It was an explosive night in any case, for more reasons than just that.

Because I fell for her.

Hard.

I realized being with her was something I'd wanted for years, and was pissed that I'd denied it for so long. I thought the fact that she'd finally come to me meant there could be something more between us. Maybe I'd even date her exclusively, break ties with any of the other girls I was seeing and just be with one person for a while.

I thought it was the beginning for us.

The next day, I showed up for practice, and was welcomed with a red flag in my locker. It was a calling card from the manager's office, and a red flag never meant good news. It turned out to be the worst news I could get.

I'd been approached by the Stars a couple weeks before. The deal was, they were a great team and had an above-average chance of making it to the finals that year. They decided they wanted me as a backup for their front lines. Now, I wanted to win The Cup as bad as any other guy, but I didn't want to do it while sitting on the bench. The money they offered wasn't easy to ignore, so I figured I'd agree to their deal, sure that the Devils would up my salary in order to keep me. It may sound like a gamble, but that's just the way these things went down. Hell, it was their game, not mine. I was just following their rules.

But when I sat down in Benny's office, he broke the news: The negotiating term was up, and they weren't prepared to match the Stars' offer.

So, they let me go. Traded to Dallas, effective immediately.

The pronouncement was like a punch to the gut. I guess I never really considered the idea that I was expendable. I thought I was worth more, but it turned out I was wrong.

Wrong about my job, and wrong about the girl. At the time, I was convinced Avery had something to do with the decision.

Five years later, there she was, delivering another stick to my face.

I couldn't bring myself to call her yet. My emotions were too big and too mottled to talk to her in any normal way without coming off like a desperate loser. I almost told her I loved her last night, for chrissakes. I was sure it was just the heat of the moment.

A very heat-filled moment.

I mean, I really liked Avery. I always had. She was smart and fun and she didn't take any of my shit. She had this great dimple in her right cheek that would only show up when she was really laughing hard over something. I lived to make that thing appear. And I really liked the way her eyes would spark when she smiled, or soften when she was listening to me spill my guts, or crinkle at the corners whenever she was lost in thought. And yeah, sure, she'd swooped into my bar-into my life-and turned it right the fuck around. But come on. Did that mean I loved her, for godsakes?

Yes.

Shit.

I threw off my covers and got my ass out of bed, cursing the blinding white sun shining through my windows.

I fed Magnum.

I took a shower.

I did my paperwork.

I punched the wall.

Then I went downstairs.

We weren't scheduled to open until six on New Year's Day. I would have just closed for the holiday, but the bar was already going to be shut down for the wedding the following night as it was. My poor regulars would go into withdrawal.

Hank must have partied a little too hard last night, because he didn't show up this morning to do the sweeping. I grabbed the push broom from the storage closet and just did it my damn self. I needed something to take my anger out on anyway, and the repeated slamming of the bristles against the wood floor was just the thing to do the trick. There was more debris than usual: Scraps of confetti, the occasional paper hat, a few pairs of cheesy 2004 glasses. I shoved my broom at all of it, herding the mass into a pile in the middle of the room.

I was so caught up in my head about the Avery Situation, playing it over in my mind, trying to make some sense of what happened, that I didn't notice the banging in my brain was actually a knocking at the door.

When I finally looked up, there was Julie, cupping her eyes to the glass and giving me a wave.

Julie!

"Holy shit!"

She must've read my lips, because she was laughing as I unlocked the door. It had been forever since I'd seen her, and goddammit if she wasn't one hell of a sight for sore eyes.

"Holy shit, Jules! How are you?"

She came inside and gave me a quick hug, which I could only return with one arm because I still hadn't put down the damn broom. "Mmm. I'm good. It's good to see you!"

"You too."

My face mirrored hers, smiling ear to ear as she said, "I hope you don't mind the surprise visit. I've just seen so much press about the bar lately and figured I'd check it out for myself."

I directed her over to one of the hightops, answering, "I'm glad you did. It's been too long."

"Much too long." She scanned her eyes around the room, noting the new changes. "Wow. The old dive cleans up real nice, huh?"

"Yeah. I had some help. Landed myself an event planner who likes to decorate." At the mention of Avery, my stomach clenched.

"Well, whoever did all this must be some sort of genius."

"She is."

"Oh, it's a she, is it?" Julie shot a knowing smirk at me. It's not as though she wasn't aware of my depraved history with various members of the female persuasion. She was all too aware. "I should have guessed the reason you look like shit was because of some girl." She brushed a strand of golden hair out of her eyes and smiled as she asked, "So, who's the unlucky lady?"

I caught a glimpse of the small scar at her forehead. It was barely visible, but I couldn't look away.

Julie caught my stare. "Is it that noticeable?" she asked.

I reached a hand up to her face and ran my finger across it, feeling my heart break. "To the rest of the world? Not at all. To me? It's hard to see anything else."

"Great. I'm a walking scar."

"You're a walking vision." I didn't try to hide the warring thoughts playing across my face.

"Zac, you really need to stop beating yourself up over it."

As if I could. "I'll never stop beating myself up over it. I should have been able to stop it. What kind of man could do something like this to you? Why would you even let him within a twenty mile radius of you?"

"It's not your fault, Zac. I don't know why you insist on taking that on. You're not the one that hurt me."

"Wasn't I? Didn't I hurt you for months? Maybe I didn't take a whack at your skull, trying to intentionally scar you for life. But I hurt you all those months after I tore up my knee, when I was such a dick, Julie. And yet, you still stuck by my side. Why did you do that?"

"You needed me to."

"But I didn't deserve it."

She sighed as she reached across the table to grab my hand. "You didn't deserve to bust up your knee. You didn't deserve to watch your father die. We don't get what we deserve. If that were so, I'd be a princess living in a castle."

"Yes, you would." I looked down at the table and directed my commentary toward our intertwined hands. "I want to thank you, Julie. For being a friend even when I didn't deserve it. I want to thank you for everything."

"You're welcome," she offered, without hesitation.

"And I want to apologize, too. I want to say I'm sorry."

"For what?"

I finally raised my head to meet her eyes. "For never saying it before."

Her face wore a mask of sympathy as she pursed her lips and gave a squeeze to my hand, banishing the last of my guilt. I felt it lifting off of me, my body finally shrugging off the burden I'd carried for too long.

Living with regrets is no way to live at all.

"So," she started in, breaking the sappy moment. "Tell me about this bar-fixing fairy that's got you all hot and bothered."

"Is it that obvious?"

She raised an eyebrow and said, "I don't think I've ever seen you like this."

"Yeah, well, I've never been like this." I ran a hand through my hair and admitted, "I don't think she's as into me as I'm into her."

Julie laughed and shook her head.

"What?" I asked, completely mystified.

Her eyes met mine as she smiled out, "Not into you? I don't think you realize what a ridiculous statement that is. It's easy to be crazy about you, Zac."

"Thanks."

"You'll figure it out. Besides, you've got your old Girl Expert back on the payroll. My advice never steered you wrong."

"The stakes were never this high, Jules."

She placed her palms on the table and ducked her head to meet my eyes. "Holy shit. You've really got it bad for this one, huh?"

"You have no idea."

"You'd be surprised." She clamped her lips together, hesitant to continue. "I didn't just come back here because of all the press about the bar. That was just an excuse to get you back into my life before this belly gets any bigger."

My brain couldn't compute her words, even though I knew what she was trying to say. "What?"

"I'm pregnant, Zac."

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.

At first, my stomach dropped at the news. It was too much to register. But even then, I knew I was overjoyed about it. How could I not be?

My eyes were bugging out of my head and I couldn't find any words. Julie filled in the dead air. "And I'm getting married. To a great guy. Even if he is a Rangers fan."

I finally found my voice. "Holy shit, Jules! That's fantastic!" My mind was spinning, but we were both wearing the same crazy grin. "Your parents must be flipping out."

"They are. I wanted to tell you myself before they had the chance to spill the news to your mom. They're really happy. Are you?"

I jumped up from the table and pulled her into a hug. "Are you kidding? I couldn't be happier." I wrapped my arms around her and gave her a big squeeze, joyful and astonished, relieved and overwhelmed. I was humbled to find that she missed me, still viewed me as someone important enough to want to share this with. I clutched her a little tighter and gave a kiss to the hair at her ear just as Avery bounded in the door.

My face dropped along with hers when I realized what she had walked in on, how easily it could be taken the wrong way.

Before I could say the words, "Avery, wait!" she was in her car and zooming out of the parking lot.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

There are moments in your life by which you can mark the passage of time. Those events that are so monumental, each milestone becomes a definitive line delineating Before from After. BC to AD. For me, that tick on the timeline was the year 1999. There was no denying that that entire year was fraught with some life-changing moments, and I've managed to jumble them all together as one.

When you're young, you get behind the wheel and hope you don't get in an accident, not because you're worried about getting hurt, but because you don't want anything to happen to your car. At some point in your life, you wake the fuck up and the opposite becomes true. You realize the stupidity of your past outlook, and recognize that a car can always be fixed.

People sometimes can't.

I don't know where that dividing line is, that point separating a cocky teenager from a realistic adult. In any case, back in '99, I was way too old to be straddling it. I still maintained that teenage conceit, that cocksure invincibility. I was a professional fucking hockey player, for godsakes. A physical specimen of the highest ranking-feared on the ice, desired by women.

Most of them, anyway.

Julie and I were childhood pals-more like cousins, really-considering that our parents were best friends and we'd known each other since birth. She had two older sisters, so by the time she and I came along, there were seven rugrats under the age of eight for our parents to contend with. We'd grown up in the same neighborhood together, but her family moved upstate about the time she and I started college. I went to BC; she went to some art school in Manhattan. We were separated for a couple of years, but once I got drafted to the Devils, her home base of New York wasn't so far away.

We were always pretty close, so it was good that we were able to maintain the friendship, even outside of the family connection. Our shared history solidified our bond and was one of the only things I knew I could always count on. She was a good friend.

There weren't too many girls I could say that about. I didn't particularly know a lot of women I liked enough to keep around for more than a few nights of debauchery, and it's not like any of them had been able to put up with me for any extended length of time either.

But Julie was different. She was fun, and unassuming, and cool. There was never any threat of a romantic relationship between us, so she never tried to stake a claim on me, and I was just as content to let her live her own life, too. She'd sometimes come and hang out at Johnny's with me and the guys whenever she didn't have something better to do. I relied on her for advice, and she relied on me as her go-to date for weddings or society parties whenever she needed a stand-in.

So, when I got shipped off to Texas, we both knew we were going to miss one another, but it's not like either one of us was crying into our pillows every night or anything.

We stayed in touch, though. One particularly lonesome night in April, I called her out of the blue. I found myself expressing my homesickness to her, which had the unintended effect of her showing up one day after practice. There she was, in all her Julie glory, right there in Dallas for a surprise visit. I couldn't have been happier to see her.

We bypassed the night out with the guys, and instead decided to take off for some alone time. It was raining that night, just barely a drizzle; that much I do remember. I was driving her stupid rental car. I must've taken a turn a bit too fast, and the weather conditions didn't help matters any. I swerved, the car fought me, we skidded off the road. Not a drop of booze in either of us; it was just one of those freak things.

The sickening rip of twisting metal and shattered glass roared through my ears like a freight train as we wrapped around a tree and then everything went black.

I awoke to the sounds of sirens and bright, flashing lights and a blinding white pain in my left leg. Julie was crying, her golden hair tangled with blood, her eyes focused on the red on her hands and shaking in disbelief.