October. 2016

You can imagine pain, empathize, think of how different sorts of heartache would feel to bare. How it might fester inside of you, weighing down and crushing the vital parts of us we need to keep moving. Pain can feel like a disease, one that rots us from the inside out.

Pain can be blanketed with substances or distractions. Pain can be buried deep enough that we're able to smile until the roots start to wrap themselves around our hearts and squeeze until we have no choice but to dig it all back up.

I've been hurt before. Friends have lied, girlfriends have cheated on me, I've had to bury a beloved pet. Nico, the hamster I was so adamant would live forever. He did well, but old age comes for all of us.

There was something unique about the pain worming itself down into the base of my stomach these days.

Whenever Kinsley looked at me, her smile a bit smaller, her eyes a bit more guarded, I felt winded. Of course I was grateful she was still alive and things could have been worse when she hit her head. But the love of my life looking at me as if I'm a stranger was one of the most gut wrenching things I have ever been through.

We had plans. We were engaged, building a home, getting dogs. I meant it when I told her we'd start over and we'd go as slow as she needed, it didn't mean I wasn't desperate for that ring to go back on her finger.

I sat on the steps outside of the rink.

Somewhere behind the thick dark clouds was sunshine, I caught the occasional glow of it when the wind shifted. I was fucking freezing but I needed air in my lungs before I got back on the team bus this evening.

Practice ended a while ago, I'd made a coffee, walked outside and got a phone call from Ash asking if I was going to be home for Halloween. Ash was big into her spook fests. She decked out her apartment, hired caterers, ghouled herself out so she was the best dressed. I had to admit, the events were a good time but I had to be in Seattle on the first of November.

She was disappointed to hear I couldn't commit but I didn't make it more often than I did.

"You look like you're about to kick someone in the teeth," Lei walked past me, skipping down a few steps and leaned on the metal arm rail, watching me.

"I just hate being this far from Kins," I admitted, turning my phone over and over in my hands. We had a flight into Colorado later tonight and then we were straight back here to Alberta for our match against Edmonton. Two days later we'd be in Vegas.

All of the travelling had never bothered me like this before. I'd never felt homesick but now I was homesick for her. It was killing me not to text her and ask how she's doing every five seconds. To beg her to follow me and forget about a job if it meant I could wake up beside her in these fucking hotel rooms I was sick of seeing.

Lei tapped the arm rail, the ping of metal echoing in the parking lot. "Things are going well, right? You two seem good."

"Things are good. Great," I blew out a breath and palmed my jaw. "I miss her so fucking much. She was supposed to be here, we were supposed to be doing this together. It's just hard."

"You haven't even known her for a year," Lei tried to disguise his judgement with a soft laugh but the nail struck. I looked at him, glaring. "Chill man, I just think the space might not be a bad thing. She needs it. You could do with remembering you had a team and friends before she came along."

"Are you fucking with me?"

He shrugged, his twists peeking out from underneath his beanie. Lei wasn't the jealous sort but he was firm on his stance that friends should never come second to lovers. Kins wasn't just a lover though. She was the one in a lifetime. The answer to a question never asked, the gift that kept on giving. I had never been shy to tell people what she meant to me.

"I have a lot of love for my friends," I rested my elbows on my knees, looking at Lei with a narrow glare and a tilted grin. "But none of you have the ass I want to spoon for the rest of my life. Or the tits I use as a pillow."

Lei shook his head and sighed. "Shallow man, I knew it was all about her looks."

"Get fucked."

"I'll be your spoon baby."

I punched him in the thigh, both of us laughing because he knew that while I was drawn to Kinsley's smile and her sweet dotted freckles, it was who she was that sucked me in and refused to let me go.

The amnesia had changed a lot about her and I knew it was hard for her to accept that she might be different, but it wasn't enough to change how I felt about her. Her bark had less bite and her heart was softer.

That didn't matter to me. Sure, she used to have these walls that felt almost impossible to climb, but once in a while, she'd lower them, look at me with this tenderness I didn't know she had and whisper sweet sentiments that filled every crack the past had put in me.

Her short temper and her attitude and the damn balls she had to tell anyone and everyone what she was thinking was gorgeous. But that part of her wasn't gone, it just wasn't her weapon of choice right now.

Kinsley used to be defensive to the point that her immediate reflex was to get aggressive and I accepted that, I also knew that while that part of her was now quieted, her voice wasn't and if she needed it, she'd wield her words just the same.

That was what I loved about her. All the threads that came together and weaved her DNA into this gorgeous, one of a kind fabric, unbreakable, unmovable, forever her.

I scuffed my foot on the step and looked at Lei. "I don't know how to tell her."

"Tell her what?"

"That we're engaged. That we're building a fucking house together."

Rain started to patter down, just a light fall. It hardly rained at all in October so I didn't bother hiding from it.

Lei flicked his hood up and pursed his lips. "I don't know, Maverick. You should've told her straight off the bat. I don't know why you thought spreading out all this life changing news was a good idea."

His words punched dread straight into my stomach. "We didn't want to overwhelm her with it all at once."

"At least the processing could be done in one go. She has to keep finding out new shit when she's only just learned to cope with what she knows. I told you, right? I said, tell her straight up from the start. You didn't listen."

It shouldn't be this hard to admit that Leighton could be right, but it is. Especially when the damage is done and I can't go back and argue with Sadie that her idea might not be the best one. I let her call the shots because she's Kinsley's sister, but perhaps we both fucked up.

My phone started to ring and when I saw my girl's caller ID smiling back at me, I shot up off the steps and slapped Lei on the arm as I passed. "Have to take this. See you back at the hotel."

"Yeah, whatever."

I slid into the rental car I was borrowing from the hotel and hit speaker on the phone. "You've made my afternoon."

Her laughter came through and squeezed the fucking air out of my lungs. "Hi. I thought I'd call before you get on the plane later. How's it all going?"

As much as I wanted to tell her I was missing her and wanted her here more than anything, I didn't want to put that burden on her shoulders. I could tell she felt bad enough about not coming when she told me.

"It is what it is, babe. We're on top of our game so far. You been watching?"

"You know I have. I'm thinking about coming to Alberta for the Edmonton match."

My head fell back against the seat, relief pouring through me. "Please, baby. I miss you. I'll book the flight."

"I've been looking at your schedule," she said. "You don't have another game in Vancouver until like, December."

Her disappointment was evident, even if she was doing her best to hide it. "I know, Kins. It's hard, this sort of life. Being with someone who isn't home a lot."

"I don't have regrets," she said fast, her raspy voice tugging on the walls of my heart.

It was a mad sort of desperation, wanting so badly to reach out and hold the person you love and not being able to.

"Is it hard not being single though?" She continued. "You know, being on the road all the time, all the opportunities to mess around with whoever, whenever. I mean, it seems like the ideal life for someone unattached."

I tousled my hair, feeling restless at her train of thought. "No, it's not hard not being single. It's about the sport for me, not the women or the travelling or the opportunities. I love what I do, but I love you more."

Her little intake of breath made me pause. Shit. I hadn't said that to her before. Not since the amnesia. I didn't want to rush her into saying it back until she was ready and as the silence stretched on, it was obvious she wasn't ready.

"I got the job," she finally said and I stared at the steering wheel, finger tracing the soft leather and chrome Mazda logo. "At Lin Architecture."

Get it together, asshole. Tell her congratulations.

"Congratulations," I forced the words to come out naturally. "I knew you could do it. Not a single doubt."

I wonder what she'd think about the fact that she was designing our house. She'd be proud of that work, her mock ups and mood boards, all the hours she'd poured into our home so far. It was all on her laptop which I'd stashed in the top of our closet, waiting until she was prepared to receive the news her sister and I had hidden from her.

Fuck, Lei was right. We should have told her from the beginning.

"Jason owns that business," she said. That got my attention. "Did you know that?"

Shit, I wasn't sure how she was going to handle what I said next. "Yeah, I did."

There was a beat of silence, my knee shook while I waited for her response, each second that ticked by made me more nervous that I'd once again, fucked up.

"You knew?"

"Babe, uh, the thing was, Sadie thought it'd be best if you went into the interview not knowing about Jason. She was worried you'd turn it down and asked me not to mention it."

There's a subtle scoff of disbelieving laughter and I'd know that sound anywhere. That's the sound of a gun being cocked, because she's about to fire off.

"I don't know," her tone is frustrated, but almost withdrawn, like she's afraid to be as blunt as she wants to be. "I'm just getting a little bit sick of people narrating my entire life for me."

Fuck. "What do you mean?"

"Well, from the start of this whole thing I've been told what I should know and what I shouldn't know," she sucks in a sharp breath, pausing for a moment. "And I just feel like everyone else is. . . dictating who I am and where I'm going. I don't know if that makes sense."

I slink back into the leather seats, head tipped back and an ache of regret in my chest. She's right. Sadie and I have had a huge hand in feeding back her life to her and I'm still keeping things she deserves to know. It was her fucking life.

"Yeah," I clench my eyes closed hard and wish there was a better way to do this but I've never faced a situation where the love of my life forgets who I am. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"I'm an adult," her words are a touch softer. "I know I've been through this weird experience and none of us really know how to deal with it but I'm just starting to get a bit over everyone keeping things from me."

The next time we're together, I have to tell her we're engaged. Fuck whatever Sadie thinks is best from now on. I've had enough of taking her advice.

"It won't happen again," I promised her. "I imagine it's frustrating to find out people are micromanaging the details of your own life."

Her breath rushed and she sounded relieved when she said, "Yes. It makes me feel like a child."

My lip twitched on a grin because I imagined if we'd had this conversation a few months ago, it would've sounded more like 'if you fuckers keep one more thing from me, I'll kick off. Stop fucking with me.'

Like I knew she would, she was able to wield her words to get her point across, firm and straight forward but without the threat of violence. I'm glad to know I appreciate either side of her demands.

After we hang up, I feel the happiness she brings me start to slip. My leg was still bouncing and I blew out a quick breath as I called Sadie's contact, as I'd done a thousand times before in these last few months.

It rang for a while and then finally, she picked up, the background echoing like she was in the staff room at the museum. That was how often I called this woman while Kinsley was recovering.

"Hey? What's up?"

Granted, my phone calls were lesser now that Kinsley and I were spending so much time together.

"Just talked to Kins," I peered out of the window, watching team mates file out of the rink with bags of gear. The rain had stopped.

"Okay?"

"She's not happy that we didn't tell her about Jason owning Linn Architecture."

Her light laugh was dismissive. "No, she's fine now. She understood why I didn't tell her."

My head shook with frustration and I clenched my jaw. This had been going on from the moment Kins got diagnosed with Amnesia. Sadie decided she knows best and fuck whatever I think.

"Na," I pushed a hand through my hair, frustration making me tug the ends of it. "She's sick of us telling her what's good for her and I'm done drip feeding her information."

Sadie's voice came through a bit more cautious. "Okay, well, we agreed that it had to be gradual."

"No, you said it had to be gradual. You made me keep my distance at the start and decided what she should know and what she shouldn't."

"For her own good," she snapped back. These girls weren't afraid to get into it when their heckles were up. "She didn't need to be overwhelmed with all of it all at once."

"It's her fucking life," I shouted, the restraint slipping because I was so damn sick of this argument. "She should've been told all of it from the get go. Who the fuck are we to tell someone what parts of their existence they're entitled to know, Sadie? Fuck that. I'm telling her we're engaged next time I see her."

"Phoenix—"

"No," my voice was thunderous in the small car. "You don't get to tell me I'm not allowed or it's too soon or it's too much. However she reacts to it, that's her right. As long as she knows the truth."

"Don't you think it might be insanely overwhelming to tell her she's engaged to someone she just met?! That's a lot."

"Might be," I folded an arm across my chest and tucked it under my armpit. "But it's her engagement to know about."

"I'm trying to help her, Phoenix."

Matthew's was making his way across the lot toward my car, bag slung over his back. I guessed he wanted a ride so I decided it was a good excuse to end this conversation.

"Whether you're trying to help or not, Kins has made it clear she's sick of being kept in the dark and I'm going to respect that. It wouldn't matter if she got pissed and never spoke to me again, I'm going to be honest."

"Oh, it wouldn't matter," she mocked me. "Sure, Phoenix. You wouldn't cope for three seconds without her."

"Yeah, neither would you."

"What does that mean?!"

I bite the inside of my cheek and contemplate whether I'm about to go too far. Fuck it. "It means you're co dependent, Sadie. Kins has been looking after you your entire life and as soon as she got amnesia, you didn't hesitate to switch places. I don't know if that was out of guilt or some sort of power play, but it's fucking blindingly obvious."

Her voice started to tremble. "How about I just want to take care of her because she's my sister and she would do it for me?! She has done it for me. Like you said, our entire lives. I owe her."

Matthew's opened the car door and slid into the passenger seat, letting the cold in with him.

"Yeah," I said to Sadie. "Well you're going about it all fucking wrong and I'm not listening to you on this for another fucking minute."

I hung up and dropped the phone into the cup holder beside me, punching the steering wheel just to blow off some of the pent up frustration festering in my limbs.

Matthew's was stone still in the seat beside me, brows raised. He wasn't a stranger to violent outbursts or irrational anger. He had more penalties than our entire team combined.

"Can I hitch a ride?" He asked, opting not to ask me about the phone call. "Leighton's going around asking people what they think of his girlfriend and then showing them photos of their mom."

That made me laugh as I pressed the start button beside the steering wheel. "You aren't in the mood?"

He glanced toward me as I backed out of the spot. "Well the fact that he actually slept with my mom a couple of years ago, makes it a bit of a sore spot."

Shit, I forgot about that and I do my best not to cackle as we leave.