White nods. “I know. We also confirmed that. Trust me. We looked intoeverything. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have ashitstorm to clean up, and I just lost my head coach for the next four weeks.”
I walk out of the meeting in a daze. Beckett retired. Even though they told him it wouldn’t save my job. It’s enough to keep me from focusing on anything as I walk home: the sidewalk twisting by in a blur of sunshine and dogs on leashes. I know I should turn do-not-disturb off my phone and start interacting with the real world again, but I’m not ready yet.
I’ve talked to Charlotte, but she’s been annoyingly optimistic about the whole thing, and positive thinking was not the point of my time in the cabin. The separation from my daily life was to come to terms with the fact that the life I thought I was going to live was gone. I didn’t cry. I didn’t mope. I walked. And I planned. And I did puzzles.
And maybe Charlotte was right. It didn’t end up as bad as I thought.
My dad, well, I’ve avoided him like the plague. Though there were a few nights in the cabin when I would spiral and listen to the voicemail he left, in which he calmly walked me through all the reasons I’d ruined my entire life with one mistake. He doesn’t know what the mistake was, but it doesn’t matter.
Gray concrete shifts to the tiled floor of my apartment building, as I mentally shove my dad out of my mind.
I did make a mistake—and a really fucking big one—but no one is perfect all the time. Not even me. No matter how hard I try.
“Hey,” a deep voice says from down the hall, pulling me from the recesses of my mind.
“Kane.” My eyes meet his. I want to run and jump into his arms. To beg him to forgive me. I was never supposed to sacrifice him.
The sight of him standing in his doorway, a black T-shirt pulling across his chest, is like a balm on my burning soul. My gaze tracks his Adam’s apple as he swallows hard.
“Did it… Are you still… What happened?” he asks. His hands twitch by his side, curling into fists.
And I wonder whether it’s a reflection of the same tension running through me. The one that desperately wants me to run to him. The same one that’s holding me back.
Not sure how to bypass the cracked earth that’s spread wide between us.
“Fin?” he asks.
“I’m on unpaid suspension for four weeks,” I say, the tears I’ve been holding at bay all day finding their way to my eyes.
He closes his eyes, letting out a sigh. “Oh, thank God. They said it wouldn’t likely matter.”
Suddenly, I’m standing right in front of him, between our two apartments. I glare up at him, the tightness in my scowl pulling me back into my body. “You shouldn’t have done that! I was the one who crossed a line. I was the one who needed to pay for my mistake.”
I bang his chest with my fist, and it lets out just enough of the swirling desolation in my chest that I do it again. And again. And again.
My fists crash into him as the tears pour from my eyes.
When I start to slow, he wraps his arms around my back, pulling me into him.
I lean my forehead against his chest. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I love you.”
That’s not…
I mean…
Could it be…
Do I…?
Yes.
As much as I don’t want to, it’s as inevitable as the puck dropping at the beginning of a game.
I jerk my gaze to his. “You… what? You can’t.”
He engulfs my hands with his, pulling me flush against him. His lips are millimeters from mine, his breath a warm caress as he says, “In fact, I can.” He presses a light kiss to the corner of my mouth. “Which is for the best, since I do.”
