Page 15 of Take Two

“Julian.”

“Cyaire.”

I sigh. Long and resigned and entirely aware that I was never going to avoid this particular conversation, not once I told him I was coming to Seattle. I should have known the conversation was always going to find its way here. Of course it was.

“Are you planning on looking for him?” The teasing is completely gone now, replaced by something quieter and more careful.

For a moment I don’t answer.

The silence stretches long enough that I know my brother notices it. Hell, I notice it.

Because if the answer were truly no, I would have said it immediately, without hesitation, the way you answer questions that have no weight to them.

“Wow,” Julian says softly. “Okay then.”

“Don’t,” I warn him. I genuinely, sincerely do not want to have this conversation in the back of a moving vehicle with Cameron performing elaborate indifference in the front seat.

“I’m not starting anything,” he replies, which is the thing people say immediately before starting something.

“You’re absolutely starting something.”

His laughter drifts through the line again, low and fond.

I turn my attention back to the window and let it rest there.

The truth is that I have spent the last two months actively, deliberately, and spectacularly unsuccessfully trying not to think about Jamie Maxwell.

One look across that hallway at the arena was enough to unravel every carefully constructed version of him I’d been carrying around for three years. All of it gone, instantly, replaced by something far more complicated and far less manageable.

Now I know exactly who he is, and it is as though a veil has been lifted from my eyes and replaced with a spotlight pointed directly at everything I’d been conveniently not examining.

Because once I knew where to look, Jamie Maxwell became impossible to miss.

The ridiculous part is that I still don’t know what to do with any of the information I’ve collected over these two months of what can only honestly be described as low-grade, hockey-adjacent stalking.

“Do you even think he’s still here?” I ask quietly, letting a little of the vulnerability through. Just enough. “The season’s over. They won the Stanley Cup. Isn’t this when athletes disappear to tropical islands and spend the summer posting vacation photographs from places the rest of us can’t afford?”

“Some of them, and Cy, you can definitely afford it.” Julian says.

“Exactly. He’s probably halfway around the world by now.” I reply, jumping on it quickly, because part of me recognizes what I’m doing and does it anyway. If he’s not in Seattle, then there’s my answer. Neat. Tidy. Decided by geography rather than anything requiring actual courage on my part.

Maybe that’s true. Maybe it isn’t.

The problem is that I keep replaying that night at the arena, turning it over from different angles.

If Dad hadn’t been there.

If Malik and Julian hadn’t been standing beside me.

If I hadn’t convinced myself that walking away was the sensible thing to do.

Maybe I would have stayed. Waited in the hallway, found some way to begin a sentence that started with ‘I don’t know if you remember me but’. . .Maybe something real could have happened. Instead, I left, and I have turned that decision over in my head on more occasions than I’m prepared to admit out loud in this SUV.

If I’m being completely honest with myself, I’ve regretted it more than once over the last two months.

“At least I know who he is now,” I say eventually, to say something.

Julian is quiet.