Kiss And Make Up: My Ex Is The Hockey Captain

Maxwell's POV

If I had admitted that I had imagined seeing Arabella Hayes again in the last four years exactly zero times.

That was a lie.

I had imagined this a hundred times.

Sometimes she was standing in the middle of the crowded room and was looking at me with these same eyes.

Sometimes she was angry.

Sometimes she was crying.

Sometimes, especially these pathetic versions, which I've been imagining at four in the morning, she ran into my arms and told me that she had been waiting for me.

I always woke up before she could say the rest.

But I had never imagined meeting her kneeling on the hockey rink.

Especially not in her medical volunteers' uniform.

The championship game was supposed to be the biggest event of my life. The final game as a captain.

Scouts were sitting in the stands.

My father was somewhere among the crowd.

I have scored two goals.

We were seconds away from winning.

Everything was perfect.

Until one hit had thrown me into the boards.

Now I was looking at the only person capable of making me forget about my injury.

Arabella.

She was different.

Of course, she was different.

four years could change a person.

Her hair was longer than I remembered and was tied in a neat ponytail. She had lost her childish softness. There was something in the way she held herself that I hadn't seen when we were eighteen.

But her eyes were the same.

God.

These eyes.

For four years, I had been trying to hate them.

I failed.

"Sir?"

Somebody was calling me.

I blinked.

It was the athletic trainer who was looking down at me. "Can you tell me where you are?"

"At the rink."

"Good."

My gaze returned to Arabella. She hadn't moved an inch, she looked at me just like I felt right now.

surprised.

I wonder if she's going to run.

I wouldn't blame her.

Then I noticed her badge hanging from her neck.

ARABELLA HAYES.

Hayes.

Something inside of me tightened.

She had kept the name.

I don't know why it affected me so much.

Maybe because four years ago, I was sitting in my father's study with a wedding invitation spread out on the table in front of me.

The invitation had her name written next to another man's.

My father pushed it to me.

"I paid her to stay away from you," he said. "Her family needed money. She accepted."

I hadn't believed him.

Not at first.

But then he showed me the invitation card, which was the announcement of her engagement to someone else.

I had asked her that we get married before I go to school, she had told me NO. Only to see that she was getting married to another person.

I was angry, devastated even.

She shouldn't have done that to me, she knew how much I loved her.

She knew how I felt about her.

Everything was organized perfectly to have nothing left for me to say.

I called her.

She didn't pick up.

Then I called again.

No response.

I had waited until midnight.

Again, no response.

The next morning, I left for university.

I spent the first year blaming her for her choice.

Second year pretending it didn't bother me.

Third year, almost convincing myself about it.

By fourth year, I was almost okay with it.

Almost.

Then she stood in front of me alive and beautiful in my fourth year. Wearing the same surname. My heart started beating furiously.

Perhaps the wedding never happened.

Perhaps she broke it off.

Perhaps the man was gone.

Perhaps...

I stopped myself.

Hope was dangerous.

I learned that the hard way.

"Are you experiencing dizziness?" the trainer asked.

I barely listened to him.

Arabella was looking at me still.

This wasn't the look of love.

It wasn't even hatred.

This look was far more dangerous.

Confusion.

Like she has no idea why I'm looking at her in this way.

Like she has no idea what I have been thinking about for four years.

"Can you sit up?" the trainer asked.

I nodded.

He helped me to do that.

My gaze didn't leave her.

She looked at my medical chart.

Just to avoid looking at me.

Typical Arabella.

When we were kids, she used to hide behind the books every time she was nervous.

She still does.

Only now was the book a clipboard.

I almost smiled.

Almost.

Then she finally looked at me again, the four years had disappeared. I could see the girl who sneaked into my yard after midnight.

The girl who stole my hoodies, claiming that they smelled better than hers.

The girl who promised to wait for me.

The girl I've been loving long before I understood what love was.

The girl who had chosen another man.

My throat tightened. "Arabella?"

She froze.

my gaze fall on her name tag.

ARABELLA HAYES.

My face changed.

Confusion.

Disbelief.

And something very dangerously close to hope. "You're divorced?"

She looked at me.

"Divorced?"