I slicked my tongue across my bottom lip before biting down on it.
“Hey.” he stretched his long arm across the island and placed his hand over mine to still the fork I’d been scraping over my plate. I hadn’t realized I was still doing it. “You don’t need to be nervous. I’m an open book.”
I released my lip and smiled. “I was wondering about your dad.” I didn’t miss the way his muscles tensed up before he forced his body to relax. “I’m sorry if that subject is too personal. I overheard you and your friend.” I realized how that sounded as soon as the words were out of my mouth. My eyes bugged out and I immediately tried to backpedal. “I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, I swear?—”
“Holly, it’s okay.” His smile put me at ease instantly. “I know you weren’t eavesdropping. I wasn’t exactly keeping that call private.”
“Okay.” I let out a sigh. “It’s just that I overheard you and your friend?—”
“Luke.”
“Right. Luke. He said something about wanting to punch your father in the face...”
Tanner pushed an audible exhale out of his nose as he rose to his full height. I had the impression he was trying to prepare for whatever he was about to say as he finished off the last of his coffee and deposited the empty mug in the sink. “My father,” he said in a tone I hadn’t heard from him yet. Hard and cold in a way that made me shiver.
I waited, cupping my mug with both hands as he moved toward me. He pulled out the stool beside me and sat down, scrubbing a hand over his face on a weary sigh.
“Hey, you don’t have to talk about it if it’s too hard.”
“No, it’s fine. Honestly. Truth is, I don’t have much of a relationship with the man. Never have. He wasn’t the kind of man who had any business having kids, really.” I knew how true a statement like that could be, seeing asneitherof my parents had any business having children. “He bailed on me and my mom when I was a kid. Just walked out of the house one day and never came back.” He shook his head and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I remember how worried she’d been. Frantic, really. For days. She even called the police to file a missing person’s report.”
“Oh, Tanner.” I reached out, my heart suddenly aching for him, and placed my hand on his arm.
“That was how we found out the truth,” he said bitterly, shaking his head on a sardonic laugh.
“We had to find out from the cops who went searching for him that he wasn’t lost or hurt, he was shacked up in some roadside motel with a hooker. My mom was scared to death that he was dead somewhere, when really he just didn’t want to be a dad or a husband anymore.”
My own parents were worthless wastes of oxygen, but at least they’d done us the courtesy of letting us know they weren’t coming back. I couldn’t imagine what his poor mom had suffered through.
“I wrote him off after that,” Tanner continued. “Not that it really mattered. It wasn’t like he was going out of his way to have a relationship with me. After that went down, life sort of moved on. It wasn’t always easy. I mean, my mom had to work her ass off now that we were down to one income. And hockey is expensive as hell. We even had to sell the house we were living in and move into something smaller. But Mom,” he paused, his features softening and a warm smile tugging at his lips, “she was a freaking rockstar. She knew how much hockey meant to mebecause she never missed a game or a practice, and despite the cost, she made it work.”
“Tanner. That’s incredible. She sounds like an amazing woman.”
“She is,” he said, pride lighting his expression. “I couldn’t have asked for a better mother.”
“Is she in D.C. with you?”
He shook his head. “No, she lives down in Florida with my step-father.”
“I’m glad she was able to meet someone better.”
“Yeah.” He chuckled as he scratched the back of his neck. “Funnily enough, he was my high school hockey coach.” I bugged my eyes out in shock, causing him to laugh harder. “Yep. It was really weird for me at first. Apparently he’d been crushing on her for years. He’d see her at all my games, all those booster meetings to raise money for the team. I’d always liked the guy, and I when I saw how he treated my mom, how he made her smile, I decided I wasn’t going to stand in their way. She spent years working her ass off after my dad bailed, then Andrew came in and did everything in his power to make her life easier.”
I propped my chin in my palm, offering a genuine smile. “He sounds pretty terrific.”
“He is. And he’s a great step-dad. When they decided they wanted to retire somewhere warmer, I moved them to Florida and bought my mom her dream house.”
“You’re a great kid,” I said softly, that warmth blooming in my chest all over again.
“I am who I am because of her,” he returned with a modest shrug. “And Andrew came into the picture just in time to teach me what it meant to be a man. A house and a membership to a country club so he could spend the rest of his days playing eighteen holes of golf is the very least I could do. Believe me.”
“And your father—the biological one—he wasn’t around for any of it?”
Tanner shook his head, some of the light fading from his eyes. “Nah. At least not until I made it into the NHL.” My stomach plummeted, and I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what he was about to say. “As soon as that bastard found out I had money, he came crawling out of his hole. Suddenly he was this proud dad. Told anyone who would listen that he was Tanner Fine’s old man.”
“What a fucking dick.”
Tanner’s eyes shot up to mine, a bewildered laugh bubbling past his lips. “I don’t think I’ve heard you cuss like that before.”
