“Why do you push yourself so hard when your body tells you that it needs rest?” Niall asks. “As an athlete, it seems you would pace yourself so that you don’t completely break down.”
I give that some thought, but I’m pretty sure he already knows the answer, since he knows me better than anyone. “Are you trying to get me to reflect on my life?”
“Is that so bad?”
I laugh dryly and shove my hands deep into my coat pockets. My brutalized wrist protests, a dull ache settling into my bones. “It’s easier that way.”
“It’s easier to run away from your feelings, you mean, rather than face them.” He says it softly, kindly.
“You think that’s what I do?”
He arches an eyebrow. “Am I wrong? If it’s not sports, it’s something else. When you and Devin first met, it was her for a while. You threw yourself into the relationship so that you could avoid everything not going well in your life. Hell, sometimes you even make baking your escape.”
“You taught me to bake,” I protest.
“And I didn’t expect you to get addicted to it and use it as a coping mechanism. Dude, when I came into the kitchen this morning there were five loaves of bread. Five. In my kitchen alone. How many are upstairs in your kitchen?”
“A few,” I grumble at the sidewalk.
Dammit. He’s right. Whenever things get tough, I throw myself into some kind of project. It’s always felt like a productive process, taking frustrations and turning them into something tangible. It got me to the NHL, didn’t it?
It also got me a shattered wrist, an early retirement that would have happened from burn out if not the injury, and a bachelor pad above my best friend’s garage. Oh, and let’s not forget that I’m also perpetually single, the woman of my dreams too good for me times a hundred. If I’d taken my head out of my ass years earlier, I could have worked on myself instead of constantly chasing more money and accolades. I might have been good enough for Devin. We might have gotten our happily ever after.
“Here’s the thing,” I sigh. “My feelings have always been so... big. Bigger than I can hold. Movement is the only thing that shrinks them down to a manageable size.”
“And how has that worked out for you?”
“Poorly,” I mutter.
“Your feelings aren’t bigger than anyone else’s, Oliver. You just weren’t given proper tools for managing them. Yourparents... they didn’t know. Shit, look at the way they handle their emotions. They take them out on others.”
“You think I’m like my parents?” I can’t imagine a worse diagnosis. The thought alone makes my stomach turn, bile rising in my throat.
“No. You’ve picked up some habits from them, though.” He stops and leans against the railing, a thick fog resting between us and Pine Island. The water is invisible beneath it, only the sound of waves lapping against the rocks below tells me it’s there. “Did you ever share these big feelings with Devin?”
I start to ask if he means during our first or second go-around, then realize it doesn’t matter. The answer is the same either way. “Hardly ever.” I grip the railing, the cold metal biting into my palm. “Most of the time, I let them out in awful ways. In New York, I’d make digs at her to make her feel bad. I didn’t know what I was doing then, but I think I wanted us to be on equal footing. I couldn’t stand her being happy when I wasn’t.”
“Is that what happened on the ski trip?”
“Her family...” I pause. Is it really about what they did?
Or is it about how I reacted? Some people would be able to brush off Jemma and Vera’s rude comments and silence. I never could because I worried that they were right.
What if I believed I was truly good enough for Devin? Would anyone else’s opinion still matter? Or would I be able to laugh and tell myself they didn’t know what they were talking about?
“I freaked out,” I say. “I was worried that her mom and sister are right and I’m not good enough for her.”
“Did you tell Devin that?”
“Kind of... I told her that she deserves better than me.”
“And what did she say?”
The memory has a vice grip on my heart. Her mouth had opened, then closed. She’d looked at me like she was trying tosolve an equation that didn’t have an answer. “Not much,” I rasp.
“Maybe she was having trouble expressing her feelings. She’s not the best at it, either.”
I look sharply at him. “Oh, yeah?”
