Last Chance Christmas (13 page)

Her words were clipped. Her opinion of him taking a nosedive.

“I should have told you.” He’d been selfish and too focused on getting her to stay. “At first, I worried about you staying there alone, when you were still on crutches.”

“Just to be clear…” She turned away from the ice rink and headed up toward the house. “You are referring to the fact that you’ve had a key to my parents’ place this whole time?”

“Yes. I do.” He followed her, not wanting to attract the attention of all the parents and kids still down at the rink, but wishing she’d stop to listen. “You admitted yourself there was no bedroom on the first floor. Was I supposed to let you hop up the stairs on one foot? And you know you would have.”

“It never occurred to you to let me decide what was best? Not even when I was exhausted from a long, hard drive in the snow and in pain?”

“All the more reason not to let you decide since you weren’t thinking about what was best for yourself.” He jogged ahead of her to stand in her way in the shoveled path. She’d have to trudge through the deep snow to get around him. “Shea, you ignored me for a decade after I got drafted because you are tough and stubborn and demanding. I get that and I admire it for a lot of reasons since it makes you excel at whatever you do, but it can be intimidating. Not unlike your father.”

She stopped a foot from him and folded her arms, all of her body language screaming to back the hell off.

“Are you seriously comparing me to a man who just said it was a bit too late for me to move back home now after I’d already given up my career in hockey?” Her voice vibrated with the sting of the insult.

One J.C. had no trouble envisioning her father delivering. Walt had always been hard on his daughter, expecting more from her, pushing her to exhaustion, pain, and beyond. No doubt his parenting had left its own kind of scars.

“Are you really thinking about moving to Cloud Spin?” Distracted by the revelation he hadn’t been expecting—news that would have had him turning cartwheels even just a half an hour ago—he forgot to block her path as he took a step toward her.

She gave him a hip check that would have sent another man into the snowbank.

Swearing, he hurried after her again while she rounded the front of the garage, heading toward the driveway where her rental car sat.

“I’m leaving.” She paused at the driver’s side door and held out her hand. “I’ll take the keys to the car and my parents’ house, too, while you’re at it.”

“The key to the house is back home—”

“Where?”

“Until this morning, it was on a hook in the garage.” He passed her the keys to the rental car since he’d driven them both here earlier this morning. “But I’ve since wrapped it and put it with your Christmas presents. I’ll go with you and—”

“You’re giving me the key to this house as a Christmas present?” She shook her head, frustration evident. “Did you think that would make it okay that you hid it from me? Well, guess what, it’s not. I’m going to your place to retrieve my things. I’ll get the key. And when I return to my parents’ house, I’d like you to be gone.” Her expression was so remote it was difficult to reconcile this vision of Shea with the one he had from just a few hours ago when they’d made love in the sauna after she’d insisted she was going to show him hot yoga.

Where was that woman now?

“I’m going with you. I’m not doing a good job explaining myself, but you can’t hold it against me that I didn’t tell you about the damn key when I know there are a whole host of things you haven’t shared with me this week.” He hadn’t let himself dwell on that, wanting to enjoy every minute of the time she gave him. “You’re thinking about buying a business. Moving back to Cloud Spin. Making peace with your family.” He shook his head. “All of that’s great, but it sure makes me wonder what’s going on with you.”

She propped a hand on the roof of the car.

“Sounds like we don’t trust each other,” she agreed, pressing the button that unlocked the door. “All the more reason to cut our losses. And I remember your skis must be here somewhere since you used them to get over here that first night we ran into each other.”

“You can’t be serious.” His head hurt. Hell, his whole body hurt.

He debated hopping in the car anyhow. Except another vehicle pulled into the driveway just then, the tires crunching on the cold snow. The out of state plates made him give it a second look. That and the guy behind the wheel opened a window to wave. Or flag them down.

“J.C.!” The man called, already opening the door as he put the red coupe into park. As the guy stepped out, wearing a Chicago Grizzlies jersey, J.C. recognized one of the team trainers. “I left Montreal this morning after our game there last night.”

He was heading their way, grinning ear to ear and oblivious to the discussion he’d interrupted.

“I’ll leave you to your work,” Shea said for J.C.’s ears alone, giving the trainer a quick wave before sliding into the driver’s seat of her rental.

Damn it. Damn it.

“Good news, man.” The trainer, a young guy fresh out of an advanced sports medicine program, had family in Burlington. No doubt he was on his way home for Christmas since the team had been so close the day before. “The team docs consulted and gave the Grizzlies the thumbs up to have you back on the ice the day after Christmas. You’re coming home.”

J.C. heard the news, but it was tough to return the guy’s enthusiasm while he watched Shea pull out of the driveway. She couldn’t do this to him. Not after the time they’d spent together.

Ten years ago, he’d let her go even though it had been tough as hell and he missed her like crazy. He’d made a bad choice with his marriage and generally screwed up in the relationship department. But she had the right of it. They weren’t going to move forward—with each other or anyone else—until they made peace with the past. And he wasn’t feeling any peace right now. He didn’t think he could even get back on the ice until this was fixed. She was that important.

“That’s great, Evan.” He shook the guy’s hand and clapped him on the back. “And I really appreciate you finding me to let me know.”

“I lucked out finding you.” The guy was still all smiles, looking past J.C.’s shoulder to the ice rink where the lights were just starting to come on as the sun went down. “I stopped for a bite at a little place near the ski resort and the guys at the bar were all talking about the outdoor rink you started up. It looks awesome—”

“Evan. I hate to trouble you more when you were nice enough to deliver this news in person.” The team had probably already emailed him, but J.C. hadn’t even checked his accounts today. He’d been too busy prepping Shea’s Christmas gifts this morning before she woke up.

“Cloud Spin is right on my way,” he protested. “I used to ski at the mountain as a kid.”

“Then maybe you won’t mind doing me one last favor.” He needed help if he had any chance of getting to Shea before she blew out of town for good. “My place is just up the hill a ways.” He pointed, hoping Evan’s car would make it up Logjam Peak. “And a woman who is very special to me is going to dump my sorry butt if I don’t reach her soon—”

“Done.” Evan earned his undying gratitude by tossing him the keys. “Why don’t you drive since you know where we’re going? It’d be a hell of a note if we got your head mended just in time to get your heart busted.”

Jumping into a four cylinder car that looked like it might need plugging in at the end of the day, J.C. was damn grateful he wasn’t trying to ski his way back up the Logjam.

He’d come too far this week to give up on Shea now.

*

The urge to
hop on the interstate and head south was strong, but Shea couldn’t leave her clothes and her laptop at J.C.’s house. She also didn’t have enough gas to make it out of town, so she pulled over at a small gas station to fill up, hoping that once she collected her things she could drive straight through to the city. She’d stay with Rachel, maybe. Or quit being so stingy with her savings and just book herself into a hotel for a few days. It wasn’t like she needed every cent if she wasn’t going to buy a storefront of her own in Cloud Spin.

The ache in her chest was vicious considering the short life of her resurrected romance with J.C. She tugged her coat around her tighter to ward off the chill as the temperatures dropped, wondering how she could have let him past defenses she’d been so careful to keep in place. She’d kept things light. She’d focused on the great sex. She had insisted on a short term fling.

But she hadn’t even made it to Christmas with him and already her heart was hurting; he was manipulating things to ensure he got his own way, and she was running hard and fast in the opposite direction.

With the cheery, piped in Christmas music playing over a loudspeaker in the gas station lot only depressing her more, Shea was glad to pay for the fill up and get back in the car. Her phone screen flashed a message, and she wouldn’t have checked it if it had been from J.C.—well, she hoped she wouldn’t have checked it—but it was from Rachel. Shea slid it open to read.

That radio show about revisiting the past is being re-broadcast on Radio App. You should tune in!

Shea remembered Rachel had downloaded a radio application that combined music with a lot of arts and lifestyle news. She tuned to it and hit the Bluetooth button on the rental so she could listen through her speakers.

She was done trying to fix things with J.C. But she couldn’t afford to give up on her family. Especially after her father had said he was always glad to see her. Besides, listening to the show had to be better than wiping her eyes with a tissue every other minute and pretending she wasn’t crying.

“…but there comes a point where you have to ask yourself, why am I doing things the same way when they haven’t worked in the past?” The popular life coach’s voice filled the car in stereo, his smooth baritone soothing and reminding her of those hours when she’d been coming out of anesthesia. Something about those words had really spoken to her—making her take this journey in the first place.

“We tend to fight the same battles at forty that we fought at twenty. And thirty. We try to solve problems with the same exact approach we used in the past that didn’t work.” Something in the man’s voice sounded like he spoke from experience. There was a sincerity there that couldn’t be faked. Or maybe it was just that Shea really related.

Wasn’t she still fighting the same battles at twenty seven that she’d fought at seventeen? When people disappointed her, she ran. She’d left town ten years ago. And she was planning to do the same thing just as soon as she could get her bag packed.

“It’s human nature to fall into a pattern of behavior. We learn it at a young age and we stick to it, even when it doesn’t work. Some of us bury our heads in the sand and refuse to see problems staring us in the face. Some of us hit the panic button and fly off the handle at every little thing, using anger as the go-to emotion for every situation.” In the middle of the life coach’s talk, Shea reached J.C.’s house. She was so caught up in what the radio host was saying she nearly missed the driveway. “Some of us run. And while we think we’re being really tough and strong with our chosen approach. We’re just scared to try something different. Scared to start a dialogue and say things that might make us vulnerable.”

Sitting in the driveway, she shut off the car and stared at J.C.’s house in the moonlight, the holiday lights they’d strung together outlining the porches and making it look enchanted. Snow covered the bushes around the front steps, making a lumpy blanket of white so you couldn’t tell where one ended and the next one began.

His house was strong and simple at the same time. Large, yes. But not ornate or overdone. The clean lines and deep porches were all things J.C. had asked for when he worked with a designer to come up with the plan to have it built. His wife had already rejected it. And him.

Could Shea really do the same? Did keeping that damn key secret really warrant all the hurt she was feeling, or was her reaction a belated knee-jerk to the things that had happened in the past to a vulnerable teenager who never quite got over having her heart broken?

Even as she knew the answer to that question, she wasn’t sure how to fix it. J.C. would be leaving Cloud Spin any day. For all she knew, the man from the Grizzlies was here to take him to the airport so he could go back to Chicago. Back to his real life halfway across the country.

“Sometimes,” the life coach continued his monologue, his voice sounding more tinny and small coming through the phone speaker instead of the car’s Bluetooth. “We just need the awareness of the pattern to break it. A realization that we are falling into the same pattern so we can choose something different. If we can turn around and make peace with the past, we stand a better chance of going forward, and successfully forging a new path…”

He kept talking, but Shea had heard all she needed to hear. All her heart could handle right now at any rate. She closed the radio app and opened the car door, walking up the driveway carefully. She had to move slower without the crutches, her foot not used to the walking boot yet on the first day of wearing it.