“I changed my mind,” I mumble against his chest as he strokes my hair. “I like your room just fine.”
He cradles my head against him as he presses a kiss to my hair. “It’s yours, if you want it. Everything I have is yours, Elliot.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
ARTHUR
For the last decade,the first thing I think about when I wake up is pain.
Not always sharp. Some mornings it jolts me awake, loud and impossible to ignore. Other days it waits. Until I move. Until I test my weight. Until I remember.
It’s better now. Months of physio and exercises have helped. But even when it’s quiet, it’s never gone. I measure my days by it. How bad will it be? How far can I push before it pushes back?
Then my thoughts shift, as they always do, to work. The players. The schedule. What needs fixing, tightening, sharpening. Who needs pressure and who needs reassurance. How to pull every last ounce out of them and aim it toward the Cup.
That’s what gets me out of bed. Purpose beats pain.
But for the last three mornings, that is not how I’ve woken up.
For the third day in a row, I open my eyes and Elliot is here.
Her long blonde hair is spilled across the pillow in a soft, careless mess, catching the early light through the curtains.Her breathing is slow and even, the quiet rise and fall of her chest the only movement in the room. She’s angled toward me, curved into my side like she belongs there, like her body learned the shape of mine long before we crawled into this hotel bed. My arm is heavy across her waist. Warming her. Anchoring her to me.
And instead of cataloging pain or bracing for the worst or wondering how much Tylenol I can take before I wreck my liver, all I can think about is how good she feels.
I love waking up next to her. I love the weight of her against me. The faint scent of her skin. The way she fits, not just physically, but in that hollow space in my chest I usually keep boarded up. My mind immediately starts racing ahead, looking for ways to keep this going. To stretch it. To make it permanent.
That’s where the hesitation creeps in.
This is not as simple as leaving a toothbrush at her place and pretending that is a plan. If it were, I would do it without a second thought. I would happily commute from Vanier every morning if it meant starting and ending my day like this. With her. But real life is more complicated than that.
For one thing, I don’t know how she feels. Not really.
Maybe this business trip is just that for her. A working vacation. A break from the everyday. Maybe she’s already thinking about getting on the plane tonight after the game, about slipping back into her routine, her responsibilities, her chaotic yet balanced life. Maybe I’m already miles ahead of her, building something in my head that doesn’t exist. That can’t exist right now.
And even if, by some miracle, she feels what I’m feeling, it’s still not simple.
Because having Elliot does not mean just having her.
It means Sam too.
It means stepping into a life that comes with responsibilityand a kid who has already been let down once. I have no interest in being another man who makes promises he cannot keep. The idea of disappointing her is bad enough. But what if he gets hurt in the process?
I am not cut out to be a father figure.
I’ve known this for as long as I can remember. God knows my own father never offered anything resembling a useful example. What he gave instead was absence dressed up as authority, anger without guidance, expectations without safety. I learned early what not to be, but never learned what to be in its place.
I never once pictured children in my future. Not even as a distant possibility. Some people grow up assuming that is where life naturally leads. I grew up assuming it was something best avoided.
Deep down, I think I know why. Even if I know I’m not my father, some part of him lives in me. In the way my temper flares when I am pushed. In the way I shut down instead of reaching out. In the way I retreat into silence and control when things feel too big. I have spent my life sanding down those edges, keeping them hidden, but I can’t pretend they’re gone entirely.
And even if they were, how could I risk it?
How could I look at a kid and ask him to trust me. Ask him to depend on me to be a steady and safe presence that won’t fail him in some irreversible way? How could I live with myself if I became the thing I swore I would never be? One mistake. One bad day. One moment where I choose wrong.
I’m not giving up on being with Elliot, but I’m also not seeing a solution. So I guess the only thing to do is to wait. To wait for the problem to sort itself out or for Elliot to tell me what she wants.
For now, I just lie there, awake beside her, wondering howsomething that feels so right can be so uncertain and fragile too.
