Chapter 12 #2
“No. No. You don’t get to show up here, reminding me of the most terrible thing I’ve ever done just by being here, when the world’s laughing at me for it all over again, when my family dysfunction is on full display for you, when I should be enjoying every minute of planning the reopening of the winery that saved my life, and then say you were never nice to me because you liked me.
I’ve worked through my shit. The past few days aside, I’m happy. And I’ll be happier when you’re gone.”
“So you get to work through your shit and apologize to Alex, but I don’t get to work through mine and apologize to you?”
My back snaps straight as his point lands.
He’s not asking me to date him.
He’s asking me to forgive him.
I asked Alex the same for something much, much worse.
And I’ve managed to mostly forgive myself for it too.
What I did—it’s in my past.
Except it will always be part of me.
Just like I’ll always have a voice whispering in my head that I should do something crazy like dance through the fields, pouring gasoline on the grapes because it would be good for ratings.
Clearly, I would never. Those voices? Those voices are a shitty gift from my teenage years.
And I would never act on those impulses that my mother gave me.
I can be a better person than the world believes that I am.
Not for them.
But for me.
Yet here I am, rejecting an apology from a guy who did what he did because he thought it was what was best.
I drop back to the ground, giving myself plenty of distance from him. “I’m sorry,” I force out.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s—it’s not.”
Something rustles in the dark, and I realize he’s offering me a bottle. “Wine?”
“Are you for real right now? I’m still not recovered from Saturday.”
There’s that rusty laugh again. “Couldn’t resist.”
“Asshole,” I mutter.
“Can’t fully shut off the dick.”
There’s a smile in his voice that irritates me.
Like he said, he’s sorry, so it’s over.
“And I won’t steal your coffee mug tomorrow.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lie.
“Still use mine that you gave me right after college.”
Something soft and warm crawls into my heart.
Something warm and unwelcome.
I make a point in my life to be kind whenever I can.
But it doesn’t mean being a pushover.
And it doesn’t mean that I don’t deserve my own time to sort through his explanation.
“It’s a good mug,” I mutter.
“My favorite.”
“If this is you feeling me out, you can stop. I’m not interested.”
“Can a guy just appreciate a mug without having an agenda?”
“Can he?”
He blows out a loud breath. “Let’s hope so.”
My pulse goes from an irritated stroll to a sprint for safety. “What does that mean?”
His extended pause does nothing for the rapid drumbeat of my heart echoing in my ears.
“Everyone always has an agenda,” he finally says. “Even if you don’t mean to.”
I swallow hard. “So yours is…what? Convince me to give you all the tricks to being on a reality show?”
“No.”
“That’s all I get? No?”
“I want to play hockey again.”
I tilt my head. “What?”
“If my socials get big enough, if this show does well enough, then maybe I’m good for entertainment value for professional hockey again.
Maybe an expansion team would want me. Or a team with falling ticket sales.
Foxy could Go There and be the retired hockey player who makes a triumphant return, all captured in a self-made documentary that would save a team. Stupid, right?”
My heart thumps hard in a way that I don’t like.
I’d feel for any guy in his situation, but just like racking him in the nuts, I don’t want to feel sorry for Declan.
But I was a hockey girlfriend with a marketing degree.
Utterly fascinated by the inner workings behind the scenes.
Ticket sales. Merchandise. Licensing. Endorsements. Partnerships.
It’s not just a game.
It’s an intricate business model.
The game comes first—the competition to be the best on the ice—but all of the gears and levers pulled off-ice are what build fanbases and make teams profitable.
With social media, the players are stars now. Go to a game, and you see them doing segments on the jumbotrons, playing goofy games or talking about which of their teammates would be most and least likely to survive a zombie apocalypse or kiss the wrong person on a kiss cam.
He’s not wrong that a fan base could love him enough to convince a team to give him a chance.
“It’s not stupid to want to do what you love,” I tell him, hating that I sound like a brat, knowing I need to get up and leave, but part of me—part of me wants to be as big of a dick to him as he was to me all of those years.
Another silence falls between us, but this one—this one’s heavy.
There’s a vibe.
Something unspoken.
He’s probably thinking about how much he loves playing with Alex. That that was half the joy of his professional career, getting selected for the same team as the guy he’d been besties with since their freshman year of college.
Not that I have any clue if they were still playing together when Declan retired.
I quit hockey when I broke up with Alex, and then I quit harder after I tried to stop his wedding three months later.
Quit watching. Burned my merch. Pretend when I hear a team name that I can still recite stats about that they’re talking about football or baseball or soccer.
Left social media entirely.
Set up a block on our internet router so that I’d never see his name again.
I tell people he’s happy, but honestly?
I have no fucking clue.
I’ve buried my head that deep in the sand when it comes to my ex, and I like it that way.
“You love living here,” Declan finally says.
“Who wouldn’t?”
“People who are allergic to chickens.”
Dammit.
He just made me snort-laugh.
Declan Fox.
Life is so fucking weird.
“I never forgave her for missing your birthday party,” he adds softly.
My stupid heart spills warmth over my belly all over again.
Alex laughed it off.
That’s your mom, babe.
I thought I was supposed to laugh it off too.
And here’s Declan, a guy that I thought hated me, telling me my mother made him mad for something she did to me.
And my body’s falling for it, when my mind knows I still need to be cautious.
People played me my entire life.
Until I moved here.
I haven’t had to keep my guard up here, but now—now, I clearly do.
“My mother had a hard life,” I say. “Rough childhood, lost her husband young, got corrupted by Hollywood, all of it.”
“Everyone has something hard in their life.”
“Not everyone can handle it.”
“But she owed it to you to be a parent. She owed it to you to handle her shit so that you could be a kid. Not a publicity stunt.”
There he goes again.
Saying the right things.
Everything I wanted my mother to realize on her own.
He suddenly grips my arm, and everything inside me turns upside down. “Did you see it?” he whispers.
“See what?” I whisper back, my voice wavering while tingles spread up my arm from where he’s gripping it.
“The shooting star.”
I look up.
Tonight’s one of those nights when the Milky Way is in full view. The kind of night that, if I were alone, I’d take comfort in how vast and fathomless the universe is.
In all of existence, my problems are small.
Even the worst moments of my life.
That’s what I came out here for.
To see the Milky Way and the shooting stars and to remember that my problems might seem big to me, but they’re not even a pinprick in the vastness of the universe of possibilities.
“Please let go,” I say while I search the skies.
“Sorry. Sorry. I—it was—there. Wow. Wow.”
His grip tightens around my arm as a brilliant white light streaks across the sky, from one end to the other, the entire show begun and ended in no more than a few milliseconds.
I don’t shake him off.
I should, but the whole thing—the star, the earth, the grounding feeling of being connected to another person—it’s a reminder that I’m part of something bigger than myself.
That we all get one chance to be a light flashing across the sky, bringing a moment of joy to the world.
I don’t want to spend my time being angry and hiding.
I want to brilliantly shine in my own life.
“Did you see it?” Declan murmurs.
“Yes,” I whisper back, and then I do pull my arm away and push to my feet.
I don’t like how suddenly comfortable I feel with him.
I am meant to be part of this world. To connect with people and do my part to make life a little better.
But not with Declan Fox.
He doesn’t follow or try to stop me this time.
And that’s good.
The shooting star—it was a fluke.
Not a sign.