Chapter 260 Still Going

Chapter 260 Still Going
ARES'S POV

April and Asher argued about a church versus the Drakes' back yard for six straight weeks. Ethan and I finally settled it — we just picked a side.
The yard was a bad idea for the wedding and everybody but Asher knew it. That grass floods every spring, there's a shed sitting in every photo anyone's ever taken back there, and Mrs. Drake would've spent the whole ceremony squinting at the sky, waiting for it to prove her right.
So, a small church in July, sixty people packed shoulder to shoulder. Family, four teammates, and a woman from the media office who cried harder than anybody in the building.
Up front, Asher kept adjusting a jacket that didn't need adjusting.
"You look terrified."
"I'm not."
"He's terrified," I said.
"Completely," Ethan agreed.
"Can the pair of you go and sit down."
"We're making sure you don't run," Ethan said.
Asher muttered something back. That one I'm keeping to myself.
Then the music changed and the whole room turned like one animal. April came down that aisle on her father's arm, and Tom Drake held onto her hand and didn't let go until he had to.
Asher stopped moving completely. Whatever had been working across his face for the last twenty minutes was just gone.
Watching Ethan was the better job, honestly. A man looking at his bride is a common enough sight. A brother looking at her is not. His chin was up, his eyes were going, and he didn't do a single thing about it.
When she reached him, Asher took her hand and said something low that nobody else caught. April laughed. In a church. Out loud.
The vows didn't pretend anything. She didn't stand up there and pretend her life had been easy. Last year got no mention, but no dodging either.
They said what they meant to do next. That's the only part anybody can really promise.
Rosa let out a noise from the front row at the exact second they were told they could kiss, and the whole church went with her.
\-----
The reception got loud inside ten minutes. Rosa wouldn't be sat down anywhere — toured the whole room under her own steam, a year and a month old and unbelievably fast, and finished up back in my arms.
Ethan tried to take her off me. She reached straight back for me.
"Excuse me."
"She has excellent taste."
"She's betraying her entire family," Ethan said.
We ended up dancing with her strung between the two of us, each holding one hand. That's not really dancing.
She laughed loud enough that April looked over from across the room. Asher was already watching. He caught me seeing him do it and didn't bother pretending otherwise.
Later on, Jax Riley crossed the room to where April was sitting with her shoes off. Two seats down, I stayed put. That was a decision, and I've thought about it since.
"You're not dancing," he said.
"I've got a child and I'm in a dress. Pick one."
He dropped into the empty chair beside her and skipped the sorry altogether. That man's stopped opening with it. Took him a year and a half.
"Are you doing the games again this year."
"Twelve of them."
"Right." Jax turned a bottle around on the table between his hands. "It's my last season. I'm done after it."
April set her drink down.
"You never said."
"I'm saying now." He stood, straightened his jacket. "So come and do the ones I'm in, and take some decent pictures, because the kid they've got at the moment cuts everybody's feet off."
"Jax."
"Feet," he said. "Every time. It's a nightmare."
\-----
Three years went by. The ordinary facts belong together in one place, because the ordinary facts are the whole of it, really.
Marcus Vale took a plea that spring and got nine years. Warren Pike resigned that summer, kept his pension, and gave an interview about the pressures on senior administrators that I couldn't sit through to the end. The county's still working through the rest of it. Two of the seven have come forward so far.
Nobody at that university has ever put out a statement with April's name anywhere in it.
I'm not the rookie anymore. My name goes on things now. Younger guys ask me questions in hallways and I answer them badly. My jersey sells in a shop in a town I never even grew up in.
Ethan runs a room these days. He's the one who sits down with a twenty-year-old having a bad month. He's good at it too, and he learned every bit of it in his mother's kitchen.
Our teams play each other four times a year, and it's a menace every single time.
"Try not to embarrass yourself tonight." Ethan saw with half a smile on his face.
"You've said that for three years."
"You're still doing it."
I scored on them that November, looked over at his bench, and shrugged with both hands. He shook his head at me for a full ten seconds straight. At the tunnel afterward he stuck a hand out anyway.
"Good game."
"Better than yours."
"Get out of here," Ethan said.
\-----
My mother came on the twelfth of January and met him afterward in a corridor, coat already over one arm. That took nine minutes. Neither of them has ever told me the whole of what got said.
She's at most home games now. She shouts — loud enough to hear from the ice. I've asked her to stop, and not one of those requests was sincere.
My father comes when he comes. He sends four words after a game, never more than four. You played well tonight.
For years I waited for that man to turn into somebody different. The waiting's stopped now. He's turned into about sixty percent of it on his own. There's a version of me that would've called that a loss.
\-----
There's a shop on the main street near my building, run by a man who does watches. Last month I finally walked in.
He took the watch off my wrist. Fit a glass into one eye, opened the back of it out on a cloth. Then he sat there looking into my grandmother's watch for a minute and a half.
"Nothing wrong with it," he said. "It's dirty and it's been dropped. Whoever wore it last stopped winding it, that's all."
"Nothing wrong with it."
"Dirty and dropped. Give me four days."
I got it back four days later and stood right outside that shop with it going on my wrist again. It makes a noise. Nobody ever told me that.
Eleven days I've had it back now. Ethan's noticed and hasn't said one word about it, because he knows me, and he's waiting.
Ethan's in the kitchen right now, doing something to a pan that doesn't need it.
There's a small box sitting in the inside pocket of the coat on the back of that door. It's been there since the afternoon I walked out of that shop.