Chapter 48
FORTY-EIGHT
Two weeks.
Fourteen days since I’d walked out of Ava’s apartment and shattered my heart beyond recognition.
Three hundred and thirty-six hours since I’d looked into her eyes and lied through my teeth about not wanting her anymore.
Not that I was counting.
The puck came at me and I deflected it on autopilot, sending it sailing toward Foster on muscle memory alone. My body knew what to do. It had been doing this for years—skating, passing, checking, shooting. I didn’t need my brain for hockey anymore.
Which was good, because my brain had stopped working properly two weeks ago.
“Nice pass,” Foster called, but he said it with the same careful tone everyone had been using around me lately, like I was a bomb that might detonate if they said the wrong thing.
I grunted in response and skated toward the bench for a water break. Coach had been riding us hard this week, pushing us toward our next matchup with MSU, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. The fire that usually burned in my chest when I played hockey had gone out. All that was left was ash.
Gordy settled onto the bench beside me. “You good?”
“Fine.”
“You’ve said that about forty times in the past two weeks.”
“Then maybe you should stop asking.”
He was quiet for a moment, watching the rest of the guys run drills on the ice. “You know if you need to talk—”
“I don’t.”
What was there to talk about? I’d made my choice. I’d done the right thing—the noble thing. I’d freed Ava from the ticking time bomb that was my genetic predisposition toward destroying the people I loved.
So why did I feel like I was the one who’d been destroyed?
Coach blew the whistle, calling us back onto the ice, and I pushed off the bench with a relief I didn’t deserve.
At least when I was skating, I didn’t have to think.
Didn’t have to feel. Didn’t have to remember the sound she’d made when I told her I was getting restless—that small, wounded noise that haunted my dreams every night.
You’re saving her, I reminded myself for the thousandth time. This is the kindest thing you can do.
But the words rang hollow now. They’d been ringing hollow since the moment I’d driven away from her apartment and sobbed in my truck like a goddamn baby.
I could feel Drew’s eyes on me from across the ice.
He’d never fully trusted me with his sister, and I’d gone and proved him right, although I was pretty sure he didn’t know for sure that we’d broken up. If he had, I had no doubt I’d be in the hospital right now instead of on the ice.
I could practically feel the questions radiating off him. It was clear he knew something had happened. Ava must have been acting differently too, even if she hadn’t told him what I’d done. Drew wasn’t stupid—he could read his twin better than anyone.
He skated up beside me during the next drill, close enough that no one else could hear. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Nothing’s going on.”
“Bullshit.” His voice was low but intense. “Ava won’t talk to me. You look like someone ran over your dog.” He grabbed my arm, forcing me to look at him. “What did you do?”
The accusation in his voice shouldn’t have stung—he was right to assume I was the one who’d fucked up. But it still hit me deep. He really knew how to kick a man when he was down.
“Just drop it, Drew.”
“Like hell I will. That’s my sister—”
“And if she wanted you to know she’d tell you.”
He searched my face, and whatever he saw there made some of the anger drain out of his expression. “Jesus, Liam. What the fuck happened with you two? You look like shit.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m serious.” He lowered his voice further. “I don’t know what’s going on, and honestly, I’m not sure I want to. But you’re still my best friend. And right now you look like you’re barely holding it together.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I couldn’t tell him the truth—that I’d broken his sister’s heart because I was terrified of turning into my father.
That I’d lied to her face and told her she was just a chase, a temporary thrill.
That I was drowning in regret and didn’t know how to swim back to shore.
Any answer I gave him would change the title I still had in his life—and that title was the only window I had to see Ava, even if I knew I didn’t deserve it.
“I’m fine,” I said instead.
Drew didn’t believe me. I could see it in his eyes. But he just shook his head and skated away, leaving me alone with the weight of everything I’d destroyed.
The hockey house was too quiet.
Gordy and Sam were at the movies with Foster, Abby, and her brother, Mason. Drew was out with Harper and Rory. And I was sitting on the couch in the dark because I didn’t want anyone to know I was home.
I tried to remember what I used to do before Ava. I’d go to parties or bars and pick up women, but even the thought of being near any woman who wasn’t Ava made my skin crawl like ants had burrowed underneath.
So I just sat in the dark, oppressive quiet, letting the silence press in on me from all sides and suffocate me with everything I was trying not to think about.
I pulled out my phone before I could stop myself, thumb hovering over her name in my contacts.
Don’t.
I shoved the phone back in my pocket and went to the fridge instead. Nothing looked appealing. I grabbed a beer I didn’t want and sat back on the couch, staring at nothing.
The silence pressed in harder.
I thought about turning on the TV, but I knew I wouldn’t actually watch it.
I could go to the gym, but I’d already worked out twice today.
I considered calling one of the other hockey guys I was friends with, but the idea of pretending to be fine for another few hours made me want to put my fist through a wall.
So I just sat there. In the dark. Letting the emptiness swallow me whole.
Men as handsome as us have responsibilities to never settle down.
My father’s voice echoed in my head, as it had every day since that dinner. I’d believed him. I’d sat across from him in that restaurant and let his poison seep into my veins because some part of me had always been waiting for proof that I was exactly what I’d feared.
You’ve got my restless heart.
But that was the thing. The thing I was only now starting to understand, two weeks too late.
I wasn’t restless.
I wasn’t bored, or itching to move on, or eyeing other women with that hungry dissatisfaction my father wore like a second skin. I didn’t want tons of girls. I didn’t want parties or one-night stands or the endless carousel of meaningless connections that had defined my life before.
I wanted her.
Just her.
Only her.
Every goddamn day for the rest of my life.
I wanted to wake up to her stealing the covers and complaining about mornings, to watch her dance around in my old T-shirts, and to hear her laugh at something stupid I said—that bright, happy sound that made my chest feel too full.
I missed her laugh. God, I missed her laugh so much it felt like a physical wound.
I missed the way she smelled—that damn vanilla-cinnamon lotion that made her smell like a delicious cookie. In a moment of weakness, I’d bought a bottle that I would smell whenever I really wanted to torture myself with missing her.
I missed the way she felt in my arms. Not even sexually—though fuck, I missed that too—but just her presence.
The weight of her head on my chest. The way her fingers would trace across my tattoos when we snuggled.
The peace that settled over me whenever she was close, like all the jagged pieces inside me finally fit together.
I hadn’t realized how much I needed that peace until it was gone.
You’re saving her, the voice in my head insisted, but it sounded weaker now. Less certain.
Was I saving her? Or was I just punishing us both for a future that might never happen?
My father had been so sure. So confident that the blood running through my veins made me incapable of fidelity. But my father was also a selfish bastard who’d spent his whole life making excuses for his own choices.
He’d chosen to cheat. Chosen to lie. Chosen to put his own desires above the woman who loved him.
That was character, not genetics.
And maybe my character was different.
Maybe genetics didn’t define who we were. Maybe it was possible to break away from that cycle.
My defining trait had never been restlessness.
It was loyalty.
I’d been loyal to my friends my whole life.
You’re my son, Liam. You’ve got my face, my charm…
But I wasn’t my father.
I’d spent my whole life terrified of becoming him, and in that terror, I’d done exactly what he would have done—I’d run. I’d hurt the person I loved most because I was too scared to stay and fight for her.
The realization hit me like a check to the chest, knocking all the air from my lungs.
I’d thought leaving her would feel like relief. Like setting down a weight I’d been carrying for too long. Instead, it felt like I’d cut out my own heart and left it bleeding on her floor.
Not being with her wasn’t saving anyone.
It was the worst pain I’d ever felt.
I pulled out my phone again, staring at her name. My thumb hovered over the call button, desperate to hear her voice, to tell her I was wrong, to beg her to give me another chance.
But I couldn’t.
I set the phone down and dropped my head into my hands.
Two weeks.
Two weeks of convincing myself I’d done the right thing.
Two weeks of waiting to feel free.
Two weeks of learning that freedom without her wasn’t freedom at all.
It was just a different kind of cage.