The Hockey Captain Wants His Plus-Size Ex Back Chapter 11
My laughter faded.
“What do you mean?”
“When I was thirteen, my aunt lived near your town. I stayed with her for part of the summer. There was a gymnastics gym nearby. Open practice on Saturdays.”
My breath caught.
He looked at the lake instead of at me, as if saying it that way made it easier.
“You were there,” he said. “You kept falling on the same pass. Other kids quit and went to get snacks, but you stayed.”
I remembered that summer.
My father was still alive then. I was softer than the other girls, heavier and slower in some ways, but I loved the mat so much I never wanted to leave. I fell often. Sometimes I cried in the bathroom. Then I washed my face and went back out.
Easton’s voice softened. “You fell maybe twenty times.”
“That sounds like me.”
“You got mad every time. Then you tried again.” He finally looked at me. “I thought you were the bravest person I had ever seen.”
For a moment, I could not speak.
All those years, I had thought no one saw me unless they were laughing. I thought my body was the first thing people noticed and the only thing they remembered.
But Easton had remembered something else.
He had remembered me getting up.
“You liked me then?” I asked.
“I didn’t know what to call it. I was thirteen.”
“But?”
His throat moved. “But yes.”
I looked down at the earring in his hand.
“All those times I went to Cole’s dorm, you always left.”
“I was jealous.”
“You looked disgusted.”
“I was angry.” He gave a short, quiet laugh. “At myself. At Cole. Mostly at Cole.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“You loved him.”
I was quiet for a second.
Then I said, “I thought I did.”
“I know that now.”
The lake was still around us. His parents’ house glowed softly behind the trees, and the porch lights reflected in thin gold lines across the water.
I took the earring from his palm and held it carefully.
“You should have given it back,” I said.
“I know.”
“You could have used it as an excuse to talk to me.”
“I know.”
“You’re terrible at pursuing girls.”
“That’s also true.”
I laughed again, and this time Easton smiled.
It was still rare enough to feel like winning.
After that, life moved forward quickly.
Cole and Vanessa’s story ended worse than people expected, but not worse than they deserved. Vanessa’s pills, her debts, and the drug she slipped into Cole’s drink all came out during the investigation. Cole’s gun, his threats, and the way he lost control finished what was left of his future.
They were both expelled.
Their cases moved through court.
People talked about them for a while. Then finals came. Then playoffs. Then graduation.
Life has a cruel kind of mercy that way. Even scandals become old news.
Easton and I did not spend much time looking back.
He finished the season as Lakeview’s MVP again. I stayed cheer captain until graduation. Sometimes people still stared at us across campus, but I had stopped building my life out of other people’s reactions. Attention had once felt like judgment. Later, it felt like proof. Eventually, it became nothing more than noise.
Easton was drafted after graduation.
I finished my degree and began coaching at a youth gymnastics program while applying to graduate school. On my first day, a little girl in an oversized sweatshirt stood at the edge of the mat, too scared to join the others.
I saw myself in her.
So I walked over and said, “You don’t have to be good today. You just have to try.”
She looked at me for a long time.
Then she stepped onto the mat.
That night, I told Easton about it. He listened without interrupting, then quietly packed me an extra lunch for the next day because he said coaching children was “more exhausting than playoffs.”
He was right.
We got married the following spring.
The wedding was small. Easton did not want cameras. I did not want anyone there who came only for the story. His parents cried. My mother came too, sitting quietly in the second row. She tried to hold my hand before the ceremony. I let her for a moment, then gently pulled away.
Some wounds do not disappear because people regret them.
But they can stop bleeding.
I wore the pearl earring Easton had kept.
Only one.
The other ear stayed bare.
When Easton saw it, he stopped moving.
His eyes went straight to my ear, then to my face.
“You found it,” he said.
“I knew where it was.”
He looked caught.
I smiled. “You hide things badly.”
“I hid that for years.”
“Exactly. Badly.”
For the first time all morning, Easton Vale looked nervous.
The man who could take a hit on the ice without blinking stood in front of me in a black suit, looking like he did not know what to do with his hands.
I took one of them.
“Breathe,” I said.
His mouth moved slightly. “That’s my line.”
“Today it’s mine.”
The ceremony was simple.
His vows were not.
“I loved you before I knew how to say it,” Easton said, voice low but steady. “I loved you when I thought silence was the only way not to make your life harder. I loved you when you didn’t know I was watching. I love you now because you chose yourself first, and still chose me after.”
By the time he finished, I was crying.
Not the kind of crying that breaks you.
The kind that proves you survived.
After the ceremony, everyone moved inside for dinner. Music started. People laughed. Easton’s teammates tried to get him drunk and failed because he gave them one cold look and they remembered their own survival instincts.
Near the end of the night, he pulled me outside.
The air was cool. My dress brushed the grass. His tie was loose, and there was a faint lipstick mark at the corner of his mouth that I had no intention of wiping away.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then Easton touched the pearl earring lightly.
“I meant what I said,” he told me.
“I know.”
“I liked you for a long time.”
“I know that now too.”
He looked at me. “I didn’t think I’d ever get this.”
“Me?”
“This.” His fingers tightened around mine. “You. Us. A life where you look at me like that.”
My chest softened.
Once, I had spent years waiting for Cole to choose me in public. I thought love meant enduring shame until someone finally rewarded me for loyalty. I thought being wanted had to be earned by making myself useful enough to keep.
Easton never made me earn a place beside him.
He simply made room.
I stepped closer and straightened his tie, though it was already ruined.
“You know,” I said, “you told me when you fell in love with me.”
“I did.”
“Do you know when I fell in love with you?”
Easton shook his head.
“Last life,” I said.
Then I kissed him.