops. Not the way it stopped when she kissed me—not the warm, expanding pause. A cold stop. An icy stop. The stop that happens when you’re skating full speed and the boards appear where they shouldn’t be.
The envelope is addressed to Sutton Blake. Care of Stratton Publishing. The address I’ve been writing to for six months.
My envelope. My letter. In Everly Hart’s bag.
It’s been opened, but I don’t need to pull out the letter to know what I wrote.
And three things hit me at once.
First—Everly must be Sutton Blake. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Hockey is in her blood, whether she wants to admit it or not. Of course she’d write hockey rom-coms.
