Audrina

I ran.

I left everything I knew, and I didn’t look back.

I have loved my best friend since I the moment I knew what love was. While I adore a good best-friends-to-lovers trope, that was never our story. We danced around each other, skated along the line but didn’t cross it, and I never knew why. Until one night, I took matters into my own hands. Doing a challenge from social media, I thought I had my best friend right where I wanted him.

As mine.

Just when I thought we were going to be together forever in the all the ways I had dreamed of, he pulled the rug out from under me. He broke my heart in a matter of seconds, and I had no choice but to take off.

After three years, I thought I was in the clear; I thought I’d never see him again, and I was finally building a life. Maybe not one I’d wanted, but one I loved.

I should have known better.

Thatcher Orlov would never give up.

He’s found me, and now I not only have to face him, but everything I left behind.

And everything I’ve hidden.

Thatcher

It’s not everyone who can say their best friend was born the same day as they were and slept in the bassinet beside them in the hospital.

But Audrina and I can.

She is all I’ve known my whole life.

Every huge moment, Audrina was there. When I was drafted, when I won my gold medals, and even through all my hockey-related injuries. She had always been my rock, my stable ground when everything felt off-kilter. We spent our whole lives in some kind of limbo where it felt like we were in a relationship, but we weren’t. While the lines were blurred, my feelings for her weren’t.

It took one song to ignite a fire brighter than any I’d ever witnessed, but I ruined it all by letting my jealousy get in the way. She took off, leaving me behind. And in the three years since she left, there hasn’t been a moment I haven’t been looking for her. I need her—not only as my best friend, but as mine.

But now, I’ve not only found her…I’ve found she isn’t alone.

My world is turned upside down in a matter of seconds, and while I’m know for my chirping on the ice, her voice is the sweetest chirp I’ve ever heard.