Prologue
Hawke
SEVEN YEARS AGO...
"Dude...you are going to miss your fucking plane. We do not have time for this shit," Oliver says in warning as we pull up in front of Vale's father's house.
My head is pounding, my throat is dry, and I feel like I'm about ready to hurl. Oh, yeah, and I'm still just a bit drunk from last night's party.
"This will only take a minute," I mumble as he puts the car in park and I practically fall out when I open the door.
Fuck, I'm hungover. No, wait...definitely still drunk.
Not sure how last night got so out of control on me.
No, wait...I know the answer to that too.
Because I love to get out of control. I love to party my ass off. Love the freedom that comes with a killer buzz. Love how happy and carefree it all makes me feel. Love partying with my boys. Love partying with my girl.
Mostly my girl. Fuck...Vale can hang right with me when it comes to our booze. She's as crazy and as uninhibited as I am when we're stone-cold sober, but when you get the two of us going at a party, we take it to a whole new level. We are young, boisterous, crazy daredevils. We get jacked up on alcohol and do stupid, whacko things. Hell, it's not considered a real party unless Vale and I end a glorious, drunken night getting new tattoos together.
It's what you do when you're twenty years old, and we do it well.
Actually, I may have done it a little too well last night. I woke up about an hour ago on the floor of Oliver's living room, along with about six other people that I didn't even recognize. There was a girl lying next to me with her head on my shin, drool coming out of her mouth.
For a brief, panicked moment, I had no clue what the fuck was going on. I didn't see Vale, but rather a strange girl lying there. We were fully clothed. Hell, everyone was, and after a few unsteady heartbeats, I realized we all had possibly passed out right there. Empty Solo cups littered the floor, a fifth of vodka lay next to me with maybe three swallows left in it.
So where the fuck was Vale?
We had come to the party together. Oliver had given it for me, a last farewell throw down, so to speak, in my honor. I was high on life before I even got there, and I actually felt drunk just on impending success. So much so, I considered not even drinking that night, but then Vale cracked open a beer and handed it to me, and without a second thought, I drank it down.
Then another.
And another.
How could I not? All my friends and teammates had come out to wish me good luck. The small community of Sydney, Nova Scotia, nestled on the east coast of Cape Breton Island, boasts only a little over thirty-one thousand residents, but I'm well known around these parts.
As the league's leading defenseman in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League--better known as the "Q"--my name is familiar to many throughout much of Canada. I've been playing for the Cape Breton Oilers since I was sixteen years old, and with my talents, I was drafted into the NHL by the Pittsburgh Titans when I was eighteen.
Third round, sixty-second overall.
For the next year, I had a brief and glorious rise up to Titan training camp, where I made the cut and survived seven games before I was scratched because I pretty much sucked.
Too young. Needs more development. Not ready.
I was sent back to Cape Breton to play another year in the "Q" rather than Pittsburgh's minor league team out of Wilkes-Barre Scranton, a move that was decided best for me by Titan management. This was fine by me, as it put me right back with Vale, who was content to take some classes in a local college, not sure what she wanted to do with her life. While I had been gone maybe a total of four months, we were still rock solid together, so we just picked up right where we left off.
It's not like I was happier to be with Vale than building a professional hockey career, but I was okay with the decision to send me back down to the "Q," and so Vale was sort of like a bonus for me. I love that girl so fucking much, so what if it took me an extra year to make it back into an NHL game? At least I had my dream-come-true girl beside me.
Vale Campbell.
Same age as me...twenty, but definitely the free spirit of the two of us. While I can get as wild and crazy as she does on any given day, I'm usually the voice of reason within our relationship when I bother to care enough to bring reason into a situation. Vale is such a fly-by-her-seat kind of girl, and it's one of the things I love about her the most. She says "fuck the consequences," and I'm usually right there beside her, urging "let's do it." We are more than lovers. We are the best of friends, two peas in a pod, Frick and Frack.
Which makes me wonder what the fuck happened last night that I woke up on a beer-soaked carpet without her, rather than naked in the bed we shared at our apartment?
I checked my phone as soon as I dislodged the girl's head off my leg. She did nothing more than let out a soft snore and roll over.
No messages.
I called Vale and it rang four times before I got her voicemail. "Hey," I said with a voice crusted in some type of hangover gunk. I gave a hard cough and tried again. "It's me. Not sure where you are. Hopefully at home. I'm on my way there now, so I'll see you soon."
I hung up, my stomach threatening to rebel on me, and stumbled down the hallway to wake up Oliver. I found him naked in bed with a girl I vaguely recognized from last night. It took me a good five minutes to rouse him so he could drive me back to our apartment, where I assumed Vale was waiting to drive me to the airport in Halifax.
Unfortunately, when I got there, my throbbin
g headache seemed to magnify even more when I realized she wasn't. I started to get a sick feeling in my stomach--non-booze related--that something bad had happened. Bits and pieces were returning to me, and I did remember that she hadn't been feeling well and wanted to leave the party. Period cramps, I think. I also distinctly remember me telling her I didn't want to leave because this was my last night before flying out to Pennsylvania, and I wasn't about to leave just because it was "that time of the month."
I had been called up to the Titan minor league team and this was what I had been waiting for. My foot was back in the door and it was a moment of huge celebration. I was leaving, and if I was lucky enough to get solidified within the Titan organization, I probably wasn't ever coming back here. In just a year, I had gained massive improvements in my conditioning, my skills, and my confidence. I was ready for the big leagues and they wanted me, so it was a night to party, celebrate, and say goodbye. I was going to be sad to leave this community where I've lived for the past four years, so I wanted to make it count.
Of course, I would be crushed to leave Vale, but in my mind, that was just temporary. I had to work on getting her to come with me. Despite her libertine ways, she was at heart a small-town girl deeply meshed within her community and even closer to her dad. So, we'd be separated for a while until I could get her to make that leap with me, but still...I'd be seeing her. Surely she'd come to visit me and we'd make our long-distance relationship work. But these guys...my bros that I'd played junior hockey with for so many years? This was my last night with them. Surely she understood why I didn't want to leave.
Surely she wasn't pissed at me for that?
Oliver made a quick call to Avery, his twin sister and Vale's best friend. The call was short, and even though Oliver tried to find out where they went last night, the most he got out of her was that Vale wasn't feeling well and was staying at her dad's house. I'm sort of thinking that her "not feeling well" translates into her being pissed at me.
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 faci
al 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."
"Did I do something last night?" I blurt out in a panic, my hands coming to her shoulders. I need to hold on to her...desperately. "Please tell me, I don't remember shit."
She shakes her head and pushes up in the bed. Her hands come out from under the quilt to pull it up to her chest as she rests against the headboard.
"What the fuck, Vale? Why did you stay here last night?"
She looks at me with dead eyes and says, "It doesn't matter."
"It does fucking matter. The only thing I remember is you wanting to leave the party and me not wanting to. I woke up on Oliver's living room floor. Now what the fuck happened in between?"
If it's possible, Vale's eyes look even more fatigued and she takes in a shuddering breath. Just as I think she's getting ready to enlighten me, her door opens and Oliver sticks his head in. "Dude, you have got to hit the road. As it is, you're going to be lucky to make your flight."