Page 87 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
Someone official says he can.
Cole stands, steps back slowly, hands raised as the police rush in to do their job. He waits for guy number four to be hauled to his feet before he says, “My name is Cole Thompson.” His voice is steady. Not shaking anymore. “I play for the Minnesota Blue Ox. I need to make a statement about an illegal sports betting operation, and I need to start with a confession.”
Voluntary. Unprompted. The words he’s been running from for six months, delivered on a flooded ice rink to a police officer who was expecting an arson call and is getting the sports scandal of the decade.
I should be a journalist.
And then he’s being escorted off the ice, following bad guy number four. But he’s not limping. He’s no longer the sunken shell of a man we found last night. He stops beside Beckett, his head held high.
“Thank you,” Cole says. “For staying. For helping me. I didn’t deserve it.”
“No, you didn’t,” Beckett says with a nod. “But neither did I. Every good thing in my life was given to me. That’s not what matters. What matters is how it shapes you. You’ll get through this. You will.” He smacks a hand on Cole’s shoulder. “Just…next time you find yourself in over your head, maybe don’t lock the guy trying to help you in a closet.”
Cole laughs. “I’ll try.”
Beckett gives his shoulder another pat for good measure and steps back.
Cole nods and turns back to the door. The police escort him off the ice, and the sunrise has broken through the snowy windows. It pours through the hall as he steps into the light and disappears. Later, I’ll learn he was arrested that morning—charged, fined, and suspended from the team pending the league investigation. He cooperated fully. That mattered.
And that’s when I crash. I recognize it for what it is this time, the adrenaline working its way out of my system—a full out rush, shuddering through my bones and leaving me weak.
My knees buckle.
“Whoa, take it easy,” someone says. An EMT. She grabs my arm, leading me off the ice. Out the emergency exit and into the morning. It’s a surprisingly warm March day, despite the piles of snow surrounding us. Or maybe it’s just the sun. Oh, how I love the sun.
She leads me to one of the ambulances and settles me onto the tailgate. A moment later, she wraps an emergency blanket around my shoulders—the scratchy, silver kind that makes me look like a baked potato at the world’s most dramatic cookout. She checks my eyes, my breathing, asks questions I answer on autopilot while the rest of my brain processes the fact that it is over.
Twelve hours, four thugs, two hockey players, one Zamboni, and a fire.
I’m not thinking about the kissing, thank you. Because Beckett hasn’t come to check on me, has he?
My glasses are cracked. Sometime in the last thirty minutes, they took a hit I didn’t register, the left lens splitting diagonally and bisecting my vision the same way the crack in the photograph bisects Coach, Beckett’s dad, and Beckett. The same way tonight bisected everything into before and after.
I finally spot Beckett. He’s standing a little ways away, tinfoil blanket around his own shoulders, hair plastered to his head. He’s bruised and battered. And he stands across the parking lot, looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read. Somewhere between the picture in the hall and our little tumble on the ice, something changed between us. Again. In those three seconds, laughing in the water, looking into each other’s eyes, I almost believed he’d forgiven me.
But here’s the thing:
We were in the dark, abandoned and afraid.
And now it’s day. The sun has risen. The danger is over. And Beckett hasn’t moved from that spot on the pavement.
I know this scene. I’ve written it. The protagonist completes the mission. Saves the building, the evidence, the photograph. The job is done, and the man on the bench has her letter in his pocket and his walls rebuilt, and she cannot force him to hear what she needs to say, and the dignified thing—the brave thing—is to accept the distance and step into the new day.
The heroine walks away. The readers cry. The sequel handles the reconciliation.
Except there is no sequel. This is real life.
I stand up. Take a step.
“Everly.”
My heart stops.
“Can we talk?”
I turn back. Beckett’s walked over to me. The morning sun catches his eyes, reflecting off those flecks of gold hidden in the blue. His brows are pinched, jaw tight. He’s as uncertain as I am. I bet if I reached out, set my hand on his heart, it’d be racing too.
I open my mouth.
