The bitterness that had encased my heart cracked and fell away. I’d never understood how Pax could prove so unfeeling. I’d thought him ruthless toward me in my time of need. Now I realized he was still that sensitive boy I’d fallen for, just in a hulking, stunning body.
“I…don’t know what to say.” He blinked at me, hurting from a past neither of us could change.
“What is there to say, really?” I inhaled as I stared down at my hands. My nails were short and rounded, buffed to a shine. I’d never been one to fuss over nail polish, though I enjoyed the manicure treat days Paxton’s mother used to take me on. Looking back, I think I mostly enjoyed the company of a woman—a mother—who was interested in my thoughts and interests. I cleared my throat, unable to force words past the choking pressure in my throat.
“Hana, going through thatalone…”
I offered a small smile as I finally breathed past the pain. “Your dad knew. I told him and Hugo.”
Hugo was one of my older brothers. Devon, my other brother, owned a brewpub in our hometown. Hugo worked with my father at the university as a conditioning coach.
I watched Paxton’s face contort again. Each revelation was a blow. I hated hurting him—always had—but he needed to know the whole of his father’s treachery. I’d thoughtfor surePax would come when I’d called the Naeses’ house after not being able to get through to him. I’d had to use the hospital’s phone because mine was destroyed in the wreck. Mr. Naese had answered, made appropriately sympathetic comments, and promised to pass the information along to Paxton.
Based on Pax’s expression, that had never happened.
How stupid ofme, really. Paxton had never been anything other than thoughtful, and I was ridiculous for failing to realize that before this moment. I’d been in too much pain, then grieving, then angry, to think through Pax’s lack of response. It had just seemed par for the course, the way things were going for me then. But it was all built on lies, omissions, and assumptions.
I was in the sciences. I knew exactly what to do with assumptions: never, ever accept them. I stared down into my coffee and a glimmer of something bright, something beautiful, cut with painful precision right through my chest.
Was it? Could it be…
Hope. Over the ringing in my ears, I heard Paxton speaking. I raised my head and blinked at him, seeing him clearly—really—for the first time since he’d broken up with me. Here he was, his expression shattered, his voice breaking, as he began to cope with the loss we’d experienced—that we should have experienced together.
“Hana. I don’t… I don’t know how to fix this. I…” Bright red color seeped across Paxton’s cheekbones, and he burst out, “My father is an epic dick, and I’m never talking to him again.”
My anger from those days came back, choking me. Yes, Mr. Naese was indeed anepicdick, and I never wanted to speak to him again either. But that wouldn’t hold, because Paxton had been close to his father, and I wouldn’t be the reason he lost that connection. More, I was going to have to sit down across from the man who’d worked to cut me out of his son’s life and ask him why. That would not be an easy conversation, and I wouldn’t like the answers, but I deserved them.
“I broke my new phone the night of the draft,” Paxton said.
At my expression, he rushed on to explain. “I wanted to call you, but everyone was telling me not to. I was heartsick that Houston had passed me over, and I’d left you, and…” He closed his eyes and a tiny, self-deprecating smirk flitted across his lips. “I threw that phone out the window of a cab.”
“You?” I gasped, shocked to my core. Paxton was levelheaded, cool no matter what came at him.
“I sure did. Then I kicked my dad out of the cab and went drinking with Davis.” He grimaced. “That asshole got me wasted. I don’t remember much after the first beer.”
I picked up my coffee and took a long sip, trying to wipe the bitterness off my tongue. “That would explain the pictures of you partying.”
Paxton’s eyes closed. “I wasn’t dating those women. Though I hooked up with some of them in the ensuing months, hoping it would make me feel better about breaking up with you.”
“Did it work?” A morbid curiosity bubbled up, along with the rancid taste of jealousy, choking me.
He opened his eyes, and his gray-green irises seemed to darken. “Not even a little bit.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” And I was, though I wasn’t.
“Not as sorry as I am. For everything that happened then.” He reached across the table and took my hand. He didn’t try to slide his palm against mine, clearly sensing that was too intimate a gesture. But he cradled the back of my hand in his much larger one, making me feel dainty, small…fragile. “Then the pictures came out, and your friends were harassing you. That’s why you called your mother—that night, those pictures.” Pax looked sick. “I saw them recently because team PR had all the guys go through everything that’s online and attached to us.Fuck! I look like such a douche in those.”
He did. And not the man I’d thought I’d known. That had left me questioning everything between us and had led, in part, to the spiral I’d found myself trapped in these past few years. I’d thought I’d made progress toward learning to accept and love who and what I was, but being with Paxton now brought about a dizzying array of emotions I didn’t know how to process.
“Hana, I’m so, so?—”
“No.” I set the coffee down with a distinct thump. “No. It’s over. We can’t change that, and guilt won’t make it different.”
“But—”
“No, Paxton.” I shook my head. I stared at the kitchen doors for a moment. “It won’t change what happened,” I murmured again. “We’re here today. I’m fine.”
And I was. Though I wanted to blurt out my depression, my dislike of my career, and my worries about my future. I wanted to treat Paxton as the confidant he’d once been. Instead, I said, “I get that you didn’t know this, and it’s a shock, but I don’t think I can trust you. With me.”
