Love, Hate and Hockey Skates

Twenty-Three

Sorry for the short chapter! I am still recovering at home and doing my best to get as much writing done to catch up on the days I've missed :)

~*~

Ace went back inside and started hammering back drinks like his life depended on it. At the very least, his sanity did. As much as I wanted to stop him, I knew he was holding on by a thin thread after that conversation and right now he needed a distraction.

I made sure to stay one step behind him in case anything happened, but by the end of the night, he looked exhausted and ready for bed. It was difficult to pull him away from the guys, but he was about to go overboard and possibly give himself alcohol poisoning.

"Come on, Ace. You need to get to bed." I struggled to haul him up the stairs as he went floppy dead weight on me.

"Hey, pretty girl. You're so pretty, where did you come from?" he slurred.

I rolled my eyes and laughed. "Oh man, you're wasted."

"Yeah, I am. Sorry, pretty girl, but I can't sleep with you. I have my own pretty girl that I'm waiting on."

This made me pause for a second. "Well, where is she?" I asked and continued to drag him.

"She will be here soon, I made sure she would never forget me."

I bit my lip nervously and wondered who he was referring to – me or Amber.

"Who are you talking about, Ace?"

He smiled wistfully. "The prettiest girl I've ever seen. I want her to be mine so badly, but she hates me." His smile fell and it looked like he was lost deep in thought.

I managed to haul his ass into the bedroom and flopped onto the bed, giving up halfway. Ace moved up on the bed and laid on his back to stare at the ceiling.

"What was her name, do you remember?" I asked, I wanted to get as much drunk information as I could.

"Of course, I could never forget her name, or her eyes, or the way they light up when she smiles. I love the way she smells most of all, like strawberries."

'Strawberries?!'

I sniffed my hair, freshly washed yesterday, and could still smell a hint of my strawberry shampoo. I've used the same kind since I was young, it tamed my curly hair the best.

"Who is she?"

"Her name is Isla Thatcher. See how beautiful that sounds? Iy-la, listen to it, Iyyy-laaaa." He continued to draw out my name as my heart raced in my chest.

Everything he said was about me. The desperate longing to be his, the adoration for everything about them, that person was me. I felt so happy I could burst at the seams with joy and die knowing I was on cloud nine when I fell.

"You're so lame, you know that?" I teased him.

"Is it lame to love a person?"

I stopped dead and the L word. He actually dropped the bomb, and I was sure he had no idea he even knew it.

"Maybe you should wait until you are sober, you don't know what you're saying right now," I said and tried to push him further onto the bed.

"I have never felt more sober in my life," he said while heavily slurring his words.

I scoffed. "Yeah, you sure sound like it. Come on, it's time for bed."

Ace wrapped an arm around me and pulled me down onto the bed.

"I'm serious, Isla. I have waited a long time for you, and I never gave up hope that one day in the future, you would be mine. Whether I had to wait tens of years or a hundred, my only goal in life was to have you by my side for everything."

Tears gathered in my eyes and my chest had become tight when he kissed me gently on the forehead.

"I love you...Isla..." he mumbled. I looked up to see he had finally succumbed to exhaustion, and those were his last sleepless words.

I smiled through my tears of joy and kissed his cheek.

"I love you too, Ace."

~*~

I woke up in the early hours of the morning for no reason, nothing had woken me up, but I was wide awake. I checked the time and saw it was only 5 AM, too early for anybody else to be up this early.

I dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom or a glass of water, but that wasn't doing anything, and I knew I was going to be up for a little while. Deciding to walk downstairs for coffee, I was right that no one was awake when I noticed how deadly quiet the house was.

It was my first time in the house as an actual person of resident and not a guest like last night, but it was still hard to feel comfortable like I did at Ace's apartment. There were at least 5 other guys who lived in this giant house and any one of them could walk out of their rooms in whatever attire they thought appropriate. Most of them were probably too drunk to remember that a girl now lived in the house.

I turned on the coffee maker and poured myself a cup before I went back upstairs to the still-sleeping Ace. Smiling down at him, I was about to put my coffee down and get ready for a shower when I heard the shrill ringtone of Ace's phone on the nightstand.

I waited to see if he would wake up, but he didn't budge, so I checked the name and my hand froze before I could touch it – it was Amber. I let the phone ring until it went to voicemail, and my heart hammered in my ears.

Suddenly, a message popped up and my nerves went wild.

Pick up the phone, Isla.

'How does she know I'm here?'

With trembling fingers, I gripped the phone and waited for it to ring again. Seconds later and it did, I almost dropped the phone out of shock and quickly punched the answer button, then left the room.

"What the hell do you want?" I asked.

"So feisty, I can see why he likes you so much."

I groaned. I could see why he disliked her so much.

"Just spit out whatever nonsense you have to say, I'm busy," I said.

She scoffed. "Yeah, busy hooking up with my man. I don't know who you think you are, but Ace has always belonged to me. Whatever you two have going on was only temporary until I got back."

"He isn't some piece of meat you can fight over; he chose me so deal with it. Stop calling and begging like a pathetic skank."

"Oh, please. Call me whatever you want, I got into his bed first."

I laughed out loud, forgetting I was in a house full of people.

"I didn't have to drug him to get him into bed, there is a big difference. You're lucky he never reported you."

"Is that what he told you? Not that I slept with him and then broke his heart? Wow, I'm seriously shocked the two of you don't remember me."

This made me pause. "Remember you?"

"Uh, yeah. I went to high school with you both."

'What the actual fuck?!'