Chapter 21
It’s not my grandma who ended up in the hospital with a heart attack.
It’s worse. If that’s possible. No one imagined Delaney’s Granny Bernadette had a faulty heart.
Her uncle Torin who’s more like her brother in every way possible except a skipped generation of parentage, calls her in the middle of the event and that’s how I find out the difference between a real girlfriend and a fake one.
Because when I hear the sound of her sob it crashes through whatever icy reserve I had, and defies all logic and everything I ever thought I knew about myself and emotional control.
“What is it?” The vibration in my voice surprises me at first, but then I notice it’s my whole body vibrating, nearly shaking with dread. Ignoring the crowd and the music and whatever else is going on around us, I wait and watch her.
She turns to me and shatters me with her tears streaming down her face. “Link...” she sobs and throws herself into my chest. My arms lock around her like a trap, except it’s her who has me trapped. Even as I realize this, my arms tighten and I don’t care.
“It’s Granny. She’s in the hospital. They don’t know if…” She sobs and presses her face against my chest, her tears soaking through my shirt as I hold her there.
“Delaney, tell me everything, baby. I’m here for you. I’ll take care of you. I’ll do whatever you want, whatever you need me to do.” My words are automatic, coming from a place in me that only knows feelings, without regard to consequences.
She looks up at me.
“Come with me to New York.”
The words are like ice, freezing me, momentarily stunning me into the stark understanding of what it’s like to make the most difficult life choices, the kind that no matter what you do, a piece of you will be missing. I pause long enough for her to blink her tears away.
Her voice is hoarse and overwhelmed with emotions, shaky. “I know what I’m asking you, but you need to make a choice, Link. You need to decide and I’m not going to make it any easier for you. Because if you don’t come with me right now, I’m not coming back.” She takes in a deep shuddering breath. “Because then I’ll know we’re not for real.”
“Fuck.” I swipe both hands through my hair and notice they’re shaky. My insides churn and my muscles coil in defense like she’s trying to pull me apart.
“I can’t go. I have a game tonight.” My voice is hoarse and I plead with my eyes for her to understand.
Her rigid expression doesn’t soften, her blue eyes remain flinty. She turns and walks away and I fist my hands so hard my nails dig into my palms, but I can’t go after her, can’t throw my hockey career away. She can’t ask me to do that.
“You played like shit tonight,”Jason says as I’m checking my phone for messages or missed calls or any sign from Delaney.
I grunt.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” He grabs the phone from my hands. I don’t bother trying to get it back. She’s not going to contact me. She’s done with me. Fuuuck.
“Delaney left me.” I say the words out loud to Jason to test them out, to see how much it hurts to acknowledge the truth, to stop holding reality at bay, pretending this isn’t really happening, that I don’t really care way too fucking much.
“Why the fuck would she do that?”
I tell him about her ultimatum.
“That’s messed up, man.”
Sabe comes over and sits on the other side of me. “What’s up with you?” He sounds concerned. A year ago I would never have thought he’d sound like this, even when I knew he was concerned, he’d never have let his feelings show so obviously.
Is that what’s happening to me?
Jason answers him for me, telling Sabe about Delaney’s Granny and her ultimatum.
“Fuck. That’s tough. You should go, man.”
“Coach will trade my ass if I miss a game.” We have one tomorrow night and I’ve already done the math. I’d never make it back in time. “We can’t let anything get in the way of hockey this season.”
“Fuck that. I’ll talk to coach,” Sabe says.
I look at him and see that he’s serious. “What are you going to tell him?”
“The truth. That you need to be let off the hook. That you have an urgent medical problem in the family and you need to?—”
“Granny’s not my family.”
“She’s Delaney’s family. Close enough. She’s almost your family. The whole team is buzzing about your engagement.”
“You know it’s not real, right?”
“Fuck that. It’s more real than you think. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have played so shitty tonight. Luckily Chase picked up the slack for you.”
I give him the finger and we chuckle. Something in me releases and it feels like all the air is letting out of my tension like a popped balloon. But instead of feeling deflated, I feel like myself again. Confident. I know what to do. What I need to do.
I stand. “I’m out of here. Tell coach for me. I hope he gets it, but if not, it’s been a ride playing with you.” I nod at each of them and wish Chase were here, but he’s taking questions from the media.
“Coach will get it,” Sabien says. “I’ll make sure you have the support of the whole team. Coach can’t go against that even if he wanted to.”
Everyone in the locker room finds out about my dilemma by the time I’m dressed and they tap my shoulder and wish me well. Everyone in the locker room blames coach for my predicament. Except me.
He’s doing his job as he sees fit. I don’t know if I’d do it any differently if I were him.
Life is full of tough choices. I need to be tough enough to make mine.
Dressed and ready, I head for the exit.
“Hold on, Milano.” I hear coach’s voice boom from behind me and I turn. He’s coming in from the door that leads to his office. I face him.
The locker room goes quiet.
“Where are you going?”
“To New York.” I don’t bother explaining because I see Sabe come into the room behind him. They’ve obviously had a talk.
“You made the right decision to stay and play the game tonight, even if you did play shitty.” There are a few chuckles in the otherwise quiet room, but I don’t even crack a smile. He stares me down for a beat and I stare back.
“Now I’m making the right decision. Go home to New York.” He pauses and a cold numbness takes hold of me because it’s not clear whether he’s kicking me off the team or giving me personal leave.
Then he adds, “Come back when your fiancée says its time.”
I head out the door so fast I feel lightheaded. Then my heart hammers and all the damn feelings I’ve been holding back flood me.
They push me with a kind of urgency I’ve never felt before as I get in my car and drive non-stop in six hours to New York City.
I get herein time to stand in the doorway of her Granny’s full hospital room, breathing heavy from my rush through the hallways, as a doctor shuts off the machines and Granny Bernadette stops breathing.
The loudest sob in the room belongs to Delaney and I push past everyone to go to her. She turns to me and after staring at me for a beat with those sparkling teary blue eyes filled with pain that I can feel down to my bones, she melts against me.
“Granny’s gone,” she sobs and I move her to a corner of the large crowded room to give us some privacy. No one stops us though I get a cold stare from her oldest uncle. But he has his own grief to deal with as he holds onto his wife.
Delaney cries for a long time, ragged sobs giving way to silent tears and then to sniffles. I hold her, my chest tight, absorbing her pain and staying solid for her to lean on. Supporting her is automatic, absorbing her feelings and taking them for my own seems normal, not foreign the way it would have a couple of weeks ago.
“I’m sorry, Milano,” she says, pulling back and swiping at the large wet spot on my shirt and tie. “You’re kind of overdressed for the occasion aren’t you,” she says still looking at my chest. The suit is what I wore to the game, the only clothes I had with me and I wasn’t taking the time to stop at my condo for a change.
“I’m the one who’s sorry, Delaney.” I cup her chin and make her look me in the eyes.
In spite of her attempt at sarcasm, her usual bravado, she’s never looked so soft and vulnerable, or so adoring.
But when I tell her coach gave me leave to come here after the game, she goes cool.
“It wasn’t a tough choice for you to be here, then?”
I shake my head. “I made the wrong choice when you asked me to go with you, Delaney. And I’m sorry. But I vow to you I’ll never do it again because I understand now what I have to lose. And I’m not losing what we have. I can’t go back to living by myself and sleeping with strange women, never connecting.”
“Those are pretty words, Milano, but we both know I didn’t ask you to come with me.” She heaves a shuddering sigh. I’m not sure where she’s going with this but my heart thunders in anticipation.
“I did the horrible thing of giving you an ultimatum. Grandma would be so disappointed in me. She used to tell me never give a man an ultimatum and I always dismissed her advice like I’d never need it.”
She sighs again and I’m about to tell her it’s okay when she puts a finger over my mouth to stop me. She looks at me solemnly, her electric blue eyes intense.
“My only excuse is that I was so broken with grief, angry so helpless. I had a week moment.”
My chest squeezes for her, needing to ease her mind if not her pain.
“You weak? Never. You’re the woman so strong that she sings her songs even though she’s afraid.”
“Such pretty words. You’re so good with words, Milano, that I’d swear you have some Irish poet in you?—”
I can’t help myself. “I want to have some Irish poet in me as soon as I get you?—”
She snorts a laugh and then she slaps me. Right across my fucking face.