Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
CARYS
A heavy lump settles in my throat, nearly impossible to breathe around.
Dad and I both order, and then he holds his hand out to one of the small tables tucked in the back portion of the shop, away from any of the foot traffic paths.
He doesn’t say anything until our drinks sit on the small wooden table between us, the steam wafting from my herbal tea and his Americano.
“A lot of people thought I should remarry after Sheri died,” he says, looking down at his mug.
I frown, my eyebrows dropping low. Dad never really talks about Mom, not if I don’t bring her up first. And I haven’t done that in a long time.
“They didn’t think a little girl should grow up without a mom.
But I couldn’t stomach the idea of getting involved with someone else.
Not in those early years. And by the time I might be willing to try, life was hectic, and Marilyn had stepped in and filled a lot of the gaps your mom had left behind.
It felt disingenuous to only pursue a woman for the sake of you having a mother figure of sorts to look for at school events. ”
He sighs and then takes a sip from the mug, not flinching at how hot the coffee must still be. I only trace the handle of my own mug.
“Now I wonder if those people were onto something,” he says. “Maybe you would have told a mom about Rhett.”
“Dad—”
He cuts me off with a quiet question that cuts deeper than a knife. “When did you realize he’s your scent match?”
“Halloween,” I admit. “He asked me out about a week later.”
He takes another long drink of coffee then runs his hand over his head.
It’s a motion he’s done all my life, a signal he’s sorting through his thoughts.
Dad isn’t someone who explodes in fits of frustration.
He thinks through everything, his anger creeping rather than dynamic. He keeps his eyes on the coffee.
“Halloween,” he whispers. “Marilyn said Rhett informed her of finding a scent match mid-November. You were together at Thanksgiving?”
I squirm in my seat but don’t look away from him. “Yes.”
“Damn,” he mutters. His look grows shattered as he focuses on me. “Why didn’t you tell me? You could have trusted me with it.”
“I was scared,” I say, slowly, tracing the edge of the table instead of the mug.
“Of me?” Now he’s truly devastated. “Carys bug…”
“Not exactly.” I grimace. “Just… I was scared of you being disappointed that I’d gotten involved with one of the players. And I was worried you wouldn’t actually take it out on me but on the team.”
He doesn’t say anything, his eyes wide with hurt.
“I’d planned on telling you over Christmas,” I hedge. “Once the season had a bit of a pause and you all weren’t struggling to climb out of the media hole the team was in when the season started.”
He takes a deep breath, his eyes finally flicking to something behind me. He swallows heavily. I try to find something to fill the silence.
“Rhett didn’t want to hide any of it.” His eyebrow shoots up in question.
“I was the one who pushed for it. It… it felt logical at the time, but it probably wasn’t.
I just thought it would look worrisome to you that I started dating the fuckboy of the team within a few months of being back from college, especially when I’d put so much effort into getting the shop up and running. ”
His chuckle is humorless. “Well, you weren’t wrong about that.
It was worrisome. I spent the entire game panicking that something had happened to you.
When he was in the doorway to your room, very clearly—” He clears his throat and waves his hand in a you-know-what-I-mean gesture that has my cheeks darkening.
“I guess I should have put the pieces together earlier that night.”
He finishes his coffee then leans his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his hand.
“And… Ashton?”
I scrunch my nose in distaste. “Absolutely not. I’m trying to forget he even saw me at all.”
We drop back into an uneasy quiet. I make inroads on my tea, nearly finishing it in three heavy gulps. He clears his throat and holds his hand out to me, palm up. I carefully set my palm in his. His eyes glisten with unshed tears.
“You can trust me, Carys bug. I might not react the best, but I’ll always be in your corner. I always have been.”
My heart warms. “I know. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about him.”
“This means they’re coming to Christmas, right?” he asks, a smile curving his lips. “So I need to figure out what to get all three of them with less than a week left.”
I want to smile, but my stomach only twists. Dad reads the hesitancy in my face.
“What’s wrong? Are we… Is it not actually that serious? Because I’ve never seen Rhett so intent on anything other hockey in the seven years I’ve coached him.”
I cover my face, trying to ignore just how dark my blush is now. “No, it’s just… messy. With Paxton. Billie flew back to California. I don’t know if she’ll be… back for Christmas.”
Or at all, but I don’t want to think about that right now. I’ve gone from friend to home-wrecker in less than a week. The thought makes me want to throw up. I sneak a look between my fingers. Dad’s face is carefully neutral, but I can see all the wheels turning in his mind.
“That bandage on his hand.” His voice is neutral, too. “He didn’t actually cut himself, did he?”
“Dad…” I groan and duck my head entirely. “It wasn’t something either of us could control.”
“Fuck, that’s going to mess with all of the dynamics on the ice,” he gripes. “We’d just settled into a decent groove, too.”
“Dad,” I whine in renewed embarrassment. “I just admitted to…” I mirror his earlier gesture. “And your first thought is hockey?”
He chuckles. “No, it was my second thought. But you’re clearly all right and sorting through it all, and I’m trying to give you the space to handle it like an adult rather than as my daughter. I don’t want to reach March when you have another heat and realize you’ve kept anything else big from me.”
I drop my head onto my arm with a groan. “I’m sorry!”
He carefully brushes a hand through my hair like he did when I was a little girl. He hasn’t done it in years at this point. I settle under the soft touch.
“All right,” he says after a long minute. “Well, regardless, they’re both welcome for Christmas. Billie, too, if she’s back.” I turn so he can see my small smile. He gives one back. Then he sighs and checks his phone. “I need to get to the arena for warm-ups.”
The weekend passes in a blur of arrangements and order pickups and texts from Rhett as he travels up to New York for a game where they manage to eke out a win.
The workload is nearly impossible to manage on my own.
The sadness I feel from Paxton only deepens as the days go by, slowly blending with a burning anger.
Feeling him slowly becomes part of my routine, like brushing my hair and cuddling in Rhett’s lap the nights he’s home.
I send another text to Billie, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do, what I’m supposed to say in all of this.
The messages show read Friday morning, and my heart leaps.
But the dots never appear, the thread remaining one-sided.
By Monday, only two days before Christmas, I admit to myself that she’s not going to be coming back.
Not any time soon, at least. A twisting stab of longing shoots up my chest, and I flinch, my hands spasming.
Rhett sets the last bucket of flowers for the final arrangement due before I can close for a couple days leading up to Christmas on the ground by my feet, palming my waist.
“Okay?” he asks, his voice the soft croon he uses when he knows it’s the bond that’s drawing a reaction.
I shrug. “I hate feeling how upset he is and not knowing how to fix any of this. I like making people happy.”
I gesture to the shop around me in example. He nods and then unloads the flowers, setting them in a pile beside me so they’re easier to grab.
As I’m slowly building the arrangement, he says, “I know you wanted to talk to Billie first.” I tense, my knuckles whitening on the stem in my hand. “But I can’t let you keep doing this, baby girl. You need to talk to him.”
I sigh and add another couple flowers. It’s not my prettiest work, but nothing since surfacing from my heat really has been. “All right. I’ll talk to him first.”
Rhett grabs my hand and kisses my knuckles. “You’re still coming tonight?” When I nod, he asks, “In the suite or in your dad’s seats?”
“The suite,” I say with a blush. We’ve already hard launched, so there’s nothing to hide by sitting with all the other Omegas in the suite we keep ready for most home games. “But I’m not wearing your jersey like I’m in a romance novel. I’ve seen enough of them to last a lifetime.”
He laughs. “Yeah, me too.”
Which is exactly why I find myself sitting beside Ollie, the Omega Timber and Kane have bonded, just as the puck drops for the first period.
Her focus is laser sharp, her eyes tracking the guys, muttering under her breath any time either of her Alphas are on the ice.
When Kane scores in the last minute of the period, she jumps to her feet, cheering louder than anyone else in the suite.
A crash of satisfaction breaks across my sternum, and I suck in a breath even as I clap with everyone else.
When the buzzer sounds and the guys head into the tunnel toward the locker room, she turns to face me.
“I’m Ollie,” she says with a smile. “You’re Carys, right? Timber’s talked about you.”
My cheeks flush. “That’s embarrassing.”
She laughs and waves away my concern.
“It’s all nice things, I promise. He adores you and your dad.
” She looks over her shoulder where the other partners are slowly demolishing a spread of nachos.
“I was curious if you wanted to have dinner with Noa and me during the next big road trip after the holidays. We like to get cozy, so we tend to make a sleepover of it, but you don’t have to stay overnight if you don’t want to. ”
My eyes catch on Noa where she talks with Marilyn. I swallow the melancholy from missing Billie.
“Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun,” I say, managing to keep the longing out of my voice. I pull out my phone and hand it to her. “Text me the address and what kind of wine I should bring.”