I hear the vulnerability behind those words that I’m sure she hoped she was hiding. As my hands grip her juicy ass, I make sure she’s looking at me,seeing me, when I reply.
“Not a chance, sunshine.”
Chapter twenty-six
Lily
“Care to tell me why we just got a text from my brother saying he wouldn’t be at dinner this week because he was on a plane to Vancouver to meet up with his old GM about a job?” My front door slams shut behind Kat as she storms into my house.
“Nice to see you, too,” I say drily as I walk out of my kitchen with a cup of coffee. It’s my second of the day and it’s only ten in the morning, but who’s counting.
“Seriously, Lil, what’s he doing?” Kat’s features are creased with worry, and I beckon her back into the kitchen.
“You need caffeine.”
After we both have mugs of coffee and are curled up on my couch, I give Kat the bare bones version of what Jude and I talked about last night. But as soon as I see the flash of pity in her eyes, I frown. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” she asks innocently, but I see the guilt.
“Like you think I made a mistake encouraging him to go, like you think he’s not going to come back.”
“No, oh my God, Lily, no.” Kat sets her drink down and drops her hands onto my legs. “That’s not it. I’m relieved you pushed him to go and meet with his old team, truly. You’re right that he’d always wonder what if. He needs to decide whether that part of his life is over or not. Any worry you saw in me is simply because I know how much he loves hockey. I’m only hoping he’s smart enough to realize he loves you more.”
I spit my coffee back into my mug to avoid choking on it at her words. “Whoa, there. Slow down. Love? That’s not... We’re not…”
The sick feeling in my stomach is intense as wave after wave of realization hits me, knocking me off my feet.
I love him.
“I’m gonna be sick,” I mumble, standing up and starting to pace. I hate this. I hate the idea Kat unknowingly just planted in my brain, that he might choose hockey over me. We haven’t said anything about love, heck, we only just had the boyfriend-girlfriend talk last night. There’s no way.
“Kat, I love him.”
“I know, sweetie.”
I sink back down and let her pull me in so that my head is on her shoulder. “He called me his girlfriend last night,” I whisper. She hands me my coffee, and I take it, sipping slowly. The warmth feels good, but the liquid still sloshes around in my tied-up-in-knots stomach.
“He might not have said the words, but he loves you, Lily. I’m sure of it.”
“So, what do I do if he chooses the NHL over me?”
Kat doesn’t answer. She can’t. Because we both know the possibility of that happening is a little too real.
After Kat eventually leaves, I do something I’ve never done. I fake a sick day and call in to the clinic. After Sukhi reassures me she’ll contact my patients, I crawl under the covers and close my eyes. I can still smell Jude on the pillow I hug into my chest. When the tears build, I don’t fight them back. I let them fall as I think about how quickly he changed everything I thought I knew about myself.
Jude saw parts of me I never showed anyone. He saw beneath the layer of positivity and he uncovered the wounds I tried to hide. The only person who’s ever bothered to try and see all of me was Kat. Though even she didn’t get it all. I might love being known as the happy one, the fun one, the crazy, wild, outgoing one, but Jude alone showed me that I could let go of all that and just be me. Sometimes quiet, lost in my head, feeling everything deeplyme.
I must fall asleep hugging Jude’s pillow —when did I start thinking of it as his— because the chime of my doorbell startles me awake. Light is streaming in through my open curtains, and when I groggily look at my clock, I see it’s just past noon.
Pulling my hair into a messy bun as I go, I stagger to the front door, trying to blink back the dazed feeling I always get on the odd occasion I fall asleep during the day.
“Nana?” I blurt out when I see her standing on my doorstep holding her purse.
“Hello, my darling.” She pushes past me without waiting for an invitation. Not that I would ever deny her, but her audacity makes me smile, ever so slightly. If anyone wonders where my bold side comes from, they’d only need to meet Margaret Chapman to figure it out.
Nana settles herself on the large wingback chair I keep by the window for reading and fixes me with her features schooled in an impassive expression.
I sit down on the edge of my couch and twist my fingers together. For some reason, I feel like a little girl caught doing something wrong, but for the life of me, I don’t know what I did.
