The Worst Kind of Promise (Riverside Reapers Book 2)

KIT

It’s weird not having fifty pounds of hockey gear weighing me down this morning. I don’t remember the last time I visited the rink outside of practice. I wish I was visiting it under better circumstances, but I’m on a mission to speak to Hayes today.

Faye’s doing better, but if Hayes continues to ignore her, I’m afraid that she’ll start to spiral again. It’s time he pulls his head out of his ass and talks to her. I’ve given him space to cool down (enough, if I say so myself). This is about Faye, not about our relationship. I don’t give a rat’s ass if he forgives me or not. He just needs to make things right with her.

He’s a lot more stubborn than I thought, which is a quality I never realized ran so deep within the Hollings’ genes, but here we are. If I have to drag him all the way to the house by his ear, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

When I step into the rink, the cold isn’t the only thing creeping up my spine. There’s a writhing mess of anxiety crowning inside me, weighing down my steps as I make my way over to the ice. I see Hayes’ figure through the plexiglass, chucking pucks violently into the goal’s net, billowing back the latticed nylon with vigor. Thankfully, we’re the only two people in the rink.

He’s red in the face, his anger tangible within the frosted atmosphere. There’s a good handful of pucks studded across the rink from his previous failures, which means he must’ve been going at this for the past hour or so.

Hesitantly, and fearing for my face, I step onto the ice in my shoes, unsure if I should grab his attention or wait for him to notice me. I feel like I’ve just walked into the lion’s den. A den that belongs to a starving, bloodthirsty lion that’ll have no problem sucking the skin off my bone and leaving my carcass to rot.

I’m doing this for Faye. I need this to work. I need to make things right.

As I wait by the rink’s entrance in silence, one of Hayes’ stray pucks comes blasting toward me, narrowly missing my face and slamming against the plexiglass right beside my head. The transparent surface—now fashioned with a new grid of scratches—shakes from the collision, and my heart nearly falls out of my ass.

“You missed,” I say, hoping that my breathlessness isn’t noticeable.

“I’m aware,” Hayes growls, his narrowed gaze scrolling over me, his bright blue eyes darkened to a dusk-like shade.

Cool, cool. It’s going great so far.

I decide to keep my distance—in case he feels the need to shoot at me again, and because I don’t want to piss him off more than he already is. With a heavy sigh, I try my best to ignore the spawn of guilty butterflies thrashing around in my gut.

“I know you’re mad…”

“Mad is an understatement, Kit.”

It’s like there are goddamn bear traps hidden beneath overgrown grass, and I can’t see where I’m going. With each step forward, I risk getting my ankle gnawed off by metal teeth.

I grit my molars, and a muscle in my jaw jumps. “You have every right to be mad at me, Hayes. But you shouldn’t be mad at Faye.”

His hand tenses around the shaft of his stick, as if that’s the only thing keeping him from using his fists to talk to me instead of his tongue. Alarmingly white and home to a topography of bluish veins, his knuckles have seen more action than anyone else’s on our team, making him more than qualified to beat me to a bloody pulp. He’s ditched his usual hockey gear for his regular clothes, and I can’t tell if that makes him more or less intimidating.

The side of his lips quirk into a snarl. “Oh, so you’re just going to walk in here and tell me I can’t be mad at my sister? Who kept two huge secrets from me?”

“No—I—I’m just saying that maybe you should try and put yourself in her position,” I reply (surprisingly) calmly, wishing he could see how terrible Faye’s been doing—how much this fight has absolutely destroyed her.

“So you’re trying to make me feel bad for her?”

Irritation knifes through me. “Fuck. I don’t know, dude! I don’t know how to fix any of this—how to fix us. Your sister is a fucking wreck right now. She’s never going to forgive herself for what she did to you. She never wanted to hide this from you for this long. She was trying to protect you, and she went about it the wrong way, but you have no idea how much she’s been torturing herself over this.”

Hayes refuses to look at me, features pinched in painful contemplation, his own internal struggle coming to light in sporadic waves. I know Hayes said a lot of terrible shit that he can’t take back, but I don’t think he meant all of it. He has a big heart, just like his sister. This is tearing him up inside.

He doesn’t have a snarky comeback or outburst of rage. He doesn’t grip his stick tighter and resume his pitiful shooting. All he does is stare ahead into nothing, dissociating, maybe digesting my words to some degree.

It’s almost worse to see him like this…drained of the anger that once fueled him, now neck-deep in the fallout of the fight, struggling to take in fresh air—struggling for the tiniest sliver of peace amongst a cyclone of chaos.

I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not, but I step just a foot closer to him. “I know you know what it feels like to keep secrets to protect someone. Faye…she loves you so much. It was eating her alive not telling you the reason why she came for the summer.”

Another step.

“And this thing between us…it’s not ideal for everyone, no. But I’ve loved her for four years, Hayes. Four. And I’m going to love her forever, no matter what happens with our relationship. Faye means the world to me, just like I know she does to you. All I want for her is to be happy, but you know she puts your happiness before her own,” I mumble softly.

Hayes’ stick clatters to the ground, sounding like an exploding landmine in my ears, and when he finally turns to face me, there’s a deluge of tears in his eyes. I’ve never seen him cry. Ever. It’s fucking heartbreaking. I’m part of the reason he’s crying. I did all of this to him, to my own friend.

My own tears singe the backs of my eyes, and it feels like my lungs are shriveling up. “I’m so sorry, Hayes. I’m so sorry for not telling you.”

I could apologize to him a thousand times over, and it would never be enough. Hayes had every right to know about me and Faye. Keeping it from him was disrespectful, and to make matters worse, when the truth eventually surfaced, betrayal clobbered him not once, but twice. If we’d just told him in the beginning, maybe there was a chance he would’ve understood. But we didn’t even give him the benefit of the doubt.

A burr of despair lodges itself beneath my ribs, inches from sticking to my heart. The closer I get to him, the worse the dizziness in my head becomes. It inundates my mouth with a sour taste and stirs the uneasy twinge in my stomach.

Hayes sucks in a deep breath with thinned lips, and I can see his shoulders start to quake, the tears much more prominent now as they slather his face. Each sob is a purge of the fury that’s conquered him, the sheet of water on his skin evidence of a losing battle.

Sorrow muddles his strained features. “How could I not have known?” he hiccups, staring at me like I have all the answers to his questions, when in reality, I feel just as lost as he does.

My response breaks in my throat before even reaching the bed of my tongue. “I…I didn’t know, either.”

I don’t know what else to say. I reacted the same way when Faye told me. All I can do is encourage him not to blame himself.

“I failed her, Kit. I was supposed to protect her. I’m her big brother. I look out for her. She’s been…oh, God. She’s been dealing with this by herself for who knows how long. What did I do? Why couldn’t she tell me? I’m a fucking idiot. I’ve been so oblivious this entire time while she’s been crumbling to goddamn pieces.”

I embrace Hayes in a hug, trying to funnel his pain into my own veins, to offer him a reprieve from the wellspring of emotions inside him. He clings to me tightly—as if he’ll collapse if he doesn’t—and his chest heaves against mine, each haunting howl that crackles his voice making my heart splinter.

“You didn’t fail her, Hayes. There’s no way you could’ve known. She wanted to tell you, she did. I think she was worried about how you’d see her. She didn’t want to burden you,” I whisper.

Hayes pulls back, not caring to wick away the tears flecking his cheeks. “How I’d see her? I don’t…I don’t understand.”

I rub the base of my neck, attempting to assuage the sting there. “I think that’s something you need to talk to her about.”

Realization breaches his darkened eyes. “I can’t believe I yelled at her. I yelled at her for getting raped. I’m the worst brother of all time,” he murmurs, hiding his face in his hands. The tremors continue at a steady pace, like the consistent drip of cave water off pointed stalagmites.

I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. Hayes didn’t respond in the most…understanding…way.

I loosen a jagged breath from my chest. “You could’ve handled it better, but you were dealing with a lot at the time. I don’t think Faye’s going to take it personally if you explain it to her. You just need to understand how your response hurt her, and you need to think about how you can show her that you’re sorry.”

I’m never one to give advice. It feels weird being on this side of the conversation. Usually, I’m the one fucking up.

“She’s never going to talk to me. And I don’t deserve her time. I don’t deserve her forgiveness.” His words are muffled, only barely brushing my ears.

“She’s more ready than you think.”

I think back to how I held Faye in my arms, how she’s spent hours telling me how remorseful she feels, how she wishes she could’ve come to her brother the second she stepped foot in California. The countless tears I wiped from her eyes, the never-ending sobs of hers I swallowed with soft, grief-stricken kisses.

He lifts his head weakly, his heart emblazoned on his sleeve—showing me the true Hayes Hollings, the one freed from the stony façade he always wears. “I was wrong, Kit.”

What is he talking about?

My brows weave together. “I don’t follow…”

“I don’t just owe Faye an apology. I owe you one too,” he starts, lips reshaped into a frown, and I can feel the projection of his penitence vault over me.

“Hayes, you don’t—”

He cuts me off. “I do. You were there for Faye when I couldn’t be. You took care of her, even knowing that I’d lose my shit if I found out that you two were together.”

I guess I never saw it that way. Taking care of Faye never felt like a job or a responsibility. It was just something inherent, a response that had been ingrained into my DNA and was as natural to me as breathing. There’s nothing I regret from our time together. The tears, the pain…it was all worth every second I got to love her.

I open my mouth to say something, but Hayes continues.

“I was wrong when I said you weren’t good enough for her. I was wrong to assume things about you that aren’t true anymore. I shouldn’t have done that. I’ve always been protective of Faye, but in doing so, I guess I kept her from getting close to anyone.”

Hayes had every right to think those things about me. I have a terrible history with women; not as bad as him, but nothing to be proud about. But ever since Faye, I barely even remember my love life before her. I can’t believe I even wasted time pursuing girls who weren’t her. It was always going to be Faye.

“You were just trying to look out for her,” I point out.

I would’ve been offended if Hayes was making things up in order to villainize me, but everything he said was true at one point. I always felt a sneaking suspicion that I was never good enough for Faye. It’s hard to be good enough for the person who’s perfect in your eyes. The person’s whose happiness could outshine the sun, whose laugh could put angels to sleep, whose beauty could rival Aphrodite’s, whose touch could melt an ice cap.

“I went about it the wrong way,” he argues with chagrin.

My heart stomps out a discordant beat, and I can feel the eye of the storm slowly begin to pass, taking with it the plague of unclearable darkness. “No one is innocent here. We all contributed to hurting one another in our own way. But I forgive you, Hayes. I just hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me one day.”

“I don’t know if I was ever really mad at you two being together,” he admits, teasing his fingers through his mane of hair. “I think I was just hurt that you kept it from me for so long.”

“If I’m being honest, I didn’t think it would last this long. I thought for sure your sister would’ve kicked me to the curb by now.”

Hayes laughs, and crinkles spring underneath his eyes, bearing an uncanny likeness to his sister. It feels so good to hear him laugh. We used to laugh about the most stupid shit, like speed running scary video games at one in the morning or pranking the rest of the guys by putting Saran wrap over the toilet seat. The house used to be a lot less heavy when there weren’t any secrets to come between us.

He shakes his head. “That never would’ve happened. When Faye loves someone, she’s with them until the very end.”

Through the whole mess of things, I hadn’t even realized that she’d told Hayes she loved me. But now it’s as clear as day, on repeat in my head.

If you wanted what was best for me, you’d accept whoever I fell in love with, no matter who they were.

The memory commands a shiver from my body, something warm uncoiling in my belly. I miss her already. All I want to do is go back home and fall asleep with her in my arms. She only has a few days left before she has to head back to Pennsylvania. I know the distance isn’t that far—and no distance could keep me from her—but I’m going to miss not seeing her every day. And once the season starts, I won’t be able to visit her as often.

Two more years, Kit. She has two more years of undergrad, and then she’s yours.

I’ve thought a lot about our future together. I’m going to support whatever career path she chooses, and if she doesn’t choose anything, I’ll make more than enough money to support both of us. I don’t know if she wants kids. I never really saw them as being a part of my life, but fuck, having a family with Faye is probably the biggest dream I have now. Bigger than winning the Stanley Cup, bigger than having the most goals in NHL history. All of that seems so inconsequential in comparison.

“You know, I should’ve seen it coming sooner.” Hayes tosses me a small smile.

Even though the truth is out now, I still freeze like I’ve been caught red-handed. “Huh?”

Hayes bends down to reach his discarded hockey stick, juggling it between his hands listlessly. “The incident with KJ, you choosing her during Gage’s drinking game, you giving her your room, you missing practices, how you’d mysteriously disappear from the couch late at night and never return.”

Embarrassment quilts my cheeks in a bright blush. “You noticed that I wasn’t sleeping on the couch?”

“When I got up to piss or get water, yeah. I thought you were just sneaking off to go meet up with a girl or something, but then it just kept happening.”

Oh, God. This is a lot more awkward than I thought it would be. I don’t think I’m pink anymore—I’m bullseye red.

All Hayes does is chuckle at my flustered expression, using the blade of his stick to swoop up a lone puck and balance it. “Relax. It was your room to begin with. It’s not like you guys were—”

His head snaps to the penalty box.

Then to me.

Then the box.

Then me.

He forgets the puck and drops his head back, screwing his eyes shut like that’ll somehow wipe his memory clean. “Oh, God. That was—you—her—in the…”

There’s no point in lying to him. He saw the evidence. The proof is in the panties. And after they were passed around like a kid’s pet rock during show and tell, I kind of figured Faye wouldn’t want them back. So I bought her a drawer full of silk and lace underwear, in a variety of colors and types.

“That was definitely a one-time thing,” I assure him.

Okay, maybe one more tiny lie wouldn’t hurt.