And as I look at the little gray house, which holds two bedrooms along the front and a small hallway that leads to a cozy living room and even cozier kitchen, my heads feels like it’s about to split open. I know that’s not from the hangover anymore, but has everything to do with the fact that something is seriously wrong for Vale to have stayed the night here without any word to me about it. I must have done something awful last night, and I’m practically choking on the dread rising within me.
My plane to Pittsburgh leaves in a little less than seven hours, but I have a four-and-a-half-hour drive to Halifax. I’m packed up and ready to go—made sure of that yesterday before the party—but I have to make things right with Vale, and that doesn’t leave me much time. My bags are in the car and Oliver is prepared to take me to Halifax, but I’m hoping a very sincere apology to my girl will put things right again and she’ll be the one seeing me off. Putting on my best hangdog look, I slowly walk up the immaculate sidewalk that Vale faithfully plants with flowers every summer for her dad. Apparently it was something her mom used to do before she died, and it was a tradition she took seriously.
Dave’s not home, and I know this because her father is the athletic trainer for the Oilers. At this time of day, he’s at the arena working on players before conditioning training, which I’m sure is filled with dudes that are as hungover as me. I noticed none of the people lying on Oliver’s floor this morning were my former teammates.
I knock on the door, hear the padding of footsteps, and when it opens, I’m staring at Avery. She’s Oliver’s fraternal twin sister and they look a lot alike, with auburn hair and dark brown eyes. You would think that with me being Oliver’s friend and her being Vale’s friend we in turn would be friends.
Not the case.
Avery and I don’t like each other very much and I’m not sure why. We know each other well because when I first came to live in Sydney, Oliver and Avery’s parents fostered me until I turned eighteen. We lived together for two years and never warmed up to each other. I find her abrasive and too princesslike for my tastes. She’s told me on more than one occasion, usually when she’s drunk and uninhibited, that I’m an egotistical bastard.
Still, we try to maintain a polite existence when we are in the presence of Oliver and Vale. Neither appears to be around right now, so I cut right to the chase as I take a step toward the entryway. “Where is she?”
Avery sidesteps, puts herself in my path, and sneers at me with malice. “As if you even care.”
“Spare me the dramatics,” I mutter, trying to act as if I have nothing to be ashamed of, when in fact I’m not quite sure I know what happened last night. “Why did she stay here rather than at our apartment?”
I expect Avery to light into me, call me a creep, an asshole, or some other equally “princesslike” curse she can come up with. Instead, she takes a deep breath while something wars within her eyes. She gives me what I might almost believe is a look of sympathy, but I quickly shake that off. Avery can’t stand me and wouldn’t feel sorry for me in the slightest over anything that could come between me and Vale.
Instead, she sort of lowers her head in resignation and backs away from the door so I can come in.
Vale’s bedroom—the one she grew up in, that is—is directly to my right, and I see the door is closed. Dave’s bedroom is just across the hall, so when Vale and I started dating when we were sixteen, I couldn’t have ever dreamed of sneaking into her room at night.
I give Avery a long look before turning to Vale’s door. I square my shoulders, put on my most apologetic look, and enter.
Immediately, I realize what I had been feeling as dread truly wasn’t that. I know this because now I’m feeling it. A cold, heavy pit of foreboding sits low in my stomach as I see Vale in her bed under the covers. The blinds are closed, curtains drawn shut, so the room is dim despite the early morning hour. I have her back, her small body clearly outlined under the burgundy quilt pulled up to her chin.
She looks lost, pathetic, and utterly alone. A sharp stab of pain hits me square in my breastbone.
“Vale,” I say quietly, and her body gives a slight jerk, but she doesn’t respond in any way.
“Baby,” I say as I take a tentative step toward her. I’m envisioning that I did the worst thing ever to her last night, without a single recollection of it. And yet that doesn’t seem right because no matter how drunk I may have been, no matter how out of control, I know deep in my heart I could never, ever do anything to hurt Vale.
Never.
I sit down gingerly on the edge of her mattress and lay an unsteady hand on her shoulder. “Vale…are you okay?”
I want to grab her and pull her onto my lap. I want to wrap my arms around her in comfort, even though I don’t know why I’d be offering it. I want her to cling to me in need, and assure me that I haven’t done something to fuck all of this up.
Still, she doesn’t answer me, so I push at her, despite what I’m now feeling as a very thick and icy wall of tension between us.
“Vale,” I say, my voice a bit stronger. “You’ve got to talk to me, honey. Are you too sick to take me to the airport today? Because if so, Oliver can do it. I’d want you to stay in bed and get better, but I’m leaving, babe. We have to talk. Need to know why you’re pissed off at—”
“Hawke,” she says quietly, cutting me off.
I freeze, peer at her through the gloom, and she turns that beautiful face my way. Vale is wildly stunning in a completely unconventional way. She’s always been a bit of a rule breaker when it comes to fashion and norms. In fact, I remember the first time seeing her at school after I’d moved here, I was stunned that one side of her head was shaved, while the other side held a long, thick fall of raven-black hair. Those crystal-green eyes sparkled, but they did have competition from her facial piercings—one ring through an eyebrow, a Medusa stud piercing just above her upper lip, and one ring through her right nostril. She also has one through her tongue, a solid barbell that has slid across my own tongue and even my dick on hundreds of occasions.
Her black hair is now worn in long, choppy layers, but she still sports all of her facial metal, including two high nostril piercings, and her body holds a variety of tattoos she’s had done over the past two years. While Dave is an easygoing and laid-back type of dad who had no problem with her piercings, he wouldn’t let her get a tattoo until she turned eighteen. That was too permanent in his mind to agree to for a minor.
So on her eighteenth birthday, I picked her up at Dave’s house and took her straight to a tattoo parlor. He just shook his head with a knowing smile, because he had no doubt that’s where his spitfire daughter would be on that day.
With me. At a tattoo parlor.
He sure as shit wouldn’t have wanted to know that we ended the night with her in my bed, losing her virginity.
“Hawke,” she says again…quietly, and I’m displaced from my memories. Her hair is lank, her skin pale. Dark circles under her eyes tell me she didn’t get any sleep last night.
I reach a hand out to touch her face but she shrinks away from me, and the pit in my stomach grows tenfold.
“I don’t want to see you anymore,” she whispers as tears fill her eyes. “You’re leaving, I’m staying, so we just need to end things now.”