Sparkling Hope (The Eastburgh Devils Series Book 1)

January.

The holidays were finally over, which I just struggled through. It was hell knowing that I hadn’t heard from Luna.

I wanted to give her enough time and make her feel like I was waiting for her, but maybe the wait was a big bust, and she won’t come back, and I lost everything.

My Dad said I should focus on my health to get back on the rink in hockey gear quickly. How should my heart get healthy when she was what I needed to breathe and heal?

I held on to all our shared memories, hoping not to miss her so much. But I missed her in every second, in every good or bad moment, and in every moment where I wanted to make her laugh.

By now, the minor cuts on my face and neck had healed well and were only a little red. The laceration on my temple with which I banged against the window pane glass was covered with tiny white plasters. My injury at the knee and at the forearm was already as good as forgotten.

With some movements, I still felt the pain, preventing me from stepping on the ice again.

My two broken ribs were well on the way to healing. Every movement still hurt a little, and it pinched.

The doctor in the hospital said I must have had thousands of guardian angels with me.

Couldn’t the guardian angels have split between me and Ethan?

Sometimes the thought circled in my head that I wished I had been sitting on the side where the truck slammed into my car.

The worst and most painful hurt was the empty feeling in my heart and thoughts and the moment my heart broke when I saw the realization on Luna’s face that Ethan was dead.

It’s been exactly a month now, a month where everything broke, and I was the one to blame.

It was proven that the truck driver had been drinking alcohol, and his traffic light at the intersection was red, but because there was no suspect since the hit-and-run driver was nowhere to be found, I was the only person I could blame.

The driver came out of nowhere. The police said I could not have seen the truck at the intersection because of the dense fir trees.

I did not sleep through a single night. Every time I woke up at the same time, I was startled out of bed. My t-shirt and pillow were soaked in sweat.

I couldn’t do it anymore.

I was so tired.

Until now, we had training, or rather the others had practiced on the ice, and I was sitting on the bench, and Coach Henderson put some piece of equipment where I could train my legs.

I felt like the biggest idiot when I rode this bike sitting on the bench. I only used this machine when the Coach sat down with me.

Otherwise, I watched my friends play ice hockey.

While everyone was changing, I sat next to Carter and waited until he got dressed after his shower to get out of the arena. I would love to get on the ice and release all my anger, sadness, and everything.

Suddenly the door from the locker room slammed against the dark blue painted concrete wall, and I saw Luna.

Luna looked terrible.

There was nothing but emptiness and little sleep on her face. Her usually large, sparkling hazel eyes were red underneath, puffy, and small. Her hair was disheveled, and individual strands hung from her braided pigtail.

It broke my heart to see what I had done.

She was wearing clothes that were way too big and two different socks. One sock was white with red hearts, and the other brown with white hearts.

‘Where is Charles?’ she sniffled, wiping her sleeve under her nose after dropping her bag on the rubberized floor.

Spencer yelled his name into the showers, and a moment later, Charles emerged from the showers with a towel around his waist and a dark blue sweater covering his torso.

‘What are you doing here?’ he hissed, pulling her out of the stall by the arm.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she kicked his hand off her upper arm and tucked a strand behind her ear, which had fallen out of her braid.

It was weird to see her standing there, so done and emotionless, and knowing she wasn’t here for me.

‘Did you know about this?’ Luna’s jaw trembled, and her eyes filled with tears.

The whole locker room remained quiet.

It almost seemed as if time had stopped in this room. No one moved or said anything. Everyone sat or stood there.

Charles looked at her, dumbfounded, until she pressed a note against his chest.

‘Tell me if you fucking knew about his room being rented again,’ she growled, ‘tell me,’ Luna shouted as Charles stared at the note and ran it through his wet hair.

‘I knew about this.’

Luna snatched the note from his hand again. ‘Fuck you, Charles. You promised me you’d do something about it.’

Carter, who sat next to me, held his hand in front of his chest as I stood up to separate them. If just one little thing had gone differently that night, she wouldn’t be standing in the locker room in this state.

‘I didn’t realize the college rented out Ethan’s room so quickly,’ Carter whispered.

I was aware that this was exactly what would happen because it was a college apartment, but that they were re-renting it so quickly was absolutely not something I realized.

‘Do you think I haven’t tried? My Dad blocked my account exactly because he knew I would pay the rent for both of the rooms,’ he explained himself.

‘Then I have to…uhm, get a job or two, and then I can pay for Ethan’s room,’ she stuttered.

She looked like she was helplessly searching for solutions to not lose the room in the apartment. ‘Luna, the room doesn’t belong to anyone anymore. It has to be rented out. There’s nothing we can do about it. Ethan is dead.’

‘You don’t want to do anything about it because you don’t give a shit,’ she sniffed, ‘I hate you, Charles,’ she smacked the already crumpled note against his chest again, grabbed her bag off the floor, and headed toward the exit.

Suddenly, she turned back to him.

‘Never, ever promise me something you can’t keep anyway, and you can go back to sleeping at your place from now on,’ she said with full fury, and I saw, like everyone else in the room, that tears were rolling down her face.

He did what?

Charles has been sleeping at Luna’s house all this time?

‘Oh shit,’ Carter muttered next to me, looking up with widened eyes at Charles, who was crumpling up the note and putting it away in his gym bag.

‘Are you fucking Weston’s girl or what?’ Luc, who had a fight with him anyway because of Charles’ twin sister, added.

Never in my life have I seen such an emotionless motherfucker as Luc.

Charles packed his things and pulled on a pair of boxers under the towel. ‘Shut the fuck up, Luc. This is none of your fucking business.’

That wasn’t a no, though I’d never put it past Charles or Luna.

Still, it wasn’t a clear no from him to the asshole’s question.

Why was this guy still on our team, anyway?

‘Did you?’ I interjected, getting up from my seat.

Carter groaned beside me as I looked questioningly at Charles sitting across from me on the bench. Charles abruptly looked from his socks he had just pulled on to me.

‘Are you fucking with me right now? The fuck you dare ask me after you broke everything?’ he hissed, looking at me angrily.

If I broke everything according to him, I couldn’t lose anything after asking that question. ‘Do you think it was all on purpose?’

‘Was it?’ he asked me with raised eyebrows, and for a moment, I felt like those words ripped open my chest.

One of my best buddies stood before me and asked me if all that had happened had been on purpose.

‘Fuck you, Charles. I know I’ve ruined everything, and I’m about to lose Luna. Do you really think I wanted all this?’ I growled, pressing my short fingernails into my palm, ‘but please don’t take her away from me, she’s all I have, and I’m trying to make everything right,’ I continued.

She was all I had left, and I was so afraid of losing her, but how could I do everything right when I didn’t know where to start.

I couldn’t get enough of her.

Before the accident, I wanted to be as close to her as possible, to have as little distance between us as possible. Now there was so much between us, so much unspoken, so much distance, that I didn’t know if what we once had would return.

Everything was real in what we had, and I have never felt so much love for a person as I did for Luna.

I still did, and with the kisses on her forehead, I promised her that forever.

‘How and why would I take her away from you? I’m only there for her, which you could be, but it’s better if you disappear and stay away. Because of you, Ethan had that accident.’

‘He wasn’t the only one who had the car accident. I was involved in all that shit, too,’ I reminded him.

I didn’t give a shit who heard what Charles and I were yelling at each other.

‘Only difference is, unfortunately, you survived it, and Ethan didn’t.’

Unfortunately.

Charles’ words were razor-sharp and dug deep into my skin. Unfortunately, Ethan hadn’t survived it, and if I could, I would do anything to undo that and undo that whole night.

‘Woah… okay. I think that’s enough,’ Carter intervened and stood beside me.

Charles packed the rest of his stuff into his gym bag, grabbed his winter jacket, and before he disappeared out the door, he stopped and turned around one last time like Luna did earlier.

‘Just to answer your question. I’ve been sleeping on the sofa for the last few weeks because I’m so fucking scared to be alone in this apartment, and I haven’t fucked her either. I’m not fucking my best friend’s little sister. I’m done with you, Weston, got it?’ he grumbled, disappearing from the locker room.

It felt like Charles had pulled the tense mood out with him like a ribbon. Yet I could still feel everything he said in my body.

I needed and wanted to fix all this. The first person I needed to get to was Luna. I looked for Luna all over the campus until I arrived in the corridor, and she was leaning against one of the lockers with her back to me.

She didn’t see me, but Aria’s eyes met mine immediately.

Aria shook her head as lightly as possible so Luna wouldn’t notice.

I would have a class right now, but I couldn’t have cared less at that moment.

Aria looked at me seriously and warned me with her look, but I had to talk to Luna. She must have seen Aria shake her head and caught her serious stare because she turned to me as I stood before her.

‘Can we talk? Please?’ my voice broke on the last word as I saw her from close by.

‘I’m going in already, okay?’ Aria smiled at her sympathetically before disappearing into the hall and closing the door.

With the closing of the door, she separated the noise in the hall from the corridor.

Only the two of us stood in this big, long corridor. All the doors were closed, and not a single soul was walking through.

‘What do you want, Wes?’ she nibbled at the dry skin on her lip with her canines.

‘I want you, Luna. I want us back,’ I breathed softly.

She took a deep breath and rubbed her hands over her face.

‘Please, Luna. I want things to be like they used to be between us.’

There was nothing I’d like more right now than to have her back and feel her close to me, and I was sure deep down she felt the same way.

‘It won’t, ever.’

She emphasized the last word in such a firm, hard tone that I felt like a shock wave was bouncing against my skin.

‘Maybe not, but we could try. Please tell me you, and I still have a chance,’ I pleaded.