Authors: Cate Cameron
Chapter Twenty-One
Nat
Scott and I were out of the house the next morning before anyone else was up, and by that point I knew better than to expect that anyone would get up to say good-bye to him. When we’d gotten home from dinner the night before, his father and stepmother had greeted us like we were distant relations or something. They’d treated Scott with the same aloof coolness they’d shown to me.
As we worked our way through the early rush-hour traffic toward downtown, he said, “Sorry if that was uncomfortable. I’d honestly kind of forgotten how they are. I mean, not
forgotten
, but I guess you get used to things, right? But I’m sorry if it was weird for you.”
“It was only weird for me because I didn’t like the way they treated
you
,” I told him. “For me? Whatever, they’re just strangers. I don’t care. But, seriously, you’ve gotten used to that? It just doesn’t affect you anymore?”
Scott made a face. “Well, you’ve got to understand that I’m a huge disappointment, you know? They’re right to treat me like scum. Obviously my mom’s side of the family has dragged me down—small-town nobodies, that’s what they all are. It doesn’t matter that they’re totally
happy
being who they are. That’s not the point. They’re stupid for being happy, because really they should be feeling miserable and inferior all the time. Small-town, middle-class nobodies. Pathetic.”
I stared at him. The sarcasm had been clear, so it wasn’t like I was worried that he actually meant any of that himself, but it was still a pretty horrible speech to hear. “They actually think that way? They’re that snobby?”
He glanced at me then looked back out the windshield. “Guess which person from that side of the family they might possibly be interested in. I mean, not for sure, yet, but if things go right in the next couple years, guess who they might consider worthy of being an acquaintance?”
My stomach sank a little as I said, “Toby.”
There was nothing but bitterness in his smile. “That’s right. He’s good at hockey—fucking
hockey
—and that means he’s worth their notice. I mean, not good enough to be one of them, because he’s still essentially a peasant, but at least he might be an interesting conversation piece, you know. A name to drop at one of their cocktail parties or gallery openings.”
So it wasn’t just Toby’s stable family that made Scott jealous. “You never played yourself?” I asked, and immediately regretted it because Scott shot me a look like I’d stabbed him with a small but sharp blade. Not enough to kill, but certainly something that would hurt.
“I played. I was pretty good, even. Just not quite good enough.” He looked at me, and for the first time ever I saw something slightly vicious in his expression. “Kind of like you, maybe. I was good, but not excellent. And I didn’t have the fire, didn’t push myself to get better. I just gave up and found other stuff to do. Told myself I was being realistic and mentally healthy. Which was probably true, but didn’t mean shit once Toby started making a name for himself.”
I tried to get past the sting of his words. Maybe he
was
kind of like me. And maybe it was too late for me to come back and try to be something more than just good. That was a worry for another time, though, because right then we were talking about him.
But before I could redirect the conversation, he said, “Sorry. That was bitchy. None of this is anything to do with you, and I shouldn’t have dragged you into it.”
“You kind of did, though,” I said. He glanced over like he was surprised I wasn’t going to take his apology, and I shook my head quickly. “Not about the hockey stuff. I mean, coming on to me. Hitting on me all the time. You do that because I’m dating Toby, not because there’s anything about
me
that you actually care about. You’re just trying to use me to get back at him. To get back at your dad. Whatever.”
He didn’t answer right away, pretending to be preoccupied with merging into traffic that even I could tell wasn’t that challenging. When he did speak, his voice was level but quiet. “That’s how it started,” he said. “I was just trying to get back at Toby. Trying to bug him, trying to jab at him a little. That’s true. But I don’t know, Natalie. I actually like you. I mean, I liked Dawn, too, but I knew there was no way she was ever going to give me the time of day. With her it was just a game. With you? I like you for you. Not just because you’re Toby’s girlfriend.”
“I’m not,” I said. The smart thing would have been to leave it at that. I could tell him Toby and I had broken up or were just about to. I could see what happened and have two weeks to worry about the next step. But the problem was Scott wasn’t just a distant crush anymore. He wasn’t someone to fool, or to win. He was a real person, with real feelings, and as guilty as I’d have felt if Toby ended up hurt by my stupid scheme, I’d have felt almost as bad if I hurt Scott. “I’m not his girlfriend, and I never was.”
It was a good thing we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, because Scott turned to stare at me for far longer than his eyes should have been off the road if we’d actually been moving. “Come again?” he finally said.
“It was a lie.” I hated the way the words sounded, but I knew I had to get them all out. “I had a crush on you, and I knew you’d come on to Dawn because she was dating Toby, so I pretended to date him so you’d come on to me the same way.” I paused long enough for him to explode if he felt like he really had to at that point, but he was just staring at me so I kept going. “Toby didn’t want to do it, but I bribed him. It was all my idea. Nobody else knows, just me and Toby and Dawn. And I’m sorry I did it.”
I stopped for a moment. “Well, I don’t know. I’m mostly sorry. I’m sorry if it makes you feel cheated or used or whatever, but at the same time, let’s face it, if I hadn’t done it, you and I wouldn’t be sitting here together, and, okay, possibly you’re going to kick me out of the car and I’m going to have to hitchhike or something to get back to Corrigan Falls, but assuming you aren’t quite
that
mad, then, I don’t know. I’m kind of glad I got the chance to know you, at least. Because before I did this you were just sort of an illusion, a distant crush with no reality to you. And now you’re a real person, and I
like
the real person, and it would have been pretty sad, at least for me, if I hadn’t gotten to know that.”
And at that point, I was out of words and traffic started moving again, so we just drove quietly for a while, me thrumming with anxiety, Scott completely unreadable.
“You faked the whole thing?” he asked skeptically after a few minutes.
I wasn’t sure what answer he wanted to hear, so I went with the truth. “Yeah. All of it.”
“And Toby—Toby was just faking?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
We drove in silence for a while, off the highway and into the snarl of traffic near the arena. I’m sure it’s nice to
live
downtown if you go to U of T, but it’s kind of a pain to get there.
But even with my stomach as twisted and tense as the traffic around us, there was a part of me that was starting to feel lighter. I’d told the truth and stopped playing the game. Things were going to start getting better, hopefully. And even if they didn’t? Even if Scott dumped me and my gear out on the side of the road and never forgave me, at least I’d be moving forward on my own terms. The bus from Toronto to Corrigan Falls was a total milk run, hitting every small town in the southern end of the province, so it took about eight hours to make the trip. But I could spend those eight hours knowing I’d told the truth and done what I could to make up for my mistake. I’d started all this because of the hockey-shaped hole in my life; I’d wanted to fill it with Scott. But then Toby had given me hockey back, or at least had encouraged me to
take
it back, and maybe I didn’t need Scott quite as much anymore. Because of Toby. Shit. Because of Toby, in more ways than one.
“Parking’s going to be tricky,” Scott said calmly as we made our way down some busy street or another. “Is it okay if I just drop you off?”
“Sure.” This seemed a bit more practical than I was expecting our conversation to be. “I have to get my stuff out of the trunk, remember.” He nodded, and I asked, “Are you going to come back? When practice is over, you’ll pick me up?”
He glanced over at me and frowned. “You think I’d just desert you in a strange city?”
He had to look back at the road, but the next time we stopped moving, he turned toward me, and now there was a grin on his face. “I’m not mad, Natalie. You did what you had to do to get what you wanted. You showed initiative. I admire that.”
“Seriously? You’re just going to ignore the part where I tricked you? I mean, you were coming on to me because you thought it would make Toby crazy, but now you know he won’t care—that doesn’t change things?”
Something a bit evil trickled into his smile. I didn’t feel like I could judge, considering how I’d tried to trick him before, but I got the feeling that he was the one scheming now. But he just said, “Let’s not talk about Toby anymore. We don’t have to worry about him, right? You can do what you want, without having to consider his feelings. So…let’s figure out what you want.”
He slid the car over to the curb in a sort of indent I was pretty sure was designed for buses and said, “Call me when practice is over and I’ll pick you up right here. Okay?”
I nodded and pushed the door open. There was no time for more conversation, not with traffic swirling around us and with practice to get to. Besides, I was happy to have the chance to spend a bit of time away from Scott and to clear my mind a little. “Thanks,” I said, and started extricating my sticks from the car.
Things were happening. I was going to practice with a university team, Scott was apparently not mad at me, and I was free to do what I wanted with him. It should have been good. Perfect, even. But somehow I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something just wasn’t quite right.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Toby
Scott and Nat came to school that afternoon. Together. Like, Scott was telling everyone about their night together, lots of fake shock when people assumed something had happened—the whole deal.
Of course, I tried to see as little of it as possible. Like most of the Raiders, I had fourth period off, so I was heading out of the school and away from the whole mess when I heard Nat’s voice calling to me from down the hall.
There was no way to pretend I hadn’t heard her, and I didn’t want to give any more gossip to the school mill by ignoring her. She and I were still together, at least for another eighteen hours, and I was happy to see her. That was the story, so I tried to keep my face patient and gently interested as I turned to talk to her.
“You’re going to be late for class,” I said.
She just shrugged. “Mom wrote me a note for the whole day; I’m a hero for being here at all. A couple minutes won’t be a big deal.” She smiled then and said, “And I wanted to thank you for setting up the practice. Like, thank you
so much
. It was hard, and I know I need to work on my fitness, but I really think I can do it! You know, they were good, but they weren’t completely unreachable? It was fantastic, Toby—thank you.”
I couldn’t let myself get sucked into her enthusiasm. I needed to keep some distance for my own sanity, so I gave her my best interview smile, friendly but remote, and said, “That’s great, Nat. I’m really glad it’s working out for you.” I nodded my head toward the parking lot. “I’ve got my own practice to get to…”
“Oh. Yeah, right.” It shouldn’t have bugged me to see her deflating. I should have been past all that, not worrying about her anymore. But things never work out as cleanly as they should. So when she added, “Is it still okay if I come by to skate a bit at the end?” I didn’t give her the answer I should have.
Instead I shrugged. “Yeah, okay. It’s our last regular season game tomorrow night, so after that we won’t be able to mess around too much. Focusing on playoffs, you know? But for tonight? Sure, yeah.”
Sure, come by and rip my heart out, throw it on the ice, and then skate over it a bunch of times. That sounds like a great idea.
“Great,” she said and gave me a smile that made it all seem worthwhile, at least for a short second. “My team has our playoff game on Saturday morning, so it’ll be great to get some ice time before then. I’ll see you after practice. And thanks again, Toby!”
And that was that. She jogged off down the hall, and I headed out for the parking lot. Of course, given the day I was having, it couldn’t be that simple. Because Scott was waiting for me by my car, watching me walk toward him, an impossible-to-read expression on his face.
“Natalie told me about your little game,” he said when I got close enough.
Damn. I wished she’d told
me
she was going to share that. But I guessed it was a good thing, since that meant he couldn’t really gloat about stealing my girlfriend. “Oh, right,” I said, and added, “Sorry about that,” in a tone that made it clear I wasn’t sorry at all. “Nat’s an old friend, so I thought I owed her a favor.” I shrugged. “I’m not really convinced that helping her hook up with
you
was doing her a favor, to be honest, but whatever. I was happy to help.”
“I bet you were,” he said, and there was something in his voice that made the hair on my neck stand up.
I shrugged it off. “You mean because it made you look stupid, getting manipulated so easily? Yeah, okay, I admit it—that was fun.”
But he didn’t look upset by my comment. Instead he eased a little closer, near enough that I had to override my instinct to step away, and he smiled gently at me, like
I
was the stupid one. “No, that’s not what I meant,” he said. “I meant that you were happy to have an excuse to spend time with her, an excuse to
touch
her.” He stepped back, probably so he could get a better view of my reaction as his words sunk in. “I know you too well, Toby. You’re not fooling me, pretending that you don’t actually care about her. You can pretend all you want, and as a favor to you, I won’t point it out to Natalie. No need for her to get upset or feel guilty. But between you and me? Let’s call it like it is. You want her, and I have her. I win.”
“She’s not a prize,” I growled. So much for playing it cool.
“Oh, I think she is. I mean, when she first told me about your little game, I admit, I was tempted to just walk away from the whole thing. But then I thought about the way you looked at her, and I knew you weren’t that good of an actor. She
is
a prize. One you can’t have. For once in your damn life, you can’t have something, because
I
have it.” He stepped farther back and looked me up and down as if he was trying to memorize the way I looked for his future enjoyment. “How’s it feel, Mr. Hockey Star?”
It felt like crap. Partly because he was gloating and I hated to let him win at anything, but I’d known I was going to have to go through this and I’d been more or less braced for it. But the part that really felt bad was hearing him talk about Nat that way. I didn’t want to give him any satisfaction, but I needed to be better than that. I needed to care about Nat, even if she didn’t care about me. “Look, fine. You won. Okay? If that’s all you care about, I’ll let you have it. You won, you beat me, you’re in charge, I’m a loser. Whatever. But don’t be a dick to Nat, okay? You want to rub my nose in it? Go for it. But don’t use her to get back at me. She’s a good person, Scott. You know that. She makes stupid decisions sometimes, but she’s got a good heart and she doesn’t deserve to take shit from you just because you don’t like me.”
He frowned, like he was really thinking about my words, but then shook his head. “You just have to be the hero, huh? You have to teach your poor, ignorant cousin about the right way to treat people?”
“Fuck, Scott, I hope I don’t! I hope you know that already and aren’t planning to use her. But if you are thinking about it? If you are going to do anything that would hurt her? Could you just…just tell me what I need to do to make you happy. Like, whatever you were going to use her to get from me? Just tell me, and I’ll give it to you. Okay?”
“Noble, chivalrous Toby,” he said, his voice jagged with sarcasm. “Protecting the fair maiden from the horrible ogre. What a burden for you. But of course you’re strong enough to carry the weight. Brave Sir Toby.”
“Coop!” I heard from across the parking lot, and Scott and I both turned to see Winslow leaning out the window of his pickup. “You’re gonna be late, man! This close to playoffs, Coach will kick your ass.”
It wasn’t that late, and Coach was always pretty understanding about us coming straight from school and sometimes needing a bit of time to wrap things up with teachers or whatever. But Winslow was giving me a way out of this conversation, and I was absolutely going to take it.
“Gotta go,” I told Scott and dodged past him to reach the Corolla. I wished I had some ringing last words to leave him with, but my brain was full of confusion and apprehension, not speeches. So I just looked past him as I peeled out of the lot, following Winslow’s truck to the arena.
It wasn’t so easy to ignore him a couple hours later, though, when the main practice ended and Nat clumped out of the change rooms dressed to skate, with Scott trailing along behind her. “I thought he hated hockey,” I said, mostly to the air, but MacDonald was standing behind me and heard it.
“He’s trying to wind you up,” he said. I hadn’t told the team about my deal with Nat, and they’d been watching Scott come on to her long enough to have formed their own opinions of the situation. I figured I’d have to correct them eventually just so they wouldn’t be bitchy to Nat as well as to him, but I wasn’t rushing to have that conversation. Scott hated hockey? Well, now hockey hated him right back, and I kind of liked it. MacDonald slapped my pads with his stick. That’s his go-to motivation tool. No pep talks from him, just stick slaps. It was actually fairly effective. “Ignore him. Run your drills, get off the ice, and spend some time with your girl. Do your thing, not his thing.”
Right. My thing was running drills with Nat. Scott’s thing was—not something I should be thinking about right then.
So we ran our drills, Nat working her ass off at her second on-ice practice of the day, getting frustrated when something didn’t go right, crowing in celebration when it did. I wanted to be mad at her, or at least neutral. Hell, I would have settled for hating her, if I could have pulled that off. But skating with her, watching her fighting so hard and taking so much joy from the struggle? Shit, maybe Dawn had been right when she’d decided I’d gone past the “like” stage.
And realizing that made it damn near impossible to look over and see Scott standing at the boards, watching her like she was a fish who’d taken his bait and he was about to start reeling in. If I’d thought he was seeing her as she really was, if I thought he truly appreciated her? I don’t know, maybe that would have actually made things worse. As it was, I was pretty sure she was just one more in a long string of girls for him, this time with the added fun of being able to torture me while he was with her.
I stayed on the ice, skating around a little, cooling down, until Nat went to get changed. I didn’t see Scott anywhere, which I’d thought was a good thing, until I realized that he’d just moved down to lurk in the hallway outside the change room I was heading for.
“Got big plans for tonight?” he asked me. “Last night for you, right?”
“Go fuck yourself,” I growled, pushing the locker room door open.
“Myself? No, that’s not quite right.”
I was half turned and my fist was in the air when something heavy looped over my arm from behind me, pulling me back, away from Scott. It was Winslow, gripping me tight. He dragged me a step away but didn’t take it any farther, letting me stay to watch MacDonald stalk out in the hall and get right into Scott’s face.
“You’re not welcome in this arena,” MacDonald said. His voice was low and calm and steady, everything I should have been but hadn’t been able to manage. “And you’d better stay away from Toby everywhere else, too. Is that clear?”
Scott managed to come up with a pretty good sneer. “You think you have the authority to ban me from a public building? And issue some sort of instant restraining order? Is that a power that comes with being team captain in this shit-hole town?”
MacDonald repeated, “Stay out of the arena, stay away from Toby,” still easy and cool, as if he thought Scott just hadn’t managed to understand his words the first time.
“Or what?” Scott scoffed.
“Or I won’t stop Coop from beating the shit out of you,” Winslow said from beside me. “And I might help him, not that he’ll need it. So I guess I’ll just help with the cover-up.”
“Don’t start any more shit,” MacDonald said, stepping to the side a little so Scott and I couldn’t maintain eye contact. “If you start something, you can expect
anyone
on this team to finish it. Clear?”
“So, just to be clear, you’re threatening me with violence?”
“Let it go,” I said, finally back in control of myself. The team didn’t need this shit, especially not right before playoffs. “He’s just an annoyance, nothing serious. Nothing to get worked up about.” Maybe I should have told them about the lie and how Nat and I hadn’t really been dating, but it occurred to me that I’d promised her I’d keep my mouth shut for two more weeks. Sure, she’d told Scott, but did that mean she wanted everyone to know? I settled for saying, “It’s all kind of complicated.” I shrugged out of Winslow’s hold; he let me go but kept a hand on my shoulder. Comforting, supportive, but also with the potential to get a pretty good grip if I started moving in the wrong direction. Winslow wasn’t stupid.
But I was past that. Scott was an asshole, but that was nothing new. And Nat? Nat was smart and could take care of herself. I just had to keep reminding myself of that.
“Go get showered,” MacDonald said to me. “Nat’ll be ready soon.”
Yeah, she’d be ready for me to drive her home and drop her off. I had homework and curfew, and she had a breakup to plan. I was running out of time, and I had no damn idea what to do about it.