Page 85 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
Out. I don’t see any blood, but my guess is that he’ll have a wicked headache when he wakes up. Good thing it wasn’t a direct shot—the ricochet slowed it down, lessened the punch just enough.
Just to be sure, I stare at him. His chest rises and falls. Okay then, he’s breathing.
From behind me, Everly’s voice: “Holy slap shot, Batman.”
I almost smile, adrenaline still coursing through my veins. I can’t help but let it go a little to my head. “Thanks.”
I soak up the victory as I swagger across the ice, toward the backpack.
I reach down for one of the straps.
And of course, my right foot goes. One moment I’m upright, broad shoulders and heroic, the next I’m on my back, humbled beneath the raining sprinklers.
A noise, like a stifled squeak, sounds behind me, and Everly’s face appears overhead, her copper curls wisping against her cheeks, glazing her blush with sprinkler water. She looks…way too happy about this.
She cocks an eyebrow. “So smooth, Benson. Really. I think that’s one for the hockey Hall of Fame.”
“You think that’s funny, Hart?”
She laughs, and it mixes with the soft patter of droplets over the ice.
“All right, then,” I say. The tone of my voice stops her flat, but it’s too late. I grab her by the arm and pull.
She lets out a yelp and goes down, crashing into me. My hands find her waist on instinct, catching the bulk of her fall. She lands half beside me, half across my chest, one hand splayed flat against the ice and the other clutching my shoulder.
The sprinklers rain down on both of us.
For a second, neither of us moves.
Then she lifts her head. Her glasses have cracked and fogged to complete opacity. She’s blinking water off her lashes and staring at me, gaping in disbelief.
“You,” she says with great precision, “are trouble.”
“I’ve been told.”
She laughs again, softly, almost a scoff. A breath brushing my cheek.
Her face is inches from mine. Water drips from her hair onto my face, drops landing on my forehead, my cheekbone, the corner of my mouth. She watches them land. Goes very still.
She doesn’t move.
I don’t move.
We’re staring at each other. On the ice. In the water. And the thing I’ve been avoiding thinking about since she held out that cracked photograph slips through.
She ran into a fire. For my name. For that picture.
Because she knows what matters to me.
Because I’ve been writing to her.
And just like that, a cop car shows up.
“We should get out of here,” she says, as if she can see it.
No—wait—I want?—
What do I want?
