Cold Day in the Sun Read online

  He groans. “You’re killing me, Smalls.”

  The Sandlot. His taste in movies is almost as good as his taste in music.

  “If we—if we do this—” I wave my hand between us like he did. “If we do this, we have to keep it to ourselves, like Carter and Livvie did. We can’t let anyone know, at least for a while. Is that OK with you?”

  He doesn’t answer right away, his eyes searching mine. I wonder what, exactly, he’s looking for.

  “Yes, yeah,” he says slowly, “if that’s the only way you’ll give us a shot, Dutch. We can keep this to ourselves for now.”

  “OK. But remember, you’re my captain. No special treatment on the ice. OK?”

  “Easy. I can keep my roles separate.”

  “Your roles?”

  “Your captain and your boyfriend.”

  I swallow. My boyfriend? He’s calling himself my boyfriend?

  “But I can give you special treatment off the ice, right?” He grins.

  My face heats and I nod.

  “Do you remember, at the A-Frame? I believe I had my hands on your hips. Like this.”

  He drops my hands and places his on my hips, and yes, even though he’s wearing thick gloves, and I’m covered by snow pants and a parka, I’m instantly warmed by his touch as the current passes through me.

  And then he crushes his mouth against mine.

  And, Oh. Wow. A cascade of electricity rushes through every cell of my body. It’s a fast, searing guitar riff. The exhilarating rush of a breakaway. A burst of fresh, cold, pure winter air. All my favorite things in one perfect moment as he tugs me even closer, as I part my lips and he slips his tongue inside my mouth. He tastes sweet, like caramel and chocolate.

  I’m on fire. Hot Sauce is so, so hot.

  I’ll take this kind of special treatment any day of the week. The bag of popcorn and DVDs falls to the ground and I reach up and put my arms around his neck, trying to get closer, closer as I taste him, as he nips my bottom lip, as he breathes out so I can breathe him in, like the Foo Fighters song, as his lips move up my jaw to my earlobe, as I murmur his name and smile, as his mouth finds mine again, crushes against me, tangles up in me, tangles me up.

  Whoa.

  I hear the swooshing sound of snow under tires and I jump back from him. Even though we’re bundled up, I worry that someone will recognize us.

  “You see? That’s the kind of thing I’m worried about. We’re in the middle of a public park!”

  Wes reaches out a gloved hand and places it on my cheek but doesn’t make a move to kiss me again. “Then let’s take this somewhere private.”

  I pick up the bag and brush the snow off. He grabs my free hand as we continue down the sidewalk toward his house. I’m too stunned—I’m holding hands with Hot Sauce Millard— to make casual conversation. After we trudge up the driveway, he drops my hand to enter in the code on the keypad. Someone has cleared the driveway and sidewalk, but the drifts are starting to pile against the house again.

  “Wait,” I say. “Don’t go in yet.”

  I wade through the snow in the front yard toward the fence.

  “What are you doing?” Wes asks.

  “I want to see this up close.”

  I shuffle along the mural, back and forth, from winter to spring and back again. Blooming flowers and green grass. A father and a daughter on a rowboat fishing on the lake, the sun sparkling on the surface. Orange and red and brown leaves along the shoreline. A group of hockey players on the frozen lake. Wes waits for me there.

  “This is amazing,” I say. I’m a little out of breath, from our walk, our kiss, the cold. “Who painted it?”

  He tilts his head. “You really don’t know?”

  I smile and shake my head. “No. I mean, I know it wasn’t here before you moved in. Your mom or Tim, maybe?”

  “No,” he says. “Look closer. Look at the players.”

  I take a step toward the fence, and my gaze falls on each of the hockey players.

  One of them has a long brown ponytail with a thin violet stripe.

  She’s me. With a violet stripe.

  I turn to look at him, my eyes wide.

  “You painted this?”

  He nods.

  “Wes, it’s so good. I had no idea you were an artist.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Dutch,” he says.

  I turn back to the winter scene, reach out and brush snow off. “When?” I ask, my throat tight. I try to think if I ever saw it as a work in progress, but I only ever remember seeing it finished. “When did you paint this?”

  “Last fall. I finished this scene the day after Thanksgiving. We got three inches of snow the next day.”

  “Last fall,” I repeat. “She’s me.”

  It’s not a question.

  He nods, his eyes narrowed, brow furrowed. “Yeah,” he says slowly.

  “But you don’t like me. Didn’t like me. Why did you paint me on your fence when you didn’t like me?”

  “Dutch,” he says in a low voice, but he doesn’t continue. He painted me in his mural. My heart soars and aches at the same time.

  We’ve wasted so much time. I don’t want to waste any more.

  “We should go inside,” he says after a few seconds.

  I touch the girl with the violet stripe one more time before following Wes across the yard.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Once we’re in the garage and he’s pushed the button for the door to come back down, he leans in, kisses my ice-cold cheek with warm, soft lips, and slowly moves to the corner of my mouth, so tenderly and with so much possibility, I have to close my eyes to believe it.

  “Come on,” he whispers.

  We stomp the snow from our boots in the garage before stepping into the laundry room and stripping off our cold, wet things, hanging them over the utility sink, the washer, the closet doors, wherever we find space.

  “I was beginning to worry,” Debbie says as we walk into the kitchen. Now that we’re back at the house, I’m self-conscious, apprehensive about the kiss(es). Wes must feel the same, because he stands about ten feet away from me. “Tim got called back to work,” Debbie says. “I heard on the news that there have been seven hundred and fifteen car accidents in Minnesota in the last twenty-four hours.”

  She’s stirring something on the stove, and Wes leans over to inspect it.

  “Tomato soup,” he says. “This the good stuff?”

  Debbie nods.

  “You want me to make grilled cheese?”

  “Sure. Holland, why don’t you give him a hand?”

  “I don’t know, Mom,” Wes says. “Holland’s a professional here. I don’t want to embarrass myself.”

  I snort. “The daughter of a professional. What are the boys doing?”

  “Still playing video games.”

  I scoff. “It’s like they’ve never seen a game console before today.”

  Wes hands me a loaf of swirled pumpernickel-rye, a stick of butter, and a knife, and I set to work while he slices and seasons tomatoes. We don’t talk as we work together to make a stack of perfectly browned, gooey sandwiches. Of course he sprinkles his with Cholula before he grills it, but I shake my head when he offers it for mine.

  “Baby steps, remember?” I say.

  We bring everything over to the kitchen table and call the boys. Jesse slurps his soup and picks the tomato out of his sandwich. Wes and Carter talk shop. We’ve got a home game on Tuesday night, so even though I secretly hope for another snow day tomorrow, I know that life will soon return to its regularly scheduled programming.

  Jilly tells stories of school and friends and skating lessons.

  “At first, I thought I’d like to be an Olympic champion figure skater. But then Wes got me a pair of hockey skates for my birthday when I was five and took me skating a lot and taught me a bunch of stuff, and I fell in love with it, you know?”

  I nod, my mouth full. There’s nothing better than bread. Except toasted
bread with gooey melted cheese and peppery tomato. At Wes’s kitchen table. I take a drink of ice water and swallow. “Yes, I know exactly!”

  She nods, too, very serious. “I thought you would. I saw your interview, and you were awesome! Anyway, hockey’s my thing now. But I’m not very good, so I play on a girls’ team.” She looks away, like she’s embarrassed by this fact.

  “I’ll bet you’re fantastic if Wes is teaching you everything he knows,” I tell her with enthusiasm. “Just because I play on a boys’ team doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for every girl. And it certainly doesn’t mean that girls’ teams aren’t just as good. Minnesota has some amazing women’s college teams that have won national championships.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she says. “I like the Bulldogs.”

  “Me too. And did you know that there will be seven Minnesotans at the Olympics next month on the U.S. women’s hockey team? Maybe when you get a little older, if you think you’d like to try out for the boys’ team, you can, but you don’t need to decide now. You’ve got time.”

  Jilly looks back over at me, the smile returned to her face. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “Keep practicing. When you fall down, pick yourself back up. Keep moving forward. That’s the main thing. Ask for help if you need it. The rest will take care of itself.”

  Debbie sits across from me and smiles, first in Jilly’s direction, then at me. “Thank you,” she mouths.

  I startle a little when I feel Wes’s hand—and the now-familiar voltage that goes with it—on my knee under the table. He gives a little squeeze, and then it’s gone. For the rest of the meal, I wait for him to do it again, to touch me again. I crave it. It doesn’t come.

  When we’re finished eating and Debbie stands to clear the table, Carter stops her. “Let Jesse and me do some of the work,” he says.

  “What?” Jess whines. “We’re in the middle of a game! Plus, we already cleared the driveway while Wes and Holland were out playing in the snow.”

  Wes coughs and tries to cover it by lifting his water glass to his lips.

  His full, soft lips. I now know what it’s like to kiss those lips, to feel those lips brush against my cheek.

  “Show some gratitude and respect,” Carter says with irritation. “You are getting on my last nerve, and there won’t be a game if you don’t start pulling your weight around here, you lazy shit.”

  “Carter, language!” I say, since Mom’s not here to do it, and Jilly snickers.

  “I’ve heard it all,” she says. “Have you met my brother?”

  Her brother stands and puts a hand around my elbow, gently, to pull me up. “Thanks for cleaning up, guys. Come on, Dutch, I want to show you something.”

  I’m sure that vague comment won’t arouse suspicion. I roll my eyes and follow him downstairs, through the big family room, and into a small workshop around the corner that smells of sawdust and metal shavings, paint and turpentine.

  “Hi,” he says after he slides the pocket door closed.

  “Hi. So, what did you want to show me?”

  “Uh, this?” He hooks his fingers into the belt loops of my jeans and tugs me close. He leans in. “This.”

  He presses his lips to mine with a groan. “Jesus, Dutch,” he mutters, moving his mouth from mine and kissing my neck. I turn my head for better access.

  “You’re so strong,” he says between kisses. “So confident. I mean, you’re beautiful, too, but your confidence, I gotta say, is really sexy.”

  Pretty sure there’s nothing I don’t like about this boy.

  I pull his face back up to mine. I kiss him fully and deeply, my mouth bursting into flames as his tongue slips into it. He presses against me, and I feel the hum of his moan. His hand slips under my shirt, his index finger tracing a line across my stomach, and I laugh against his mouth at the sensation.

  “Is this OK?” he whispers.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Would it be OK if I—if I moved my hand up—uh, higher?”

  Oh, my sweet lord.

  “Yes, please.” My voice cracks. I feel the corners of his lips turn up in a smile.

  His hand moves up, up, so slowly, so deliberately, and I’d love to give him a little nudge to move things along, but I let him take his time, relishing the feel of his touch, the current passing through every cell of my body. After what feels like a triple-overtime, he finally trails a finger along the top curve of one breast, slips his hand inside the lace, and I’m flooded, floating, flying.

  More, more.

  “OK?” he asks again.

  More than OK. So much more than OK.

  He laughs.

  “Did I say that out loud?” I ask, and he laughs again.

  I’ll never get tired of that laugh.

  This weekend has been strange and wonderful and the perfect escape from reality. Things are so off-balance right now. But with Wes, all that fades away. HockeyFest. The old-timers. The Jack Pine feature I need to write. The asshole at yesterday’s game.

  “Dutch,” he murmurs, sending jolt after jolt of electricity down my spine, into my toes. “Let’s go out on a date. A real one, where I pick you up at your house and take you out to dinner and kiss you on the front porch when I drop you off.”

  I nuzzle my face into his chest. Here, in his basement workshop, the house blanketed by snow, we can be together without scrutiny. Here, we’re Holland and Wes. We’re not the captain and the girl. I inhale for four.

  “Please?”

  Exhale for six. I can do this. We can do this. I nod.

  “Is that a yes?”

  I lean my head back and meet his gaze. “Yes.”

  He grins, bright and beaming. “Have you ever eaten at the Chinese Lantern in Brainerd? Let’s go there.”

  The Chinese Lantern is one of Brainerd’s oldest restaurants, with intricately designed red-and-gold carpets, lanterns, and decor throughout the dining room, the walls covered with signed photographs of the owner posing with visiting celebrities and public figures. He especially loves to pose with hockey players at all levels, college and NHL and Olympic. When we were Squirts and Peewees, it was a team tradition to eat there any time we had a tournament in Brainerd or Baxter to gush over the latest pictures. My family still eats there a couple of times a year.

  “I haven’t been there for months. That’ll be fun.”

  “Everything’s more fun with you, Dutch.”

  “Brainerd’s good,” I say. “No one will see us together in Brainerd.”

  “Oh, right.” He pauses. “We’re keeping this under the radar.” He doesn’t sound thrilled, but he kisses me again, this time a light brush against my lips.

  I leap away when I hear pounding footsteps on the stairs above us. I slide the door open as quietly as I can and walk over to the sofa bed.

  “Where were you?” Carter asks as he flops into a beanbag chair and picks up a controller.

  “Bathroom.”

  “Hmm. Where’s Wes?”

  I shrug. “His workshop?” I say as carelessly as I can as Wes comes around the corner holding a rough wood carving of a hockey player, arms and stick upraised.

  “I found it,” Wes says, stopping when he sees Carter and Jesse. “Oh, hey.”

  “Wow, did you make this?” I ask.

  “Yeah, my uncle has been teaching me. He gave me all his wood carving equipment.”

  “The ornaments on the tree, too? The skates and the sticks?”

  “You saw those?”

  I nod. “You’re so talented,” I say quietly. “Painting. Wood carving. Gourmet grilled cheese. Gourmet popcorn, for that matter.”

  He shrugs and nods his head in my brothers’ direction. “Nobody really knows about this. It’s a good way to unwind, you know? I listen to music and carve.”

  “I hate to interrupt this artistic love fest,” Carter calls, waving his phone in our direction, “but I got a text from Dad. Twenty-seven is open and he’s on his way to town. Wes, can you give us a lift to the aren
a?”

  Chapter Thirty

  We get home in time for dinner, comfort food, shepherd’s pie, and after I scarf down three helpings, I retreat upstairs to replay every moment I spent with Wes at his house over the last twenty-four hours. School’s already been canceled for tomorrow, another five inches forecasted overnight.

  Cora calls, digging for details.

  “Your text messages were cryptic, Holland. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Nothing’s going on. Blizzard. Roads closed. Slept in the Millards’ basement. With my brothers in the same room. What could possibly happen?”

  I don’t tell her what we’ve decided, how Wes has planned a date to the Chinese Lantern. If we’re keeping this to ourselves, that means I can’t tell the girls or Hunter. And there’s a part of me that wants to keep it close, my own, for a little while longer.

  Instead we talk about the hit I took at the LaPierre game, and she’s not satisfied until I tell her that I’m bruised and stiff but not in pain. Next, I call Morgan and have essentially the same conversation with considerably less snark and much more empathy.

  I text Wes early Monday afternoon.

  Me: Want to watch Spinal Tap with me? I’m procrastinating on my Jack Pine article.

  When he doesn’t respond right away, my mind starts to spiral with possibilities, all of them negative. The Princess Bride, the walk in the snow, our first kiss, that hot make-out session in his workshop, all a dream. My imagination. Or worse, a mistake.

  How will we make this work? How will I be able to keep my hands off him? How will we possibly keep this from our teammates? From Coach? Carter already suspects something’s going on and has for days.

  An hour later, I still haven’t heard back, so I watch This Is Spinal Tap on my laptop. When it’s over, I figure I’ve procrastinated long enough on my article, so I open a new document and jot down the easy stuff: who, what, where, when, why, and how.

  I get stuck on the why, hung up on everything that’s happened since the interview. Jo Manson and Lakesha Smith. The LaPierre player calling me a bitch. Grandpa telling me I shouldn’t even consider taking the captain spot from another player, a male player.

  What a mess.