“Your dad flies out for a lot of your games?” I ask him.
“As many as humanly possible,” Cam says before Declan can answer. “He thinks he’s responsible for my brother’s success.”
“He has good reason to feel that way,” Declan says. “I probably would have quit if he hadn’t pushed me so hard.”
“You’re a born talent,” Cam argues him. “Dad pushed me too, but I didn’t have the drive you did. You got where you are on your own merit. Dad just won’t see that.” He turns to me. “You may have picked up on the fact that Tyler Wild’s not exactly the warm, fuzzy type. And he’s mellowed from when we were young.”
I smile. “Well, we can’t pick our parents, right? As much as we want to.”
Cam’s ever-present grin grows wider. “Exactly.” He kisses me on the cheek. “Good to see you again, Mia. You guys have a good night.”
“By the way,” Luke calls out to Declan. “Logan and Blake are driving up from Texas and they’ll be here tomorrow or next day.”
“Who are Logan and Blake?” I ask Declan as we walk outside and get into his truck.
“Cousins from Texas,” he says. “I’ve never met them. They’re cowboys, so Luke and them go back.”
Cooper’s already driving back from dropping off Jamie as we pull onto the road.
“Their little goodnight didn’t last long,” I say dryly.
Declan smiles. “Coop’s going to have to up his game if he wants to hold her attention, huh?”
“I don’t know if it’s possible to hold Jamie Beth’s attention,” I say. “She’s not exactly desperate for a man.”
Declan goes quiet as we make the drive to our cabin, but my mind is racing with questions.
One of them slips out of my mouth before I can stop it. “Your dad was never…rough with you, was he?”
Declan flicks his gaze over to me. “What makes you ask that?”
“I don’t know. My dad’s father—my grandpa—he was hard on Dad growing up. Put a lot of pressure on him to be, for lack of a better word, perfect. He didn’t ever feel like he could step out of line. And if he even thought about it, well, he hit him in the face.”
Declan sucks in a breath. “You’re scary on the mark, Mia.”
“Am I?” I freeze. “So your dad…”
“He would use his hands,” Declan says like he’s talking about the weather. The only way I can tell he’s affected is he’s slowed the truck so much that we’re literally crawling toward our cabin. “A slap across the face like you said. Or on my head. Just enough that I got the point. When I got older and bigger, he stopped real quick. Once he knew I could take him out, he wasn’t nearly so brave.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, my words barely audible.
“Cam doesn’t know,” Declan says as we pull up to the cabin. “I don’t plan to ever tell him.”
“How do you know he didn’t hit him, too?” I ask.
“I’m ten years older than Cam. And when I was fifteen, I told my dad that if he ever hit Cam the way he had me, I’d cut him out of my life once I got drafted. It was the only real leverage I thought I had because like Cam said, our father lives for hockey. Anyway, he swore he’d learned from his mistakes with me and that he would never do that with my brother. He even apologized. I made the decision then that I wasn’t going to hold onto it.”
“Have you?”
He turns off the engine and glances at me. “I think the toxicity of our dynamic affected my level of trust in people. If you want to get into psychological shit, maybe it’s partially why I’m thirty-eight and have never had a serious relationship.”
I nod.
“This is a shitty conversation,” Declan says, and I know he doesn’t want to delve any deeper. “Sorry to bring you down.”
“I’m not sorry,” I say honestly as we open our doors and step out of the truck. “First of all, I asked you, and you were courageous enough to share that with me.” I meet him on the other side of the truck and put my hand on his arm. “Thank you for telling me.”
“You’re welcome.” He looks at me with those gray eyes that can turn from stormy to calm multiple times in a conversation.
