Cade: Fire And Ice: A Second Chance Hockey Romance (6 page)

My mom didn't have anything else to say. She turned the light off and disappeared back into her darkened bedroom. I listened until the sound of the ice cubes clinking together in her drink faded and then went back to the kitchen to clean up the mess from dinner. When I went to lay on the deflated air mattress I called a bed, with the sound of the boys sleeping around me, I thought of Cade. I didn't know why he liked me. In fact it seemed highly likely that he was going to wake up one morning and discover that he actually wanted one of the curvy blonde cheerleaders at school. Until that day, I was determined to enjoy every second of my time with him, aware as I was even at that young age that I might not get another chance.

I didn't see Ellie for almost a whole week after our evening in the emergency room. I also found the cell phone I'd meant to give her buried in the bottom of my backpack. Dammit.

My inability to concentrate on anything except Ellie and the incessant worrying about how she was doing distracted me from everything else in my life, including hockey. It didn't go unnoticed. After a particularly lackluster performance during an important game against our main rivals, Coach Hansen called me into his office.

"Cade. You were off your game tonight."

It was a statement, not a question and he was right. I didn't know what to say so I just sat there, looking down at the worn blue carpet in the office and wondering what Ellie was doing at that precise moment, whether she was still in pain or not.

"What's going on? Where is your head at? Is it that girl?"

Something about Coach Hansen's tone when he said 'that girl' ruffled me. I also wasn't used to being questioned. I was used to being praised and congratulated and, if I'm honest, pandered to. Coach was not in a pandering mood.

"How important is your future to you, Cade?"

Ugh, what kind of a question was that? Of course my future was important to me. I could feel myself getting progressively more and more pissed off.

"My future is very important to me."

"Glad to hear it. You know there are scouts from three or four NHL teams at all the Ice Kings games, right? And you know these are the guys who are going to determine your place in the draft - or if you even get drafted at all?"

"I know, Coach."

There was an old blister on the heel of my left hand. I picked at it absentmindedly, desperate to get the conversation over with.

"Come on, Cade. Level with me."

I hated all that we're-just-bros shit Coach Hansen always threw at us. My teammates mostly seemed to eat it up but it always came across as patronizing to me. Coach Hansen wasn't worried about me personally and I resented his assumption that I hadn't figured that out yet. He was worried about his own reputation - a reputation that might be in danger if Cade Parker turned out not to be the next NHL superstar. I looked up at him and shrugged.

"What do you want me to say? My girlfriend was badly hurt a few days ago, of course I'm worried about her. Even if you want me to just turn that off, I can't."

Coach leaned back in his chair and interlaced his fingers behind his head, looking at me and just barely managing to conceal the disappointed sigh I knew he wanted to let out.

"I understand that, Cade. But you're eighteen years old. I'm looking at the big picture here. The decisions you make now are going to effect the rest of your life. You're almost there. You need to stay focused."

"I know that!" I said, getting heated. "I have the best scoring record in Ice Kings' history and I had one bad game. I wish everyone would just get off my goddamned back."

"Cade, listen. You're going to be drafted. What do you think is going to happen then? You're going to have to leave North Falls. Do you think Ellie Hesketh is going to come with you? With her family situation?"

Small towns, man. Everyone knowing everyone else's business. I'd already thought about asking Ellie to come with me, wherever I ended up going. Fantasizing about a life with her in the big city was actually starting to constitute an embarrassing amount of my daily thoughts. I knew her family situation, but I had been putting it aside, pretending we would be able to find a way around it. Coach Hansen bringing it up like that and exposing my daydreams for what they were infuriated me. I stood up, quickly, and looked him in the eye.

"You don't know Ellie Hesketh. So stop fucking talk about her like you do!"

When I got to my car and put my hands on the wheel, they were shaking slightly. Coach Hansen was an egomaniac asshole, but he was right about one thing - Ellie wasn't going to be able to leave North Falls. I tried to convince myself there was a chance. I tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach as I drove home clinging to a desperate hope that I wasn't going to be forced to choose between the career I'd dreamed of and the beautiful girl with the small, careworn hands and the lioness's heart.

My parents were both sitting at the kitchen table, stone-faced, when I walked in. I started to turn around, intending to walk right back out again, but my mother's voice followed me:

"Cade. We need to talk. Right now."

Reluctantly, I turned back to face them and noticed a few sheets of paper lying on the table in front of my dad. It was a credit card statement. He picked it up and handed it to me like it was evidence of some great crime.

"What's this, son?"

I respected my parents. Eighteen or not, budding superstar or not, they'd always had my back and I knew I wasn't going to be able to stomp out of the room like I'd just done with Coach Hansen. I slumped down into a chair and met their worried glances.

"It's a credit card statement. My girl- I mean, a friend of mine was badly hurt last week. Her nose was broken. She couldn't pay, so I paid. I'll pay you guys back before the end of the year, like we arranged when you gave me the card."

Of course, paying them back was dependent on getting the NHL contract everyone had assumed I was destined for, but I was pretty sure that wasn't in any real danger, not due to one crappy game.

I watched my parents exchange a look.

"Son, just who is this girl? And why haven't you told us about her?"

I never told my parents about any of the girls in my life. Admittedly because up until Ellie, I hadn't felt seriously about any of them, but also because I knew my mom and dad were on a constant lookout for 'distractions' in my life and I didn't want to worry them.

"I don't know. I guess I didn't want you to worry."

My mom reached across the table and squeezed my hand.

"Well we are worried, Cade. Do you know how much that visit to the hospital cost you?"

I didn't know. What I did know was that it didn't matter. Ellie was hurt. I was the only person who could help, so I did the right thing and helped.

"No, I don't know the exact amount. What should I have done? Wouldn't you have helped a friend in the same position?"

My Dad looked me dead in the eye. "It's fourteen thousand dollars, Cade. I think we're going to have to cancel the card until you can afford to get one linked to your own account."

Fourteen thousand dollars. It was higher than I thought it would be but it wasn't enough to change my mind about paying it. No amount would have been.

"That's fine," I said, truthfully. "I understand. And I will pay you back as soon as I can."

"Cade, just how serious is it with this girl? We've been talking to people here in town and it sounds like she's bad news."

My mom's expression was a combination of disapproval and disappointment.

"Bad news?!" I asked, a little too loudly. "What does that even mean? Nobody even knows her. All they know is that she's poor. And for the record, she has just as much money as I do - and by just as much I mean 'none' so I don't understand why she's getting judged here."

My mom pursed her lips and shook her head.

"It's not about how much money she has, Cade."

"Isn't it?"

"No, it isn't. We've been hearing things about her family situation and none of it sounds good."

"How is that her fault!?" I yelled.

"Cade, calm down. You're eighteen and it sounds like you have feelings for this girl. What you need to understand is that the family someone comes from matters. It's not about 'fault.' It's about your life and your hockey career and what's best for you, which is all your mother and I want. We'll be leaving North Falls soon and you know that."

I leaned over the table with my head in my hands. I did know it. I had to talk to Ellie. I had to believe there was some hope. My mom grabbed my hand again.

"Cade, we trust you. We know you. We know that all you've wanted since your dad could strap skates onto you was a hockey career. It's so close now. All you have to do is reach out and take it. Promise us you won't lose sight of this for a teenaged crush."

I looked up at my parents and saw the stress on their faces. It made me feel angry and guilty at the same time. They'd moved to North Falls for me. I got up slowly from the table as the weight of the decisions that were approaching much faster than I wanted bore down on me. I looked at my dad and then at my mom, trying to think of some way to reassure them without betraying myself and my feelings for Ellie.

"You say you trust me. So trust me. I won't do anything stupid."

Ellie. She was still all I could think of. Lying in bed that night and thinking about the way she'd kissed me, I considered the idea of sneaking out and going to her trailer, trying to wake her up through her bedroom window. It couldn't happen, she would be angry. I needed her, though. I needed everything about her and not just in the usual way that eighteen year old boys need girls. If she didn't show up at school the next day, I decided I was going to cut class and go to her place, knock on the door and refuse to leave until I saw her. Even if she got angry, I had to see her.

I didn't go to school for almost a week after the beating I received at the hands of Katy Grebling and her crew. My face was in constant pain, but mostly it was because I couldn't face seeing the looks on the faces of the other students - or the teachers. None of whom, I knew, would lift a single finger to punish the girls who had hurt me so badly. I'd been beat up before - hell, it was almost a monthly occurrence - but never like what had happened that afternoon in the woods.

People who have never been physically hurt by another human being don't understand that the psychological wounds can be worse than the physical ones. The hurt of knowing - of really
knowing
- that nobody (including my mom and my teachers) except Cade gave a single shit about me was worse than the pain of my broken nose, my missing teeth and my cast-clad arm. If it hadn't been for Jacob, David and Baby Ben, who needed to be fed and cared for, I probably would have crawled out to the shed like a wounded animal and cried for days.

To top everything off, Baby Ben had another cold and one of my mom's barfly friends had filled her in on the town gossip. She came home totally wasted in the middle of the afternoon about three days after it happened and stumbled into the kitchen where I was eating an early dinner with my brothers.

"So. I hear someone in this house has been acting like a cheap little tramp."

I kept my head down and ignored her. She slapped the back of my head and Baby Ben immediately started wailing, still too young to have learned how to control his emotions. I caught my oldest brother's eye.

"Jacob, take your brothers into the bedroom and play with your cars."

"No, don't!" My mother yelled. "Why shouldn't they know all about their sister the slut?"

Jacob froze, terrified of angering my mother further, and stayed where he was at the table. Why did she have to involve them?

All four of us sat there, tense and waiting to see how it was going to play out.

"A hockey player, huh? You think you've got a chance with one of them? He's using you, Ellie. You really think one of the Ice Kings could be interested in ugly little Ellie Hesketh for anything more than what's between her legs?"

So that was it. She was jealous. My own mother, jealous of my relationship with a boy seventeen years her junior. It was pathetic. I could feel adrenaline beginning to surge through my veins as she shouted at me, poking one of her cigarette-yellowed fingers repeatedly into my shoulder.

"Mom, the boys are here," I said, very quietly.

She ignored me.

"Just don't get pregnant. If you get pregnant, you're out on your skinny ass, Ellie. No fucking way am I raising another baby."

I don't know why it was that comment that made me snap. My mother had said much worse things to me. But that time, it was as if I could actually feel something break inside me. I lifted my head up and looked her in the eye, speaking slowly and carefully so she would understand.

"You haven't raised any babies, mom. I've raised them. Because you're a drunk who can't even take care of her own children."

Enraged, my mother leapt up from the table and grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking me off my chair and screaming incoherently in my face. Then something happened. Something that hadn't ever happened before. I didn't sink to the floor cowering like I usually did and like my mom was expecting. Instead, all the injustices of the past week boiled over and I fought back, shoving my mom away from me. She stumbled drunkenly and lay there for a few seconds on the dirty linoleum floor. When she looked up at me, her expression for a few seconds was one of total shock before quickly curdling back into rage.

"You - Ellie, you fucking little...I am calling the police! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!"

All three boys immediately started begging her not to kick me out. It was that - their pitiful, tearful pleas, that finally got me to cool down a little. Hot, angry tears spilled down my cheeks as we all waited to see what my mother would do. When she finally managed to get up, she yanked the freezer open without saying a thing, pulled out a bottle of vodka and then disappeared down the hallway to continue drinking herself into oblivion.

The next day, my mom seemed to have no recollection of the episode. That or she realized that kicking me out would have been a bad idea. CPS made fairly regular visits to our place and although those visits never resulted in much more than a stern lecture about dressing the children properly and feeding us nutritious food, I know my mother was on some level aware of the fact that without me Jacob, David and Baby Ben would have nobody to look after them.

I took a twenty dollar bill out of the sixty-eight dollars that made up my latest paycheck from my part-time salon job and, after making sure the boys had eaten lunch, headed off to the grocery store to buy dried beans and frozen vegetables for soup. When I was finished shopping, a black Lexus pulled up next to me in the parking lot and the driver's side window rolled down. A pretty, middle-aged woman smiled up at me.

"Ellie Hesketh?"

I nodded.

"I'm Jane Parker, Cade's mother."

Oh God, what the hell did she want? She must have seen the credit card bill, the one Cade had paid for me at the hospital when I was too loopy on painkillers to protest. My immediate instinct was to run away. I think Jane Parker saw it, too, because she reached one manicured hand out of the window and touched my arm gently.

"You're not in any trouble, Ellie. I thought we could talk?"

I was seized with anxiety. Nice ladies like Jane Parker, the kind who drove nice cars and wore twinsets, generally didn't have anything to say to me. What did she want? I couldn't just flee.

"Uh, OK."

"Hop in."

I walked stiffly around to the passenger side of the car and got in.

"Are you hungry? How about some coffee and a cupcake at Ritchies?"

Ritchies was North Falls' version of a fancy coffeehouse. I'd never been, but all the popular girls at school seemed to have Ritchies cups permanently affixed to their hands.

"OK."

My voice was very low, barely audible, and I hadn't been brave enough to look Jane Parker in the eye yet. She drove us to Ritchies and ordered me a cupcake and a coffee while I waited at one of the small, wooden tables filled with dread.

"You poor thing, don't look so nervous," she said when she sat down, putting a vanilla cupcake piled high with thick, pink frosting down in front of me.

Instead of cramming the whole thing into my mouth at once, which is what I wanted to do, I forced myself to peel the wrapper off slowly and take a series of small bites so Mrs. Parker wouldn't see how hungry I actually was.

"So. I hear you are close to my son, Cade?"

I sat in front of her, nodding and completely clueless as to how to handle the situation. She was wearing a necklace made of pearls so shiny they almost looked like they were glowing.

"Do you like it?"

I felt my cheeks begin to burn. "Um, yes. It's beautiful," I stammered through a mouthful of cupcake.

"They're South Sea pearls - my husband bought them for me three years ago for our anniversary."

I'm surprised I didn't explode with awkwardness right there in the middle of Ritchies. I wasn't a girl who went to Ritchies. I didn't belong. I also wasn't a girl who talked to well-groomed older women about their pearls while we ate cupcakes. I just wanted it to be over.

"I can see that you're uncomfortable, Ellie. Can I call you Ellie?"

"Yes," I mumbled, inhaling the sweet, buttery scent of the cupcake and taking another bite.

"Please, relax. I just want to have a conversation with you. Woman to woman."

Was she making fun of me? I looked up at Jane Parker's face but I couldn't read her expression.

"OK."

"Do you care about my son?"

The tingling in my cheeks got worse and I started fidgeting with the cupcake wrapper, unable to do anything more than nod in response. I prayed Cade hadn't told her about what we'd done in her husband's car.

"That's good to hear. We're a little concerned right now that Cade might be losing focus. I know it might be difficult for you to understand - you're both so young, after all - but I hope you can see things from our perspective."

Cade's mother was so different from my own. I was dazzled by her beautiful clothing and her seemingly kind, maternal manner. She was right about eighteen being very young, too. Definitely too young to discern the difference between genuine concern for me and ruthless, sugar-coated ambition for her son. If I'd been older, or if I'd grown up with adults who were anything other than obviously dysfunctional, I might have thought harder about the whole tack she was taking, which boiled down to my presence in Cade's life being a huge risk to his future. She kept touching my arm, too. Stupidly, I enjoyed it, desperate as I was for anything that even vaguely resembled motherly kindness.

"Perhaps at some point in the future, when Cade is more settled into his hockey career, the two of you will be able to build something real. But for right now, if you truly want the best for him, you need to understand that any distractions could hurt him badly."

"Mm. Yes." I replied as my throat started to thicken at the thought of not being part of Cade's life anymore.

Mrs. Parker noticed it when I swiped the dirty cuff of my sweatshirt under my eyes, trying to catch the tears before they fell.

"Aw, Ellie. You look like you need a hug. Do you need a hug?"

I did need a hug. I needed a lifetime of hugs. When Cade's mother put her arms around me and stroked my hair, I clung to her for a few seconds, too tightly. A loud, ugly sob welled up in my throat and I didn't quite manage to contain it. A few people looked over at us.

"Do you need a ride home, dear?"

I sniffed hard, desperately trying to quell the teary, childish hiccups that were threatening to break out and nodded that yes, I needed a ride home. I didn't, actually. But I wanted to spend more time with Mrs. Parker. It wasn't a conscious thought at all and I don't think I was even aware of it at the time. Like a stray dog shown a tiny kindness I was embarrassingly grateful for the affection she showed me.

When she pulled up a half-block away from my trailer, Cade's mom turned to face me.

"Do you understand what I've been saying, Ellie? Do you understand why a relationship for Cade right now could be disastrous for his future?"

"Yes," I whispered.

"Don't be upset, sweetheart. I know it feels like the only thing in the world right now, but you'll see. You'll grow up and meet a good man and look back on all of this as if it was nothing. And if you ever need to talk, feel free to give me a call. Do you have a phone?"

I didn't have a phone so she wrote her number on a piece of paper and handed it to me, holding it back at the last second as if she'd just thought of something.

"Oh, and Ellie? One more thing..."

I looked up at her, absurdly hopeful that she might be about to ask me to meet her regularly for cupcakes and girl talk and the mothering I so completely lacked.

"It's best if you don't talk to Cade about this. I'm trying to keep it all separate from him so he can concentrate on his hockey. How does that sound to you?"

"I won't say anything." I said, so eager to please a person who had no interest in my well-being that just thinking of it years later was enough to make me cry.

"That's good to hear. I trust you."

I was naive at eighteen. More naive than most other eighteen year olds. But I wasn't stupid. I fell for Mrs. Parker's concerned mom act, yeah, but at the same time I understood that she was basically right. I
was
a distraction for Cade. He was going to leave soon, for another city and another life and I was going to stay in North Falls to look after the three little boys who had literally no one else to do it for them. It wasn't going to be temporary, either. Baby Ben was only two years old and it was going to be a very long time until he was able to look after himself.

I fixed dinner for the boys and sat down with them as they ate. They didn't have anyone except me. I had to stay with them, nothing else was possible. David looked up at one point as he shoveled another spoonful of soup into his mouth.

"Are you sad, Ellie? Your face looks funny."

"No," I lied, "I'm not sad. I'm just thinking about how much I love all of you."

The last part wasn't a lie. It was a truth that couldn't be ignored or put aside or downplayed. Cade was going to leave North Falls. And I was going to stay.