Chapter 4 #2
“Three times in one afternoon?” Carter says. “What did you do to worry her?”
I have no idea, but Mom has definitely been calling me a lot more lately. Maybe because of my injury and all the time I’ve been spending in rehab. Or maybe because my identical twin is married now, and suddenly, I’m on my own a lot more than I ever was before.
I sigh and toss my phone onto the table. “Who knows? When did you last talk to her?”
Carter’s expression freezes, then his eyes dart to the side. “Uh, I can’t remember,” he says, but something is different. He’s cagey, like he’s hiding something.
“What did you do?” I ask him.
“Nothing,” he says a little too quickly.
“Carter,” I press, and he sighs.
“I might have accidentally mentioned that you went by the hospital to see Becca.”
I sit up, dropping my hands onto the table. “Dude. Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know.” He sits up a little taller. “Honestly. We were just talking, and somehow it slipped out.”
“It slipped out? For two months, I didn’t tell our mother that you married your wife so she wouldn’t be deported, but you couldn’t keep your mouth shut about this for a week?”
“I know,” Carter quickly says. “I totally owe you one. But also, you should talk to Mom. She gives good advice.”
“Like you talked to her?” Holly asks.
“Thank you,” I say, appreciating that at least this time, he seems to be on my side. “Besides, what would I even tell her? There’s nothing to say because Becca hasn’t texted me. I didn’t want to get her hopes up, which was the right call because there’s literally nothing to tell.”
“Okay, fair,” Carter says. “I should have thought about that part. I really am sorry.”
I stand and push back from the table, making my way around the side of the house to Carter’s garage.
“Where are you going?” he calls after me.
“To take back the golf club you won in our poker game last year.”
“That’s my favorite driver,” Carter yells.
“It was my favorite first,” I yell back.
I find Carter’s clubs leaning against the wall opposite his truck and quickly find the PXG Prime Royal Edition driver I bought my first year in the NHL.
Even though he’s left-handed, my dumb brother golfs right-handed, so we’ve always shared clubs.
But this driver was one of the first expensive things I purchased after we signed with the Jaguars. It’ll be nice to have it back.
I carry it to the patio and lean it against the table before sitting back down.
Holly chuckles with barely concealed glee. He’s clearly enjoying watching from the sidelines, but there’s no danger of actual fireworks. Carter and I have only had a handful of serious fights, and this definitely isn’t one of them.
“Take it,” Carter says. “It’ll make it more fun when I beat you with a driver that costs half as much as that one.”
“Holly, can you remember the last time Carter beat me on the golf course?” I ask.
“Can’t say I do,” Holly says.
“Who’s beating who on what golf course?” Sarah asks as she steps onto the patio.
“Not your husband,” I say. “He’s too busy blabbing to our mother.”
“Ohhh,” Sarah says, dropping a hand onto Carter’s shoulder. “Is this about the Becca thing? I did tell you that would come back to bite you.”
Carter sighs. “I already apologized. And you can have the golf club,” he says to me. “But this means we’re square. You can’t hold it over my head anymore.”
“Is this a professional athlete thing?” Sarah asks, looking from me to Holly, then down to Carter. “Literally everything turning into a competition?”
“Yes,” we all say in unison.
Sarah smiles and shakes her head, then leans down and gives Carter a quick kiss. “You’re ridiculous—all three of you. Also, the pizza is almost here. You’re welcome to eat outside, but I’m sending the older girls out if you do.”
“Send them out,” Carter says at the same time Holly says, “Charlie can definitely eat with me.”
“I’ll do dinner and bedtime,” Carter adds. “You’ve been with them all afternoon.”
She nods and moves back to the door. “Once the pizza is here, I’ll make plates for the girls, then come swap you for Fiona.”
As soon as we’re alone again, Holly clears his throat. “So, uh, since I’m not your mom, am I allowed to ask you about going to see Becca? This is your ex, right? The one working at the hospital?”
I sink back into my chair and run a hand through my hair. “Yeah, that’s her.”
Holly doesn’t know the whole story, but he knows the general outline—that we were together until my dad died, and then everything fell apart.
“How did it go?” he asks.
I give him a quick summary of my interaction with Becca, which is easy because it barely lasted five minutes. All the carefully planned things I wanted to say, the words I rehearsed, then rehearsed again—I didn’t say any of it.
“So that’s it?” Holly asks when I finally finish.
“That’s it,” I say. “And it’s all it will be because I don’t think she’s going to text.”
“It’s only been a week, man,” Carter says. “Not long enough to justify that kind of a statement.”
I’m already shaking my head before he’s even finished his sentence. “Trust me. I was there. She didn’t want to talk to me.”
They’re both quiet for a beat before Holly asks, “So what do you do now?”
I shrug. “Nothing, I guess. Try to move on.”
I make eye contact with Carter, but I quickly look away. After what happened last spring, when I saw Becca at the hospital and learned she was living in Atlanta, he has to know there’s more to the story than what I’ve been willing to admit. But we’ve never talked about it.
Somehow, this is the one secret I’ve kept from my brother.
Instead of telling him the truth, I’ve let him believe that my dating history full of almosts and not quites is a result of choices I’m making intentionally. If you listen to sports reporters who peddle player gossip, I’m the playboy twin. The wild one who won’t settle down.
In the past, the reputation has amused me more than annoyed me. They weren’t that far from the actual truth; I never have dated anyone seriously—not since Becca. But they’ve got my motivations all wrong. I would love to settle down.
I just don’t know how to do it with anyone but her.
Rebecca Bradley is the only woman I’ve ever loved. And the echo of that love has been chasing me since our relationship ended. Every woman I meet has the unfortunate burden of being compared to her, and so far, no one has measured up.
So I’ve lived on the surface. Kept my feelings close and the truth even closer.
Until now.
I’m not sure what shifted. Maybe it was Carter finally falling in love or my injury and the sudden realization that I can’t count on hockey to be the center of my life forever.
But at the end of last season, some long-rusted cog in my brain shook loose, and I knew I had to do something—anything—to put myself on a different path.
As soon as I was released from the hospital, I called the therapist Carter’s been trying to get me to see for years.
If I wanted to move forward, I needed the kind of closure that would only come from apologizing.
But I had to forgive myself first. And not just for what I did to Becca.
For the accident too. For the role I played in my father’s death. For all of it.
That’s a much more complicated part of the journey that I’m still trying to figure out. But I’ve made a lot of progress. Enough that I thought I was ready to see her. To say the things I’ve been thinking for months.
But she has to talk to me for that to happen.
I probably should have considered how to proceed if she wouldn’t, because now I have no idea what to do next.
“What are you not telling us, man?” Carter asks. “The look on your face makes me think this is about a lot more than an apology.”