Page 107 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
The question sits with me, taking up space in my chest.
Are you going?
Going would mean leaving the house—stepping outside these nice, safe walls to be surrounded by crazy Blue Ox fans who surely know my name now, maybe even all three of them after that social media post last week. Which also means letting people see me instead of hiding behind my heroines. Out there in the stadium lights.
“I don’t know,” I say. I mean, it’s honest, right?
Bree nods. Doesn’t push. She is a woman who works with writers and knows that the worst thing you can do is rush the draft.
“Well, think about it.” She stands. Plucks her jacket off the back of the chair where she hung it. “But Everly?”
“Yeah?”
She nods at the pages. “I’ve read a lot of Sutton Blake books. And in my professional opinion—my extensively credentialed, highly compensated professional opinion—when the hero writes that letter”—she meets my eyes—“the heroine goes to the game.”
She lets herself out. The house is quiet.
My fingers trace the bracelet in my palm, running over the little book, the symbol of the meaning of stories in my life.
I guess the puck’s back in my zone.
Nineteen
Beckett
In my whole career as a professional hockey player, I’ve never once gotten jitters. Until tonight.
The tunnel smells like cold rubber and ice treatment. My skin chills, the rink at game temperature. The sound of cheering echoes off the concrete, the crowds calling. That used to feed me, set me on fire. I felt like a caged animal on the bench, everything inside me breaking free when I hit the ice. Not tonight. Tonight, I’m equal parts anxious, afraid, and hopeful.
The blinding lights of the arena pour over me as I emerge from the tunnel. My eyes travel up to the Blue Ox players’ family box.
Empty.
I close my eyes, tempering my disappointment. She didn’t come.
“Come on, Beck,” Wyatt says behind me. He drops a hand on my shoulder as he passes by. “Get in the zone.”
I let out a breath. “Yeah, all right.” I step out onto the ice.
Warm-ups are supposed to be mechanical. Muscle memory on a loop—edges, transitions, shooting practice, keep the body warm and the mind empty. I’ve done these three hundred thousand times. My body knows the sequence the way it knows breathing.
Tonight, every pass up the ice doubles as an excuse to look at the box.
First lap: three women. Some of the Blue Ox girls. Candy’s girlfriend, Chloe, in her Kane jersey. Conrad’s girl, Penny, watching with those eagle eyes—the investigative journalist in her catching every move and mistake. And Coco, Wyatt’s wife, a computer-wizard hacking genius—so I’ve been told. And between them, an empty seat.
Second lap: still empty.
Third: empty.
I peel off toward the net, take a shot from the circle. It goes wide. Tyler retrieves it without comment, which means he’s noticed I’m off and has decided, in the particular mercy of a man who has known me for six years, not to say so yet.
Warm-ups wind down. The lights shift. The pregame hum ascends to a roar.
We line up for the face-off, Tyler takes center. I take my position near the blue line.
The puck drops.
For the first thirty seconds I play clean, disciplined hockey. Feet moving, stick down, head up. Reading the plays the way I’ve read plays since I was eleven years old—not hunting the puck but understanding where it’s going, the geometry that lives between now and two seconds from now.
