I scrub my palm over my jaw, kick at the area rug. “Humiliated.”
“What story did you tell yourself when she didn’t step in?”
I pause, leaning back against the cushions. “That I’m not worth backing. That she was embarrassed to be there with me.”
“Is it possible that there’s more going on? You said she’s a Prince family friend. Perhaps there’s history? Or she’s somehow tied to Tori’s job?”
I tip my head and stare at the ceiling.
“Yeah, there is. She’s the mother of Tori’s ex. And she introduced Tori to some big-deal investor. Then dropped that little line.”
“And it detonated.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“When you heard that comment, what happened in your body?”
Blood roars in my ears, the memory of that night flooding back.
“I got tight. Hot. Mad. I walked away before I did something I’d regret.”
“You felt angry, yet you chose to walk away. Walking away in that moment sounds like restraint.”
My muscles relax a little, and I flex my fingers. “Yeah. I didn’t want to make things worse for Tori.”
“So you self-regulated. That’s good. What happened after the event?”
I scrub a hand over the back of my neck. “We left and took the car back to the hotel.”
“And did you talk about what happened?”
“No. Well — she apologized. About Eleanor’s comment.”
“And how did you respond?” Dr. Sparks stares at me, waiting for my response.
I swallow hard over the lump in my throat. “I didn’t.”
“So you walked away from the confrontation at the event. But when Tori tried to repair things in private, you shut down.”
I nod, hot shame climbing my neck. “Yeah, I didn’t trust myself to talk without making things worse.”
“Sometimes silence protects us from saying the wrongthing. But it can also prevent the right conversation from happening.”
I flex my knuckles, staring at my hands.
Sparks is right.
I should have talked things out with Tori. Said something — anything.
“You failed to communicate. And then what happened?”
I flash back to the rest of the night in the hotel room, the great spiral.
“I tried to keep things under control. But I didn’t. I got drunk in my hotel room. Woke up hungover. Played like shit. And she saw. Saw me miss the goal, get the penalty.” I hang my head, body burning.
Tori still came to the game. Even after I iced her out. That should have meant something.
Hell, it did mean something.
