I should have known, though. Words spoken in the dark after you bury someone you love are not weighed and measured like other words.

Our friendship returned to its usual ways: texts from the team jet and the occasional phone call where he would speak to my father and then to me.

I’d thought about him every day, though. Bryce’s whispered word in the dark—someday—got me through a lot of difficult hours.

But he hadn’t brought up our future again, and eventually I’d grown impatient. This spring—six months after my mother’s death—I asked Bryce when we could be together for real. “I would come to Brooklyn,” I’d offered. “To be with you.”

It had not gone over well. His stammering reply was not at all what I’d hoped for. My heart sank as he’d uttered phrases like “too soon,” “incredibly busy,” and “focused on my game.”

“When, then?” I’d asked, trying to hold my heart together.

“Sylvie, I don’t know. If you come here just for me, you are all alone much of the time. That is not right. The time is not right.”

Alors. I had fallen for Bryce when I’d been a naïve girl of fifteen. But now, at twenty-two, I am a much wiser woman. I know what words of true love sound like, and they don’t sound like that.

After that dreadful conversation, I wised up. I made myself stop dreaming of a future with Bryce. I went to work in the front office of my father’s hockey organization. I even looked around for nice men to date, trying to get my mind off of him.

I didn’t find any, though. It was a lonely, quiet time in the house with my father, both of us straining to hear the echo of my mother’s voice.

Things began to feel easier for me this summer. Less sadness. More ordinary joy. And just when I’d stopped pining all the time, the phone rang, summoning me to Brooklyn.

So here I stand, twenty yards from Bryce in this beautiful rink, wearing a Bombshells practice jersey. My maman would say that fate brought me to his doorstep once again.

She did, in fact, predict this.

If that sounds crazy, it’s because you never met Maman. She believed in fate. So does Bryce, by the way. He is forever seeing signs in ordinary things. So I wonder how he’ll feel when he sees me.

As for me, I really don’t know what to think. Part of me is full of skin-tingling wonder that I’ve been sent by fate or God or luck to be with Bryce again. Maybe he’ll look over at me and understand that our paths are meant to join forever.

The other part of me knows that it’s a long shot. I want to be loved desperately. I want to be cherished. I want a man who needs me in his life even when it’s inconvenient.

Bryce has already failed this test once. But since I’m here, I think I’ll school him on a few things. I’ll show him that I’m strong, and that I am full of life and ready to be loved, even if not by him. I could even have some fun with this. I will show him what he’s missing. He won’t know what’s hit him.