“I begged you to stop hiding our relationship. I told you what it did to me.”
“Which is why I told them!” I shot back.
“You always said you needed more time. If you told me you planned to talk to them, I would have known, but you didn’t say a word.”
Greer’s voice was shaking now with so much emotion that it made my chest ache. The bite mark was starting to flare to life again, burning under my skin as if it had been buried there all this time, dormant and waiting for this moment.
“My career is important to me, but it was never as important as you were. But I never felt like you cared enough to stay with me. To fight for what we had.”
His hands tightened around the leash as Chorizo put up a fight. Roxie gently took the leash and led Chorizo away to do his business while we had this chat. Close enough to offer comfort but giving us space.
“You were more afraid of your family than anything. You didn’t want to leave your home.”
“I loved you,” he said, voice cracking. “But I loved hockey, too. It felt like you wanted me to be something I could never be. Impossible standards that I couldn’t possibly reach.”
Greer looked away and my stomach twisted painfully. When he started talking again his voice was hollow.
“I heard you that day on the phone. I assumed it was with your mother, but she said she wanted to have a dinner that night. She asked if you were finally bringingherhome for family dinner the next day, and you said yes.Her, Rylan.”
Shame flooded through me. He was right. Ididsay yes to my mother. He must have seen the look on my face.
“That’s why I left after work that night. If you’d been home I would have told you everything, but you didn’t come until after midnight. I was asleep.”
I closed my eyes as the memories flashed through me in vivid detail.
“I cried myself to sleep that night. It didn’t go well, just like I knew it wouldn’t.”
“You missed an event that night,” Greer croaked. “One you’d promised to go to. It was important.”
Ice ran through my veins as I looked back up at him. “What?”
“I reminded you about it the day before, and you barely listened to me.” The hurt in his expression was unbearable. How many events had I missed like that? All because I was terrified to lose them when I should have been more afraid of losing him.
“I was just so tired of showing up to things without you. Of pretending like it was fine that my omega didn’t want to be seen in public with me.”
My heart dropped straight into my stomach.
“I’d gotten an award from the AHA for rising star and one for being a team captain.” He swallowed. “There was a big banquet and I had a reserved seat for you. It was the one that you promised me you would go to as my omega.”
There was so much hurt between us. So much pain. Far too many reminders of what we both had wanted and how the other had failed us.
It hurt knowing that I had done this to us, just as much as he did. When he wasn’t around, it was easy to pretend that it was all his fault.
Reality was a fucking bitch.
Chapter
Fourteen
Roxie
The two men in front of me were both haunted. Everything they thought they both knew about the situation was twisted.
I stood off to the side now as their voices grew softer, walking Chorizo but not going too far.
Careful footsteps had me turning around to see Kota walking toward us. He was still dressed to the nines from dinner, his blazer and slacks made him look impossibly taller.
Chorizo greeted him quietly like he knew this moment was loaded.
