“To be honest, Christopher Cunningham made this suggestion. He’s looking out for you guys,” Terrence said, referring to the owner of the construction company they’d chosen. “He also told me a couple of stories about the three of you when you were kids, hanging out with his two, Cassie and Carter.”
“It’s fair to say we got into quite a lot of trouble,” Jake said.
Olivia grinned. Quite a lot of trouble was a huge understatement. Carter and Jake were the lead mischief makers, and the rest of them just went along for the ride. As adults, when they’d needed building advice, it had been Christopher they’d gone to. He’d been their father’s best friend, and the first to show up after the storm to see how he could help. Carter and Christopher had helped carry her father’s coffin into the church, while Cassie had helped Liv and Emerson pull together his wake.
Terrence and his team took them through other drawings. Artists’ renderings of what the inside of the old building would be like. Different exterior elevations. The roof.
God, the roof. Her nemesis.
“Because the roof was a mix of original glass, polycarbonate sheet, and rusted corrugated metal, it didn’t stand a chance against the storm. And the way repairs had been conducted over the years left instability between joints.”
“Dad,” Olivia muttered, and Emerson reached for her hand. He’d been so concerned after their mother’s death to not leave his three children with a mess, that he’d refused to take on loans to upgrade the distillery beyond emergency repairs. Hence the mismatched roof unable to withstand anything more than a solid downpour.
“To be honest,” Terrence added. “It’s a wonder that the roof hadn’t succumbed to the weight of snow or a storm before now.”
Quiet fluttered between Emerson, Jake, and herself as the words sunk in. What if it had happened while there were people in there, celebrating the happiest day of their life?
Oh, shit. A wave of nausea had Olivia pressing a hand to her mouth. What if someone had been killed? That in and of itself would have been the absolute worst outcome. But god, what if someone had died and they’d had no insurance? They’d have been sued. Her father ruined. And it would have been all her fault.
Olivia stood and hurried to the restroom that she’d seen on the way in, just down the hallway. Flinging the toilet door open, she dry-heaved twice, her stomach in knots.
Pressing a hand to her forehead, she forced herself to breathe. Slow and steady breaths that somehow seemed to calm her. When the nausea began to fade, she stood and leaned back against the cool stall.
Guilt.
Somehow, she needed to make her peace with it, but she wasn’t sure how. When she’d first started on her meds, she’d felt numb. Too numb to process all the emotions that were now rattling around in her head. And if she was honest, she wasn’t being truthful with her therapist, or her family, with how she was handling it.
How could she explain that this was almost the opposite of how she’d felt on meds? Emotions exploded through her like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Fast, vibrant, loud. It was almost too much to take in. It was as if she’d gotten out of the habit of letting herself feel anything at all, and this was feeling overload.
Those emotions were gusting back in like the storm that had ripped off the roof.
The door to the restroom opened and Olivia stepped out of the stall.
“Liv.” Emerson peeked her head in. “Are you okay?”
Olivia nodded, then shook her head. “What if the roof had fallen in on guests?”
Emerson rested her hip on the counter. “But it didn’t, Liv. It was an empty building.”
“It would have ruined everything,” Olivia whispered, looking at her pale face in the bathroom mirror. “There would have been no insurance, we would have lost—”
“Come here,” Emerson said, pulling her into a tight hug. “What happened was in the past. And nobody was hurt. And we aren’t ruined. And the three of us are figuring this out. Together.” She gripped Olivia’s upper arms and stepped back. “Resilience, Liv. It’s all we’ve got. Life will continue to toss challenges at us. Some of them are big, some are small. But there hasn’t been a challenge thrown at this family that we haven’t found our way through.”
Olivia sighed, letting her sister’s words in. She wanted to fight back against Emerson’s overly simplified view of the world, but she didn’t have the energy. Em dipped her head to make sure Olivia looked straight at her.
“Mom died. We got through it. Dad died. We got through it. The distillery is a mess. We’re getting through it. You got sick and look at you now. Pulling yourself up by the tips of your fingers and fighting back. The key is that we’ve done it together.”
Olivia wanted to feel peace from Emerson’s words. She listened to each one, trying to let the words bounce around in her brain so she could make sense of the jumble of feelings. There was good intention in them, and she could see from Em’s face that she meant each word.
She wanted to believe every single one of them, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t quite internalize them. It was as if they were meant for someone else. Someone other than herself.
And she couldn’t quite figure out why.
Anders flew off the ice and through the gate to the bench. He sucked in gulps of air. The coach had left his line on for what felt like three times longer than the forty-five seconds it likely was. Winnipeg was not for laying down in the Rush’s barn. He looked across at Wyatt Lewis and found his right-wing man gulping down a sport’s drink like he’d been stuck in the desert for hours. The American had a decade on Anders but was just as fast on the ice. His Finnish left wing, Theo Valkama, watched the play on the ice.
Winnipeg’s defense was on fire.
He listened as the coach yelled instructions. Jean Paul Fleury had played for Montreal his entire career and was one of the few who had parlayed his skills into coaching. The challenge was his calls occasionally veered to those of a frustrated captain, yelling at those around him about how he would have made a play, rather than how the individual player should have.
But that made it easy for Anders to sift through to the essence of what exactly was expected of him, even if the comments were deeply personal.
He watched as team captain Ryan Hall skated up the ice, only to be slammed against the boards.
Another call to change the line. Canadian Jacob Miller led the charge for the new line, making sure to not skate out too early and draw a penalty. The need to get on the ice and do more crawled over Anders’s skin. He had a love-hate relationship with the bench.
Another forty-five seconds.
“Berg, go,” Fleury called, and he was up and out onto the ice.
Last minute instructions followed the three of them as Wyatt and Theo raced to their zone of the ice. A glance at the clock told him they had enough time to break the deadlock. In a play they’d practiced a million times, Anders handled the puck down the center, dummying left, his usual preference, then flicking it right toward Wyatt, who was waiting for delivery. With a flick of Wyatt’s stick, the puck went flying to the top left corner of the net.
With arms in the air, he skirted behind the net, and Anders nodded, the closest he came to celebration. They’d done it. But the game wasn’t over. As he got within a few feet of the bench, the fresh defensive pair charged on. Bogdan Demyanov, the six-foot-six Denver Rush monster known for his forechecking abilities, skated onto the ice, along with the Rush’s defense-oriented forwards. Fresh legs near the goal were perfect. Plus, most players didn’t want to mess with Bogdan on a good day. When the guy was on a mission, like now, with only fifteen seconds on the clock, it was highly unlikely they’d break even. Alternate captain Logan Johnson finished the line.