“You need to tell me. Now. Starting with why Dad was so insistent I break up with Hana.”
“I can’t… I have to talk to your father.”
“I’m going to get in touch with her. I should have done so sooner.”
“Oh, Paxton, I’m not sure?—”
“It’s not your choice, Mom. It’s mine. Clearly I don’t have all the information, but I’m sick with missing her.”
“You…you are?”
“Don’t act like that’s a surprise. You said a minute ago that—look, you saw us together,” I’d said, my tone soft. “What we had…” I’d heaved out a breath. “What we had was fucking special.”
I’d expected Mom to reprimand me for my vulgarity. Instead, she’d surprised me. “What you two shared was something most of the rest of us can’t fathom.”
“Then why did Dad pressure me?” I’d asked again.
“Because you were young,” she’d said, tears in her voice. “Sean, it’s Paxton, and he’s asking…”
The conversation had turned garbled, and then my father’s voice had flooded the line.
“Son.”
“Dad.” I’d been stiff, standoffish with him since the draft. We both knew why, and it must have weighed on him as much as it did me.
“I just… You were so young, Paxton,” he’d said. He’d cleared his throat and continued, his voice gruff. “Just over twenty-one, barely legal to have a drink. Heading into a career that was going to offer you every possible opportunity.”
I’d gnashed my teeth at that ridiculous comment they kept making. As if I hadn’t known my mind well enough then to know I wanted to play in the NHL. “I would have thought you’d want me to keep my focus, and I didn’t do that most of my first season, which nearly cost me my career.” My tone had been accusatory.
I still couldn’t believe my father had wanted me to break up with Hana, date others, instead of settling down.
“You had your whole life to settle down, and I didn’t think the girl down the street could be—should be—your whole life,” Dad had countered, his tone defensive.
Mom had been sobbing in the background, which made the hairs on my arms and at the back of my neck stand on end.
“That’s not all of it,” I’d said. “You’re still keeping something from me. Something important.”
Dad had sighed. “Paxton, you have the opportunity to meet someone glamorous. Someone who will support your career, not expect you to support hers. Ending it with Hana was for the best. You know that.”
“No, I don’t know that,” I’d said.
“We’re worried about you, honey,” Mom had said. Her voice had been closer. No doubt she’d had her hand on my father’s shoulder. They’d always been a united front. Always.
And in this, they’d kept something important from me.
“I’m unhappy that you’re upset, but this is why we didn’t want to tell you. We didn’t see a way forward where we kept a relationship with you if we told you what had happened,”my father had said.
“You’re right. You don’t. We don’t have a relationshipbecause you lied to me,” I’d seethed. “Don’t call me. Don’t contact me again.”
Chapter10
Hana
Once Paxton stopped speaking, stopped relaying that horrible conversation, the silence stretched out between us, pulling tension tauter and tauter.
My heart thumped against my chest. “I don’t know what to say to that,” I told him.
“Once I knew you’d moved, I planned to hire a private investigator, but I didn’t like invading your privacy. Thus, I kept putting it off, even as the need to see you, to talk to you, grew. It got huge, Hana. I woke up the other morning knowing I couldn’t wait any longer. And then Cruz told me he’d found you. So I came out, and well, you know what’s happened since.”
