I didn’t raise my glass.
I couldn’t.
Because all I could think about was the text still waiting on my phone, the girl waiting for me, and the sinking, suffocating certainty that loving her was the cruelest thing I could possibly do.
I don’t remember much about the rest of dinner.
My father talked. I nodded in the right places. When the check came, he paid—one of the few gestures of fatherhood he still made—and we walked out into the cool night air.
“It was good seeing you, son.” He pulled me into another hug, and I let him, my body numb. “Think about what I said, yeah? I’m not trying to be cruel. I’m trying to spare you the pain of learning this lesson the hard way.”
“Yeah.”
He clapped my back one more time, and then he was gone—climbing into a rental car and pulling away without a backward glance. Off to his next adventure and to whatever woman was waiting for him there.
I stood in the parking lot for a long time after his taillights disappeared.
My phone buzzed again.
Ava
Everything okay? You’ve been quiet.
I stared at the message until the screen went dark.
Then I got in my truck and drove.
Not to Ava’s apartment.
Not to the hockey house.
Just drove aimlessly.
Because I didn’t know how to face her. I didn’t know how to look into her eyes and pretend I wasn’t terrified that every kiss, every touch, every whisperedI love youwas just the countdown to the moment I inevitably destroyed her.
The kindest thing you can do for whatever girl has you smiling at your phone like that is let her go before you hurt her the way I hurt your mother.
Maybe my father was right.
Maybe the kindest thing I could do was let her go.
Before it was too late.
FORTY-SIX
I shouldn’t have come here. That was the thought cycling through my head as I stood outside Ava’s apartment door, my hand raised to knock, my whole body vibrating with self-loathing and dread. I’d driven for an hour after leaving my father, trying to outrun the poison he’d planted in my brain. But every road I took led me here.
To her.
Because even when I was trying to outrun my demons, she was still the only place that felt like home.
That’s what makes this so dangerous, the voice in my head whispered.That’s how it starts. He loved your mother too. Look how that ended.
I knocked before I could talk myself out of it.
The door opened, and there she was in sleep shorts and one of my old hockey T-shirts, her hair pulled up in a messy bun and her lips lifted in a gentle smile.
“Hey.” Her smile flickered when she saw my expression. “I was starting to worry. You never texted me back. Is everything okay?”
