Page 75 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
“The book started before I knew it was you.” There’s a thread of steel underneath the breaking. “Those letters didn’t tell me anything about the scandal—only how you felt ostracized by your team, how the pressure to perform was too much?—”
“And you, what, picked the rest right out of the tabloids?” The words taste like battery acid. “My voice. My words. My pain, repackaged as entertainment.”
“Would you have preferred I didn’t write back?”
The question hits like a puck off the crossbar. No angle to play. Because the answer is no. Her letters were the only thing that kept me sane during the worst six months of my life. The lifeline was real. The comfort was real.
My teeth clench, holding back my answer.
“I loved your letters,” she whispers. “In the elevator, I meant what I said. That your letters meant something to me. And when I realized who you were, I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, we weren’t exactly friends.”
“What about the kiss, Everly? First-person research? Did tonight give you enough material?”
She flinches. Hard. She’s crying—silently—tears falling straight down without sobs.
And suddenly, I’m back in the arena, yelling at eleven-year-old Everly. My chest feels split in two. I never wanted to see that again.
I turn my back to her, shut it out. “I need to think,” I say, retreating to the place inside me I know is safe. Back behind the blue line. Defense. Hard and strong. “Cole is still in danger. We need to get out and get help. That’s the priority.” I look at her. “Everything else waits.”
Thirteen
Everly
And just like that, whatever crack had been mended between Beckett Benson and me, whatever this was blooming between us, is gone. Shattered in the romance section of Blue Line Books.
My chest feels like it’s going to cave in, and for the first time in this long, horrible night, I’m thankful for the dark. Because I can’t stand the idea that he’s not entirely wrong. I did know. I did keep the secret. I did carry his letter next to my manuscript notes, and the distance between “treasured” and “used” is a line I drew in my own heart and never showed anyone else. From where he’s sitting—back against the crime-fiction wall, eyes closed—the line doesn’t exist.
I just wish the lie and the love weren’t in the same envelope.
From somewhere in the building, distant, carried through the ductwork, comes the sound of voices.
I go completely still. Hold my breath. Listen.
The words come in fragments:
“…Thompson got away…”
“…doesn’t matter. When we destroy the paperwork, he’ll have nothing to fall back on. He’s dead in the water.”
“What about the other two?”
“We’ll weed them out…”
There’s a heavy pause, brief and deliberate.
“Torch it.”
Wait—what?
“A building like this, plenty of faulty old wiring. No one will think twice. Park by the north entrance. If they don’t come out on their own, let the fire have them.”
My blood goes cold. They’re going to burn the building. Sutton Arena. Blake’s Café. The rink where my father taught me to skate. The bench with our names etched into the wood. The office where his nameplate is still on the wall. Where Beckett’s father played.
They’re going to burn it to the ground.
“Beckett. Open your eyes.”
Something in my tone gets through. He opens his eyes, his gaze bone weary, his whole frame exhausted.
