He tells me about Labowski, apparently the worst guy in the NHL, and exactly what happened that day on the ice. I feel better about it, but I don’t tell him that I saw it on the TV before he got a chance to explain it himself.
“But the weird thing,” he says, when we’re sitting in our chairs watching the sun set over the horizon, our plates cleaned and stacked on the cooler between us, “is that I… I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would. My manager told me it would be a good idea to get out of the city, and I didn’t realize how much it was affecting me until now.”
“Jake Bradson,” I say, lolling my head to look over at him, “are you telling me you actuallylikeWildfern Ridge?”
He looks over at me, holds my gaze for a long moment, and I feel that thing between us again, just begging for one of us to acknowledge it.
“Actually,” he says with a shrug, still holding my gaze, “yeah, I am. I guess I could… I could kind of see myself settling down ina place like this someday. Like, the constant go-go-go of the city wasn’t helping me to let go of the anger about everything that happened. My dad, that stuff, you know?”
That stuff.
That stuff includes me — my decision to stay in Wildfern Ridge instead of going with him all those years ago. We’re still looking at each other, holding the stare, and I feel the truth bubbling up in my stomach like I might be sick with it.
Then, Jake does the one thing I can’t skirt around, can’t take a sip to ignore.
He asks me directly, a serious look on his face, “Lara, what happened? Back then? I’m not angry. I just— I think it would help me a lot to know why you decided to stay.”
I close my eyes, feel tears pushing behind my lids. The angel and devil on my shoulders, each arguing their point of view, swapping clothes and pitchforks until I’m not sure what the right thing is anymore.
Then, I open my mouth, and I tell him the truth.
CHAPTER 20
JAKE
Five years ago, when Lara told me that she wasn’t coming with me to Michigan, it felt like I was hovering outside my body. Like I was a character in a movie, watching my life play out in front of me.
Now, it feels like that, again.
“Zachery came with me to the clinic,” Lara is saying, her eyes on the ground. “And I swore him to secrecy. I thought — I knew that it was whatIwanted. But I also knew that it wasn’t whatyouwanted, and I would never ruin your future like that. Not when you’d been working your entire life to get out of Wildfern Ridge. When that was the only thing you’d ever wanted, and you were so close to getting it.”
My mind swims with responses to that, knowing that Lara could never have ruined my life by staying in it. That Wildfern Ridge isn’t as bad as I thought it was. That I could live anywhere if it meant getting to be with her.
She is right, though. If she had told me the truth back then, I would have dropped my spot at Michigan. I would have pickedup more hours at my dad’s company, even if it meant being around him more. We would have found a nice place here, maybe even bought a house together.
I would have done whatever it took to be there for her, to make a life in Wildfern Ridge happen. And I wouldn’t be playing professionally in the NHL right now. I would never have had the opportunity to punch Labowski in his face, to get myself splashed all over sports news stations, to spark discourse online about ‘the code’ and whether or not I’d broken it.
If Lara had told me back then, I wouldn’t have spent the past five years of my life trying to figure out what I did to make her change her mind back then.
“I lied to my parents about it for a while, but eventually I had to come clean. They were… upset, obviously. But all they’ve ever done is support me, and they kept doing that, having my back, keeping me safe. They were both there for the delivery.”
“So…” I swallow, try to meet her eyes, but can’t, my body a swirling, uncontained mass of emotions I don’t understand. It feels like the only thing I can do right now is make sure I have the facts straight. “You have a baby?”
Wehave a baby?
“Well…” she swallows, reaches into her pocket, and when she holds her phone screen out to me, her hands are shaking. I want to reach out and take them, soothe her, but I can’t when it feels like my own body is out of my control right now, like panic is sparking just under my fingertips.
I look at the picture on the screen and instantly see myself in the three kids staring back at me. A little girl wearing a purple dress, looking shyly down at the floor, with blond hair just like Lara’s.A little boy in the middle, holding a toy lion, his mouth open like he might be roaring at the photographer, his hair the exact same dark brown shade as mine. It’s like looking at a baby picture of myself. And on the end, a little girl with her arms crossed, taller than the other two, wearing overalls. Her long dark hair is slightly tangled, her face red like she’s been running, and her eyes glint amber.
Just like mine.
“Three?” I ask, feeling like I’m speaking through a throat made of gravel. When Lara nods, it feels like the world ends around me.
It’s not logical, but my mind starts to do the math — three kids, and about five years lost with each, makes fifteen years I’ve already missed with them, collectively.
If she was three months pregnant with them the night she told me she wasn’t coming with me, they would have been born around January. They’ll be turning five in six or seven months.
I missed their first birthdays, four of them in total. Twelve birthdays.
