Page 93 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
“You know about Sutton Blake.” The words wheeze from my lungs, every fundamental thing I knew about my father crumbling before my eyes. “How long have you known?”
“Since Frigid,” he says, quoting the earliest variation of my debut romance, Too Cold for Love. The one that started chapter by chapter on an internet blog and eventually landed me an agent and a contract. (It’s languishing in some used bookstore somewhere. Don’t go look for it—it’s not very good.)
“After your mother left, and you with her, I felt like I didn’t know you anymore. I didn’t know what was going on with your life. So when your mother mentioned that you were writing, I did some research.” A ghost of a smile touches his face. “It wasn’t too hard. E.J. was easy to find. She didn’t seem to be hiding too much.”
That’s true. I was never really hiding E.J. Not from him, at least. The wig and the makeup, that was all branding. I remember giving him a signed copy from my first print run, remember how proud he looked—proud, but not surprised.
Right. That makes sense now.
“Sutton took a little longer,” he says, his gaze running over the books again. “It was a few months back—the Blue Ox practice rink was under maintenance, so we practiced back at Sutton, and I decided to stop by Blue Line Books, see how your inventory was looking. I was a proud dad, what can I say?”
He reaches for a book in the pile, the spine nearly nonexistent. Floppy. Worn. He hands it to me.
It’s a first edition Breakaway, from the very first print run, a special edition with the “Dear Reader” note in the front cover.
“This one caught my eye on the way out—Sutton Blake. I don’t how I knew, but I did.”
My fingers trail those little white stripes down the spine, my heart racing. “And you never said anything?”
“You used pen names for a reason. I thought you didn’t want me to know.” He looks at me. “I’ve coached enough players who use their jersey as a mask to know what it looks like when someone is terrified of being seen.”
The words land where my eleven-year-old self lives—desperate to be seen, terrified of being unwanted.
“I wanted to respect your boundaries,” he says. “So I signed up as a beta reader instead. From then on out, I read every word.” He picks up Slap Shot, the second book in the series—his notes fill the margins of chapter nine, where the hero breaks down about his father. “I was waiting for you to tell me. When you were ready.”
“I was afraid you’d be embarrassed,” I say, and it sounds like my eleven-year-old voice. Small. Breakable.
Dad’s face changes. “Embarrassed?” He says it like it’s a foreign word. “Evie. How could I ever be embarrassed by you? All I have ever been is proud. Of every version of you. And every genre.”
He picks up the manuscripts one at a time, placing them between us like evidence.
“You write about people being brave enough to love. About heroes learning they’re worthy of the thing they’re afraid to want.” He holds up Breakaway and Slap Shot. “You know who reads these? My players.”
“Your players?”
“Half the locker room has a Sutton Blake in their bag.” He smiles now. “None of them would ever admit it. But Vasquez has read Breakaway three times. Kowalski cried during the scene where Eli calls his mother—he’ll deny it to his grave, but I caught him reading in the stands before practice.” He pauses. “They come to practice lighter, Evie. Because your books give them permission to feel things they didn’t know they were allowed to feel. All I did was leave a few copies out. Your writing did the rest.”
I’m staring at him. At the manuscripts. At the notes, thoughtfully, carefully fitted into the margins. And it hits me then that maybe that’s where he thought I wanted him, in the margins of my life. Out of the story.
Funny how I felt the same way, isn’t it? Or not. Really, it’s sad.
A moment passes between us, something simultaneously heavy and light. I feel like I’m seeing a part of him for the first time.
After a moment, he lets out a breath, the air shifting. “About Beckett…”
My heart sinks—here it comes.
“What he said to that reporter…” he says gently. “It’s not true. And it wasn’t true when he said it seventeen years ago.”
I blink at him a moment, trying to get my bearings. “What?”
“When he said you should stick to the stands.”
“You heard that?” I close my eyes, trying to rebuild the scene. “You weren’t there.”
“I was.” He pushes away from the sideboard. “I was in the stands, talking to the scouts who were there that day. I tried to catch you, but you ran off and”—he pauses, then straightens, his brows pulling together—“I told him to pack it up and get off the ice. I let him cool off in the locker room awhile, but I pulled him into my office after practice and said ‘You will never speak to my daughter that way again. You will never make her feel small in my rink. So long as I am Coach, that ice is mine, and she belongs on it more than you do.’”
The words ring in my ears, my breaths coming out in shallow gulps, each one threatening to break me. My father watches me, waiting for some sort of response, but all I can do is try to process another piece of my life reforming in my mind.
