Page 138 of Wild Card 13

Ty watched me for a breath, then nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Seven forty-five.”

“Seven forty-five,” he repeated then walked toward the door.Dottie followed him halfway across the office before stopping and looking back at me. “Stay with her,” he told Dottie quietly.

My heart pulled painfully against my ribs. Dottie returned to my side. Ty stepped into the corridor without looking back, the packet still tucked securely beneath his arm. His footsteps faded beneath the hum of the arena until I could no longer separate them from everything else moving outside my office.

I remained behind the desk. For what felt like an hour, I stared at the empty chair across from me.

Ty had changed more than I wanted to acknowledge. Not completely. Not enough to erase what happened between us. But enough that dismissing him as the same careless boy had become harder than it used to be.

It would have been easier if he pushed. Easier if he turned every serious moment into a joke or treated tomorrow like another obligation he could survive on charm.

I knew how to protect myself from that version of him.

I did not know what to do with the man who listened when I told him no. The man who noticed six missing letters in an email signature. The man who asked the right questions when nobody was watching and left my office without demanding anything I had not offered.

One afternoon did not rewrite our history. One thoughtful meeting did not make him safe.

And being forced into his orbit did not mean I had to forget why I had spent years learning how to live outside it.

I slid the remaining packets into a neat stack and rose from my chair. Dottie watched as I walked around the desk and placed both hands on the back of the chair Ty had used. It remained angled slightly toward mine. I pushed it beneath the desk until the legs aligned perfectly with the edge.

Then I stood there, staring at the place where he had sat, and rebuilt every wall he had made me forget for the last hour.

CHAPTER 17

LUCY

THEN

While my mother packed twenty years of our family into cardboard boxes, Naomi and I stood in a line wrapped halfway around North Metro Arena and pretended the cold was our biggest problem.

“I thought you said Marion saved us seats,” Naomi sniffled, pulling the collar of her coat higher over her mouth.

“She did.”

“Inside?”

“That is generally where arena seats are located.”

Naomi narrowed her eyes at me through the strands of dark-blond hair escaping her knit hat. “I’m trying to determine whether we’ll reach them before graduation.”

The line moved another three feet.

Around us, the parking lot had disappeared beneath rows of cars, school buses, and television vans with satellite dishes rising from their roofs. A police officer in a reflective vest directed traffic near the entrance while another tried unsuccessfully to stop a group of Northbend students from climbing onto the base of a light pole to hang a navy banner. The banner readFINISH ITin white block letters large enough to be seen from the highway.

Across the lot, Eden Prairie students poured from two buses dressed in black and red, already chanting loudly enough to make several Northbend parents glare in their direction.

This did not feel like high school hockey. It felt like the entire state had been waiting for this game all winter.

Naomi followed my gaze toward the television crew setting up near the main entrance. “You neglected to mention there would be cameras.”

“I didn’t know.”

“That man has an earpiece,” she gasped dramatically, pointing to a news crewman setting up a large tripod.

“I can see that.”