“Here, thank you,” the taller of the two said as he thrust an old envelope and a pen at me. “We’re huge fans. We both play back home; I’m a center.”
“And I’m a goalie,” the other teen added.
“I shoot on him all the time,” the center added.
“And I stop the shots,” the goalie-in-training said. “Mostly,” he added, with a wry grin.
“I use twenty-nine as my number,” the center said, and scuffed his feet. That was the coolest thing.
I smiled when he glanced back up. “That number is important to me. I’m glad you want to use it.” I’d never told a soul why I chose that number, only that it was important to me, and no one ever pushed for more. One day I’d tell my story, but it had to be to the right person at the right time, and given that Bailey had thrown me out, I wasn’t about to tell anyone soon. I couldn’t be trusted to speak at all.
I signed autographs, posed for selfies, and then came the inevitable question.
“When are you back on the ice?”
I had my reply ready, the one I’d been using all this time, “Not sure yet.”
“Thank you, Mr. Buchanan,” they chorused, and then left, chatting to each other about posting the photo. I guess their circle of hockey-playing friends would then know that Kai Buchanan was in Wishing Tree.
And then, if they had hockey news apps, they’d know by breakfast on Sunday that I was retiring.
Chapter Eight
BAILEY
I watched the interaction outside my door through a gap in the blind, still in shock that he’d stolen—then kept—my wish. God, the embarrassment that he’d even known what I’d written. The shame of it. I bent at the waist and wanted to curl up in a corner and never set foot outside my workshop again. All those years of interaction, and he’d never once said he knew about the wish. All those times we’d talked, albeit not for long, he’d never once asked me why I’d written that wish.
I have all these feelings for you. How could he even say that? Why now? Just because he was retiring, was I simply a consolation prize, like he expected me to be waiting for him when he was done? Was that what was happening here? Yeah, I love you, Bailey, but I had to do the hockey thing first, and you can wait, and then I’ll come find you later, okay?
It was only after he headed away from my door that I start breathing normally, then I stared at the card for the longest time as if it was going to explode. All thoughts of working on Brooke’s gift were gone, instead my head was filled with Kai.
The wish threaded on scarlet ribbon was innocent enough, a small square of white card worn at the edges, a little creased, and with words smudged since I’d written it. The hopes of the fifteen-year-old boy were simple, and the one thing I’d wanted back then.
Everything I still wanted, despite the pain knifing my heart.
Why would Kai have taken the card? And why was he showing this to me now? What was he doing back in town, and why did he want to talk to me?
So many questions, but I was frozen in place.
He wanted to give me a kiss that meant something. What the hell? It was cruel to tease me like that.
But what if he meant it? What then?
I should ask him. I should just outright ask him if he wanted to kiss me. I should get him to tell me when he thought he loved me, when he imagined it was okay to tell me. Oh, and was I just some convenient thing for him?
But then, what if he hadn’t meant to say any of that?
There was not a single thing Kai and I had in common—well, apart from the obvious, given we were brothers-in-law, and joint uncles to Charlie and Alice. The card mocked me, begged me to pick it up, but I couldn’t even reach for it. I simply moved my stool closer and stared at it. Boots padded into the workshop, snow around his face, his paws like ice. When he leaped onto the counter and I saw him heading for the wish, I picked it up and pocketed it without reminding myself of the heartfelt words, instead closing my fingers around the scrap of silk that centered me, and I slowed my breathing one second at a time. After a long pause where I did nothing at all, I sat back on my stool and turned to stare at my wall of photos.
So many of the family ones included Brooke and Kai, more when Brooke had married Callum—wedding photos, christening photos.
And the one that I always stared at the most? Kai in a Harriers’ jersey, with his arm over my shoulder, Christmas, three years ago.
He was smiling down at me as if I were special to him. I reached forward and pulled it off the wall, just as my CD began to play Mariah Carey. I turned off the CD, the joyful music too much for me to handle when my entire world had shifted around me. I opened the top drawer in my cabinet and slipped the photo inside—I didn’t want to stare at it, caught between love for Kai, and a new-found distrust and sadness. There was no way I could work today, too tired of everything to even think about it. Too mortified that he’d read my wish and had known all this time about how I’d felt back then.
My cell vibrated and snapped me out of my thoughts. I caught my brother Duncan’s name, answering and putting him on speaker phone before it reached its third buzzing dance on the counter.
“Can I ask my favorite brother a huge favor,” he began without preamble, in that wheedling way he had of getting me to do things. It usually involved babysitting his and Sydney’s daughter, who was three, and their son who was adamant he didn’t need his uncle watching out for him.
“Go on,” I said.
“Syd wants us to do some last-minute shopping for the kids.”
“Tell Sydney that it’s not last minute if it’s only the first of December.” I added a theatrical eye roll even though he couldn’t see it.
“From your mouth... Anyway, I know you’re at Mom’s later decorating her tree with the girls, so is it okay if I drop the boys after practice with you? I mean, I get you already have Emma and Alice, but I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course, that’s fine.” There went my images of quiet time with the girls, because when Charlie and Mitchell got involved, it was anything but quiet.
“Okay then,” he paused for a moment, and I reached to end the call, but clearly, he hadn’t finished. “Heard you ran into Kai last night.”
“I did.”
“Lucas said you were talking.”
I stared at the phone and wished it would suddenly break. “Briefly.”
He sighed. “Look, Bails, this is awkward, and I know you’d probably rather talk to Callum, but if there’s anything you ever want to uhm… talk about… then you know you can talk to me. Jeez, that is way too many uses of the word talk, but you know what I mean.”
I glanced at the phone, imagining my brother overcome with whatever the hell this was.
“Talk about what?” My embarrassment was still fresh from Kai, but he couldn’t possibly mean anything to do with Kai. I felt the heat in my face.
“Anything,” Duncan said, and then there was a crash in the background. “How many times, Mitchell! No hockey in the kitchen! Gotta go, but you know where I am, yeah? Thank you again for the babysitting, bro.”
“No worries,” I said, but he’d ended the call.
Almost as soon as the call with Duncan ended, I got a text from Lucas, which was even weirder.