“Ohnowyou wanted to see me? Have you lost your goddamn mind?”
“It’s good to see you haven’t changed any, Lex,” he said. “Can I come in? We have a lot to talk about.”
Lexie was so stunned she could do nothing but step aside as he crossed the threshold into her condo, uninvited and unwanted.
And still, she couldn’t deny the way her body felt drawn to him, like it had before. He looked as at home in this new place as he did in the old one, taking up more space than anyone had the right to.
Wasn’t she just thinking about that road trip to West Virginia, and Jack and Alice and the thirty years they’d spent apart, and how it made the year she and Mitch spent apart seem measly in comparison?
When confronted with him like this, dressed in his usual flannel and those jeans that hugged his thighs and perfect ass, Lexie nearly lost her mind and threw herself at him.
But as he stalked further into the condo, turned in a circle, and said, “Nice place,” she violently shook her head, reminding herself that they were not the same people they were a year ago.
As desperate as she was to put space between them, while the only thing that would truly suffice would be miles, she settled for the ten by eight-foot granite slab that served as her kitchen island.
The quiet between them stretched thin and unending as Mitch twisted his hands in front of him, a nervous gesture Lexie had never seen on him before.
“I’m sorry about hockey,” she blurted, unable to handle the silence.
Mitch shrugged. “Thanks. Hockey was everything to me. You know…until it wasn’t.”
“What changed?” She asked despite already knowing the answer.
“You. You changed everything for me, Lex.”
You changed everything for me, too,she thought.
But God, how did they come back from the last year? From everything weighing the air between them? She was still somadat him, her heart still badly bruised in her chest. With him standing in front of her, once again in her space, trying to work his way back into her life, she desperately wanted to say fuck it and run into his arms.
He would let her, too; his showing up here today proved that.
But if she didn’t stand up for herself now? After how he left? After how he refused to see her when she tried to visit him in Ann Arbor?
She’d never forgive herself–or him–if she gave in so easily.
“What do you want, Mitch?” She asked, infusing her voice with as much venom as she could muster, even though her insides were tangled in knots that would take days to unravel.
“I told you, I wanted to see you. And we have to talk.”
“The time for talking was, oh, I don’t know…” she said, tipping her wrist up to check her imaginary watch, “a year ago. Or maybe five months ago when I came to see you and you sent me away like a fucking coward.”
“Lex,” he said, exasperated.
“Stop calling me that! You don’t get to call me that anymore. You lost that privilege the day you left.”
“Lexie, please, just listen to me.”
“No, you are going to listen to me.” She took a deep breath and finally cracked the lid on that little box she’d kept buried deep in her heart since he left. All of the hurt, the anger, and theembarrassment, spilled out with her words. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through since you left? What I’ve had to deal with? You cut off contact with everyone, Mitch. Your teammates, that’s one thing. It’s a job and you have to adapt. I get it. Trying to fit into a new room has to be hard. What you did was shitty, but I can understand. But I’m not your fucking teammate, and I wasneverpart of the job. The way you just walked away without a backward glance and left me to pick up the pieces was so cowardly it makes me sick. You broke my heart. I spent months after you left crying. You made me feel so stupid for loving you that I suffered in silence so I wouldn’t have to admit it to anyone and feel ashamed. I’ve just barely managed to put myself back together, and now you walk in here acting like everything is fine? It doesn’t work that way.”
“How could I break your heart when you never even gave it to me?” He asked, eyes on the floor.
The fact that he had the gall to ask her that, aftereverythingshe had given him…
“You’re so fucking dense if you honestly believe you didn’t have it the whole time,” she said. “Remember how I told you that you were either going to be the best or worst thing that ever happened to me?”
Mitch, who still couldn’t be bothered to meet her eyes, mumbled, “Yes.”
“I figured out which one it was the moment you left without saying goodbye to me. Now get the fuck out.”
