Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 81281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
I look at her, confused. She’s not making a blanket statement. That’s personal experience driving her words.
And I can’t fucking help myself. I make a sound that is not quite a laugh. “You know?”
I’m not being cruel about it. I’m just… she works in a performance facility. She went to UCLA and then to grad school. Her trust issues are probably about a research paper someone published without crediting her.
She nods at me. “Yeah… I know. I was with someone for almost two years,” she says, a hint of sadness but also anger in her voice. “He was smart, charming, the kind of person who’s very good at being exactly what you need them to be right up until they aren’t.”
Her words trail off and her gaze shifts to some middle point in the room, as if lost in memory.
I want to hear more. I’m morbidly curious. “What happened?”
“I found out he was cheating.” She wrinkles her nose as if it’s distasteful to even say those words. “So, I ended it and I felt his displeasure at me confronting him in the form of bruises.”
My entire body locks tight and an irrational fury wells up inside me. The fucker cheated on her and then punished her for it? I want to pound this unknown man into the ground, but more importantly… why do I even give a fuck?
“The thing that stayed with me wasn’t the grab,” she says more firmly, her eyes clearing from the haze of a bad memory. “It was that I never saw it coming. I’m professionally trained to read people… I do it for a living. And I was completely blindsided by someone I thought I knew down to the bone.” She looks at me now. “That’s the part that doesn’t leave. Not the betrayal itself. The fact that I trusted my own read of someone and I was wrong.”
The room is very quiet.
My chest feels like it cracks open, because that hit close to home. I don’t know what to do with it, so I don’t do anything. I sit with it, the fact that someone just described the precise interior of my own damage using a completely different story.
I don’t say that though.
“Is he why you came to Portland?” I ask..
She shakes her head. “No. I came here because Portland’s my home, but nine hundred miles felt like the right distance. He didn’t take the breakup well.”
I nod once.
She collects her tablet from the counter. The period is about over and I’ll go back out and whatever just happened in this room will get filed away under the professional relationship it technically still is.
“Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving,” Livia says, and the change in subject catches me off guard.
“So I heard,” I say.
“You’re going to Miller’s house for the get-together, right?”
She’s reminded me on no fewer than three occasions.
“I’m not sure,” I say, mainly to get a rise out of her.
“Yeah… that won’t work for me, Locke.” Livia crosses her arms over her chest. “We made a bargain.”
“I remember,” I grit out.
“Do holidays bother you?” she asks.
“They weren’t big in my house growing up,” I say, and then wonder why I admitted that to her. I’ve opened a proverbial can of worms for her to poke and prod at.
But she doesn’t, instead distracted by the team filing into the locker room signifying the end of the previous period. “I’ll see you at the team gathering and you can follow me to my parents’ place after.”
She turns her back on me, an obvious spring to her step, which means she feels like she got the better end of our collective bargaining agreement.
I pull my jersey back on and check my chin one more time.
A hand claps me on the shoulder. “All good?” Rome asks as he eyeballs the stitches.
“Yeah, man,” I reply, and then as an afterthought, “Thanks for the lesson delivery out there.”
“I got your back, bro,” he says, holding a fist out. I bump it.
Those words really don’t mean much because words are just words. Yes, he’s shown he has my back out on the ice, but it’s nothing special. It’s part of the job.
But there’s comfort in that because I know my teammates will do their jobs. I don’t have to worry about emotions or hard feelings getting in the way.
It’s like Livia said a few minutes ago. It’s not the betrayal that hurts the worst. It’s the fact you trusted your own read of someone and completely got it wrong.
Meaning… it’s your own fucking fault.
And when it boils right down to it, it’s not others I don’t trust.
It’s myself.
Chapter 12
Livia
Miller and Cherry Parks live in Lake Oswego, twenty minutes south of Portland. Wide streets lined with mature trees, manicured lawns behind black iron fencing, stone mailboxes standing like sentinels at every driveway. Their house sits back on the property, all pale stone and windows.