Loved Twice by the Hockey Star novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: Center Ice

"No," I said.

Erik blinked.

"No?"

"You're not doing it."

"Britta, it's Alumni Night. February 13th. Eighteen thousand people and every camera in the state. He'll be standing at center ice getting his banner. It's the one night he can't walk away."

"And you'll say what? That you woke up from a coma and know who was driving?"

"I'll say what Nils told us."

"Nils told the whole state the opposite yesterday."

He opened his mouth.

He shut it.

"You'll be the captain who called his own father a liar at his own banner night," I said. "On the word of a brother who's denying it on the radio. To help the woman you're sleeping with."

"I don't care what they call me."

"I do."

He stared at me.

"The league will care. The owner will care. Dag will sue you for every dollar you have, and he'll win, because it's hearsay." I took his face in my hands. "And Ingrid will grow up watching clips of her father being the guy who lost his mind on the ice."

"So we do nothing?"

"We don't do nothing. We get it from Nils's own mouth. In public. Where nobody can say it was you or me."

"He won't."

"He told us," I said. "Once. At one in the morning. Sober. He'll do it again."

Erik leaned his forehead against mine.

"You've got more faith in him than I do."

"I've got more practice," I said. "I've been forgiving people I shouldn't for seven years. Mostly myself."

Ingrid's fever didn't come back.

The days went in a straight line after that, and I let them.

Ten days after the transplant, a thick envelope came to Erik's lawyer from the hospital in Duluth.

He brought it to the sixth floor himself, a short bald man who'd once represented half the Voyageurs.

He laid one page on the family lounge table in front of us.

My ER chart.

Seven years old.

Midnight, December 19th.

Blood alcohol, point zero zero.

Pregnancy test, positive.

Erik read it twice.

Then he put his finger on the line with all the zeros and left it there.

"Dag's petition says she was drinking," the lawyer said. "This says she wasn't. The hearing is February 16th in Two Harbors. A judge is going to read this out loud."

I didn't cry.

I'd thought I would.

I just sat there looking at my own blood written down as a number, the first thing in seven years that said I hadn't done it.

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