I’d hid my crush on him as best I could. And he and my mother were thick as thieves, as we say in English.

Bryce had lived with us for four years. And when, at age twenty, he’d left to play for Montreal, we’d all been so incredibly proud of him.

I’d missed him terribly, but I’d been self-aware enough to know that he viewed me like a little sister. Besides—I was headed off to college at the University of Michigan.

And there had been holidays and summers to look forward to. We had become Bryce’s family, so he spent his free time with us. I’d lived for those moments when he’d watch movies with me in the den, and my mother would spoil him rotten.

Then—a couple years later—my mother died very suddenly. One day she was home with my dad and baking cookies. And the next day she was just gone. She had a brain aneurysm and drove her car into a ditch, dying behind the wheel of her car before the police even arrived.

We’d been devastated. Bryce—recently traded to the Bruisers—was the first person I’d called after my father broke the news. “Sit down, I need to tell you something. Maman is gone.”

The next few days had been a blur. Bryce told Coach Worthington that the mother of his heart had suddenly died, and Coach took the extraordinary step of sending him home to us for a week. He’d missed three games to come to Ontario and hold my hand at her funeral.

My father was beside himself. He’d loved her desperately. “My beautiful rose,” he’d sobbed at the kitchen table the night after the funeral. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do without her.”

Bryce had finally teared up, too. It had broken me to see them so sad, so I’d gone to bed, tucking myself in and wishing I could wake up and have my old life back—the one where my mother hummed to herself in the kitchen while she made tea.

Later, Bryce had come into my darkened room, climbed into bed with me, and held me in his arms. That had never happened before.

“Sylvie,” he’d said quietly. “I want to love like that, Sylvie. The way your father and your mother were to one another. That could be us. Some day we will be together for real.”

“Oui?” I’d asked, stunned. “Vraiment?”

“Vraiment,” he’d repeated. “She wanted me to take care of you.”

“She did?”

“Oui. And I promised her I would. You are so special to me. You are everything. Fate sent you to me. I know it.” He’d said a lot of things that night that I’d never expected him to say.

Then he’d kissed me. I’d already been on emotional overload, but Bryce’s kisses had been the only thing that made me feel better about the terrible, gut-wrenching loss I’d just suffered.

My achy heart had held Bryce’s promises tightly. Thoughts of our future together had sustained me for weeks after he left.