“Even if it’s messy?”
“Especially then.”
“I don’t care if things get messy as long as I know there’s an us,” he declares.
I draw a breath. “Okay. Then tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“What you feel in here,” I lay my hand over his heart. “What are you feeling?”
He looks down at me like I’ve hung the moon even as he’s bracing himself for it to all fall apart. “I’m afraid.”
My brows wing upward. “Is that all? Join the club.”
Then I realize how serious he is when he continues, “My biggest fear is that one day, you’ll decide being with me is no longer worth it to you. Because getting a second chance with you?” He shakes his head. “It means so much more than hockey ever did.”
I twist so I can meet him head on. “You’re serious.”
“As another concussion.”
“Don’t joke about that. It was awful to watch.”
A flicker of surprise passes through his eyes. “You watched that game?”
Uncomfortable, I admit, “Just because you were on the team didn’t mean I stopped being a Kings fan.”
“That’s generous especially since I ruined us to earn that spot.” He tucks me against him before admitting, “I’m afraid no matter how careful I am, I’ll end up hurting you.”
Before I can get a word in, he goes on, raw and unguarded. “I’m afraid the choice I made in the past will always haunt us,” he concludes. “That you’ll see him every time I make a mistake.”
Tears sting my eyes. “Brennan…” I whisper.
“I’ve been going to therapy because I couldn’t carry inside me the man who would deliberately hurt someone for control. For accolades. So, maybe it wasn’t directly to get you back, but the way I hurt you has come up a lot,” he says quietly.
My breath catches.
“I started with one session,” he continues. “But somehow…you came up in the first ten minutes.”
My chest aches at how vulnerable he’s making himself.
“I told him about the photo. About leaving. About choosing hockey. My therapist asked me a question that wrecked me.”
“What question?”
He swallows. “He asked me ‘Whose future did you risk?’ when I explained the reasons I left. Saying yours made me nauseous.”
I feel the last bit of tension buried inside my heart unravel at his words.
Brennan continues, voice rough, “I realized I protected my future, my image, my fear. But not you. Never you.”
Tears spill down my cheeks freely now. He uses his thumb to wipe them away. “I didn’t know how to live with that,” he says. “So, I stopped hiding behind excuses.”
My fingers are going to leave marks on his chest. I reach for his hand and hold it to my face. “You’ve changed.”
“I hope in a good way.”
A watery laugh escapes. “Yes. I think so given our present location.”
