The Trailblazer Paperback

Chapter 1: Declan
The arena pulses with energy, an infectious excitement and enthusiasm for tonight’s game that carries into the locker room.
It washes over me, demanding that I mentally lock in. It hypes me up, reminding me how fortunate I am. How many people turn their childhood dream into reality? How many little kids with a pair of skates and a hockey stick dream of playing in the NHL?
It’s my first season starting for the Boston Hawks and each time I take the ice, gratitude for my stubbornness, persistence, and the luck of the Irish, mainly in the form of Beau Harrison, the man who paved my way for a hockey career, rolls through me. I take a deep breath and try to calm my nerves. I toss up a prayer and move to close my locker door when my phone buzzes with an incoming call.
As soon as Da’s name flashes across the screen, a ball of dread forms in the pit of my stomach. Something’s happened. There’s no way Da would call right before a game, a game he’s most likely tuning into, unless something is wrong.
“Da, what’s wrong?” I answer immediately.
He sighs. “I’m sorry, Declan. Mr. Harrison passed.”
His words slam into me with the strength of a slap shot: hard, quick, and devastating. I gesture to a guy on my team that I’m stepping out to talk to Da. Once in the hallway, I sink down onto a bench, gripping the phone until my knuckles pop.
“When?” I whisper, my tone raw with emotion.
“Four days ago.”
“Four days? When’s the funeral?” A note of panic laces my tone. Did I miss it? Miss saying goodbye to the man who shaped my future?
“The family had a small, private ceremony. He was cremated. I’m sorry, son. I know how much he meant to you.” Da sighs, “There aren’t many men like Beau left in the world.”
How’s Vivi? I’m desperate to ask but years of silence between me and the girl who once owned my heart causes me to hold my tongue. Instead, I work a swallow, guilt expanding through my chest. “I just spoke to him two, maybe three weeks ago. He asked me to send some signed hockey gear for one of the youth camps his foundation runs. He was so…proud.”
“He was always proud of you,” Da agrees. Da worked as the head grounds caretaker on Beau Harrison’s estate my entire childhood. It wasn’t until I started university that Da moved back to his native Ireland. At that point, Mr. Harrison’s granddaughter Vivi and I had broken up and without Da or Vivi to visit in Tennessee, Mr. Harrison became my only point of contact in the place that raised me. And now, he’s gone… “How did he die?”
“A heart attack. He’s been having trouble for quite some time. He just kept it quiet. I only heard occasional updates from Mrs. Stevens,” Da explains, referencing another employee of Mr. Harrison’s. “Genevieve’s taking it hard.”
Vivi. My heart twists thinking of her. How is she handling the news? Is she alone, walking the halls of the mansion she was raised in? Or maybe in a downtown bar, drinking to her granddaddy’s legacy with a group of friends. I frown, realizing I know nothing about her life now. I know nothing about her.
But the last time I spoke to Mr. Harrison… “He asked me to look out for her. When I spoke to him, he asked me, and I laughed it off. He knew…” I trail off again, trying to make sense of the news. “I haven’t spoken to Vivi in seven years.” But I’ve never stopped thinking of Genevieve Rae, my Vivi. She was the one that got away, the one I never got over. Even though I clung to my relationship with her granddaddy all these years, we never spoke of Vivi. Not until that last conversation…
“Well, if you don’t get to Nashville by tomorrow, you won’t be able to honor that request.” Da’s brogue is thicker, filled with emotion and the pain of losing his old friend.
“What are you talking about?” I demand.
“She’s getting married.”
Those three words stop me short. They pull something in my chest, something I locked away years ago, until it unravels, unravelling me.
“To whom?” I whisper, a new type of fear skating up my arms. There’s no way Vivi wouldn’t postpone her wedding in the wake of her granddaddy’s death. Mr. Harrison was more like a father to Vivi anyway. Her mom died in childbirth and her dad is a career military officer, usually deployed. Vivi wouldn’t celebrate anything, much less a wedding, five goddamn days after Mr. Harrison’s passing. Something is off; it doesn’t feel right. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Henry Stevens,” Da offers, naming Mrs. Stevens’ son, one of my childhood buddies. Henry, Vivi, and I grew up together on the Harrison Estate.
Memories of long forgotten days roll through my mind with sharp precision. Henry, Genevieve, and me swinging from a rope into the creek, climbing trees, racing each other to the top, bike riding around town, and eating ice cream cones on Saturday afternoons. While Vivi and Henry were close, we always knew, all three of us, that Vivi and I were forever. That our connection outpaced any childhood friendship or adolescent puppy love.
At least, I thought we did. Until Vivi and I broke up the summer before college, I went to Ireland with Da, and she stopped returning my calls. Instead of the friendship we promised each other, Vivi stomped all over my heart, and we moved down two different paths with two very different endings.
Genevieve Rae is marrying Henry Stevens.
The words don’t compute in my brain because they’re all fucking wrong. She can’t marry him. She can’t marry…
But can’t she? An old memory, one I worked hard to forget, flairs to life in my mind. The one time I returned to Tennessee after leaving for the University of Minnesota. It was my sophomore year of college and I had to see her; I had to know why she cut me off the way she did. When I hugged her goodbye before my trip, we swore we’d still talk, that we’d be in each other’s lives no matter what. I tried. Why didn’t she?
When I saw her with Henry, I knew. They were laughing, messing around with boxing gloves behind the small house Henry’s family occupied. He was training her but his hands, they touched her with familiarity, with confidence. The blustering friend of my childhood had grown into a man who knew my girl better than I did.
Unable to stomach it, I left. I haven’t seen her since.
The cheers from the arena reverberate down the hallway, capturing my attention again.
“Da, I appreciate you calling but I’m about to skate out on—”
“Hockey isn’t everything, son.” Da’s voice holds an edge, something I don’t fully understand.
“We broke up,” I remind him. “We haven’t talked in years.”
“Have you not thought of her in that long too?”
I swear, because Da knows damn well that not a day passes without my thinking of Genevieve. About the promises we made and the future we dreamed up. About the friendship we swore meant everything, no matter where we went to college, no matter what happened afterwards.
But then I left for Minnesota and she…fell in love with Henry fucking Stevens. I saw it with my own eyes the following year.
“It’s not too late,” Da murmurs. “You’ve still got time, son.”
“Time for what?” I scoff, frustrated and angry and so fucking gutted by the news Da shared. Mr. Harrison is dead. Vivi’s getting married. The arena is waiting. My head spins, my emotions pulled in too many conflicting directions.
“To get your girl.”
“Right,” I say sarcastically. “I gotta go, Da.” I hang up.
But I don’t stand from the bench. Instead, I fist my phone and feel the gut-wrenching sadness of Mr. Harrison’s loss mix with the terrifying realization that I can’t lose Vivi. Not forever, not without knowing what went wrong, not without…telling her that I never truly moved on.
Before I can overthink it, I pull off my jersey and re-enter the silent locker room. I change into sweats. I rush down the hallway of The Meadows, away from the arena, toward the parking lot and my waiting SUV. I blow off a NHL hockey game as a defenseman for the Boston Hawks, the career opportunity of a lifetime, to drive seventeen hours to break up a wedding. But not any wedding. Vivi’s.
* * *
I lost my fucking mind.
It’s the only thing that makes sense as the high of adrenaline, the wave of fear, I’ve been riding for nearly seventeen hours on my drive home to Tennessee morphs into fatigue.
I take the turn toward my tiny hometown, on the outskirts of Nashville. My parents moved here when I was a kid, my father’s family unhappy that he fell for an American instead of an Irishwoman. It was hypocritical bullshit if you ask me since my father’s mother married a German. But we don’t talk about my grandfather, the guy who hit it and quit it, leaving nothing behind but his last name and a dark stain on my family’s reputation in a small, Irish village.
After mom passed when I was five, Da stayed in Tennessee, happily employed by Mr. Harrison. It wasn’t until I accepted a hockey scholarship to the University of Minnesota that Da agreed to move back to his homeland.
While my whole family now resides in Ireland, the one I made as a child in Tennessee still claims a piece of my soul. Genevieve Rae still holds a piece of my heart.
Which is why, after seventeen long hours, I enter the small town we both call home, and scan every passerby for her wild, blonde waves and bright, sky blue eyes.
Driving down Main Street, my life in Boston falls away. Instead, I see a million memories from before Boston and the NHL, from before hockey. I see Vivi eating strawberry ice cream cones with chocolate sprinkles. Mrs. Grant in her green apron, waving us past her shop on our bicycles, after stuffing our pockets with candy. I see the old public library where Vivi taught me how to read and the corner store where I bought her a bracelet for her twelfth birthday. That was the first time she kissed me, and I don’t know if I ever truly came up for oxygen since. Because when my lips touched hers, everything I thought I knew disappeared and everything I thought I wanted changed.
I wanted her.
Shaking my head, I turn off Main Street toward a bed-and-breakfast Da told me Mrs. Cleary still runs in the heart of the historic district. I park my SUV and grab the small bag I keep in the back for emergencies—usually of the hockey variety—but right now, I’m glad it’s stocked with two changes of clothes, clean underwear, and a toothbrush. It also holds a couple hundred-dollar bills and my passport, which is a relief, since I left my wallet in my locker at The Meadows. Shouldering my bag, I make my way inside.
Mrs. Cleary turns and smiles when the bell alerts her to my arrival but when she spots me her mouth drops open and tears spring to the corners of her eyes.
“Declan Yaeger, my word, is that really you?” she asks, her hands gripping the skirt of her dress.
I smile, knowing the moment my dimple pops because Mrs. Cleary’s expression softens. “It’s me, Mrs. C.”
“Oh, welcome home,” she sighs, hurrying around the counter and wrapping me up in a big hug that feels the same as it did when I was nine and flipped over the handlebars of my bike out front.
I breathe in the cinnamon and sugar that clings to her, years of making scones before the rest of town is awake, and feel a strange sensation move through my chest. The world suddenly shifts, straightens, and a wave of homesickness, a longing for what was, crashes over me.
Mrs. Cleary grips my shoulders and pulls back, offering a hopeful smile. “You’re here for her, aren’t you?”
I nod, my brow furrowing. “How’d you know?”
She laughs lightly. “Genevieve has that effect.”
I smile. She sure does.
“Besides, we haven’t seen you here in years.”
Her words cause guilt to swell inside but I bite the corner of my mouth and nod in acknowledgement. There’s no way I’m going to admit that the one time I did come home, my heart splintered all over again. After that, it never made sense. Why would I come back here if I wasn’t coming home to Genevieve?
But right now, staring at Mrs. Cleary, noting the gray strands running through her hair, the wrinkles bracketing her mouth, I feel ashamed for staying away so long.
“We’re all really proud of you, Declan,” she says, making me feel worse.
“Thank you,” I say quietly, undeserving of her praise. I never would have made it as far as I did without the support of Mr. Harrison. His commitment to me, to hockey, created my future. Him and Vivi and Da. This town. “Does she love him?” I dip my head, unsure if I want the answer.
She must, right? Genevieve Rae wouldn’t marry for anything less than love. But how could anything be greater than what we once had?
Mrs. Cleary grips my hand and squeezes until I meet her eyes. “He’s a good man.”
I nod again, the movement jerky. Henry Stevens is a decent, caring guy. He’ll make a good husband, a good father.
“They been together long?” I can’t help myself from being a goddamn gossip when I want every morsel of information pertaining to Vivi. Everything and anything I missed over the past seven years, even though I have no right to it, to her, anymore.
Mrs. Cleary tips her head, studying me. “You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” My voice is hushed, as if the fear of knowing holds it back. Does Vivi hate me? Is she pregnant? Is she in trouble? My throat burns as the thoughts tumble through my mind.
“Henry and Genevieve…” Mrs. Cleary trails off, collecting her thoughts and words, and an irrational surge of dislike rises toward my old friend.
But why shouldn’t Henry have Vivi? He stuck around all these years. He stayed while I…left. Left and never really looked back.
“Well, they’re doing right by their families, whatever that means,” she says finally, leaving me with more questions. “Come.” Mrs. Cleary taps my arm before turning back to the front desk. “Let’s get you checked in and showered. Ceremony’s at three.” She looks up at me. “You have two hours, Declan. Use them.”
I nod, following her. Now that I’m here, that strange adrenaline mixed with fear is back, wiping out my fatigue and filling me up with a restlessness that borders on panic.
I need to see Vivi. I need to talk to Henry. I need to mourn Mr. Harrison. I need to know when the hell everything changed so much, and why I didn’t realize it until now.
* * *
Some of my questions are answered only an hour later as I stand to the side of the church, pacing back and forth, my mind racing. All the emotions of coming home are warring for space in my mind, but I shut them down, focused on Genevieve.
After calling Da to let him know I arrived in Nashville, I quietly enter the church, only to catch my first glimpse of her. And it nearly breaks me.
Genevieve Rae is a vision. She’s always been beautiful but now, as a woman, she’s stunning. Her golden hair is curled and pulled away from her face, showing off her cheekbones and the delicate slope of her neck. Her lips are a perfect Cupid’s bow, begging to be kissed. Her eyes are just as blue as I remember.
But that’s where the similarities end. Because the fun-loving, spunky, loud, and giggly girl from my past is now an intense, unreadable force of a woman.
Her voice is even as she stands by the altar, exchanging words with the priest, Father Ward. But she wrings her hands, and I can tell she’s nervous, just doing her best to hide it.
Father Ward nods and moves out of the church through a side door. Vivi’s shoulders drop a fraction but then the door opens again, and I watch as she straightens, her body tense.
She turns slowly and as she does, she relaxes and a smile that could light up New York City washes over her face. My hands curl into fists as Henry Stevens strides down the aisle. What the hell is he doing here? Isn’t it bad luck to see the bride before the wedding?
But nothing about this wedding seems traditional. The timing, the reaction of Mrs. Cleary when she saw me, the bride and the groom meeting before the ceremony, it all indicates a sense of urgency I don’t understand.
Henry’s expression is serious and Vivi’s smile morphs into a look of concern. She holds out her hands as he reaches her. He takes them, pulling her forward to wrap her in a big hug. He holds her for a long moment, both of their eyes closed. They look sad, almost hopeless. Absolutely nothing like a couple about to embark on their happily-ever-after.
Vivi pulls away first but keeps her hands tucked in Henry’s. “You can’t go through with it, can you?”
“You look beautiful, Viv.” Henry kisses both of her cheeks.
I frown, straining to hear their words without giving away my presence. What the hell is going on?
“Henry,” Vivi says.
“I can’t go through with it,” he murmurs, his eyes closing, as if in pain. “I can’t live the lie.”
“I understand,” Vivi states without a trace of anger. “I’m so sorry I ever asked you to.”
“No.” Henry shakes his head. “I’d do anything for you, Viv. I just, I can’t do this. I can’t keep hiding like this. I need to tell him.”
“It’s okay.” Vivi shrugs and offers him a lopsided grin.
“It’s not,” Henry argues with her. He reaches up to stop a tear that falls from her eye and my body coils in anticipation.
Why is she crying? Why is he jilting her? What the hell is he talking about, a lie?
Henry swears and shakes his head. “I hate myself for standing by and watching you lose everything.”
“Not everything.” She gives him a sad smile.
He shakes his head, his jaw clenched.
“I’ll be okay, Henry.”
Henry clucks, his expression filled with admiration for Vivi. “Only you, Viv. Only you manage to land on your feet. It’s not fair that you’re always taking care of everyone, with no one looking out for you. I hate that I’m—”
“Stop,” Vivi cuts him off and shakes her head. She clings to his wrist, holding on to him like a lifeline.
I work a swallow, anger rushing through me. Why is she forgiving him so easily for jilting her? Why doesn’t she seem angry at all? I’m angry for her. And what the hell does Henry mean, no one is looking out for Vivi? Isn’t that his job, as her fiancé?
“Viv…” Henry cups her cheek, his other hand hooking around her hip to draw her closer. She stumbles forward and I let out a low growl. “You and I both know this is bigger than us. You can’t lose the foundation. If Alfred and you…” He trails off and sighs. “So much of the good you’re doing will suffer.”
Vivi shakes her head, her smile soft, her eyes sad. “But I can’t lose you, Henry. I can figure out the foundation stuff and deal with Alfred, but not at the expense of us.”
My confusion ratchets up several more notches. Isn’t she losing him now? If he leaves her here, in church, on their wedding day, what the hell will be salvageable of their relationship? What am I missing?
Henry clears his throat. “If we do this…”
“Henry, no.” Vivi shakes her head. Her eyes close and I watch her shoulders sag. Is she disappointed? Relieved?
Whatever she is, it sure as fuck isn’t the fury that races through my body, turning my blood hot. Henry’s gonna leave her at the altar? And tell her this on their goddamn wedding day while standing in church?
“Viv…” Henry’s thumb swipes along her cheekbone. “You need to get married, babe, and if not me, then who?”
Hurt blazes over Vivi’s face, her expression crumpling as Henry’s words ring true. It’s the dejected acceptance in her eyes that breaks me free of the spell holding my tongue.
I step forward and without thinking about what the hell I’m agreeing to, I announce, “Me.”