Chapter 40

All I want to do is lie in bed and cry, but I don’t have time to wallow. My final independent project is due—including a presentation outlining my role in the Terror organization and execution of the gala—as well as two group projects. It doesn’t matter that I’m sleeping like shit and food tastes like cardboard. I have work that needs to be done, so my broken heart is forced to sit on the sideline until I have time to fall apart. School and the job with the Terror are all that matter now.

I’ve spent the past couple of days at the library. Mostly so I can avoid dealing with my life. Hollis has checked in twice to see how I’m doing. I haven’t responded. The truth is, I’m a mess. I’ve broken up with guys before and been broken up with, but none of them has hurt the way this does. I thought Hollis was my person. I thought we were starting on the road to forever, and now there’s this blank, hollow space in my chest where that dream used to be.

A coffee appears on the table as Jameson slides into the seat next to me. “Hey, Aurora. I figure you could use—” His smile drops, and his expression shifts to concern. “Shit. Are you okay?” He rummages around in the front pocket of his backpack and withdraws a pack of tissues. I touch my cheek and realize I’m crying.

“Oh my God. What the hell is wrong with me?” I accept the tissue and dab at my cheeks and eyes. Thank God for clear, waterproof mascara.

“We’re all under a lot of stress these days,” he offers.

Last week I learned Jameson had been offered grad school admission in BC and the program in Toronto. Ultimately, he accepted the offer out west.

“Yeah. I still don’t make a habit of crying in the library.” I shake off the emotions and try to compartmentalize.

“Is it school related? Can I help with anything?”

“It’s personal. Family and stuff.”

“I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really. It just makes me feel shitty.”

“That’s fair.” He reclines in his chair. “The gala looked like it was a huge success. I mean, based on the stuff I saw on social media. You got to meet Scarlet Reed. Like, wow.” He makes a mind-blown gesture. “Is she nice in real life?”

“Yeah, she is.” And she wants to steal the man I’m in love with. Maybe she will now that he’s decided I’m not ready for a relationship. “I wanted it to be the right time.” I blink away the look on Hollis’s face, like he’d realized exactly how not ready I was. I thought I could handle it. I wanted to be able to, but based on how terrible I feel, maybe he’s right after all. I can’t have it all. No one can.

I drag myself out of my head. “How about you? How was your event?”

“Good. Great. We raised like fifty thousand, which is kind of peanuts compared to the gala. I think I read you raised close to a million for all these charities?”

“We had some big donations from some heavy hitters. Fifty thousand is amazing. You should feel great about that.”

Thankfully, two more members of our group show up, and we get down to work. The ache in my chest is unbearable, but at least I have something to focus on besides my battered heart.

On the way home, my mom calls. I’ve put off a conversation, too raw to deal with anything but my own feelings.

“My sweet girl, tell me what’s going on,” are her first words.

“Have you talked to Dad?”

“He called yesterday. I wanted to give you time, but I also want you to know I’m here for you, however you need me to be.”

I tip my chin up to the sky. It’s a beautiful spring day, but I can’t appreciate it. Not with how heavy my heart feels. “He’s so disappointed in me and that’s the last thing I ever wanted.”

“Oh sweetheart, he’s not disappointed in you, he’s disappointed in himself.” Mom sighs. “Tell me the real reason you hid this from him for so long.”

“He had to sacrifice everything for me,” I whisper.

She’s silent a moment, and when she speaks her voice is thick with emotion. “My poor baby, I’m so sorry I did this to your soft heart.”

“What are you talking about?” I push through the doors of my building and head for the elevator.

“I wanted to be the best mom for you, Aurora. Truly I did.”

“I know⁠—”

“Let me finish, sweetheart.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I was not the best version of myself when you were young. And I wanted to be. I tried to be. But your dad, he was…so lost without you. And you, God, you were so lost without him. Every time I would pick you up and bring you home…you would just be so sad until the next time you saw him. He steadied you and you steadied him. He made you shine in a way I couldn’t.”

I want to argue, to disagree, but I remember how hard it was to leave him when I was little. How excited I would be for every visit and how crushed I was when they were over. The doors slide open, and I step inside, grateful it’s empty because I’m on the verge of tears. “I know you tried, though.” I push the button for my floor.

“Giving up custody of you was the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life, Aurora. But I couldn’t bear to see you in pain every time you had to come home with me or leave another set of friends. I felt like I was breaking your heart all the time. Especially after your summers away. I kept taking you away from where you were happiest. It was the most painful thing I have ever done, but it was the right thing, for both of you. Roman could give you all the things I couldn’t. He could love you exactly how you needed to be loved. The sacrifice for him was letting me try for as long as he did. And I am so, so sorry that I couldn’t be the mom you needed then, but I hope that I can be the one you need now. I love you, my sweet girl. You are my most precious gift.”

“I love you. I don’t think I realized how much I needed to hear this.”

“You are such an old soul, sometimes I forget that you need the same reassurances as the rest of us.”

My dad is waiting outside my apartment when I step off the elevator. “Hi Dad,” my voice cracks with emotion.

“Talk to him. Be honest. I love you. I’m here when you need me.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“With all of my heart and more.”

I end the call.

“Zara?” Dad asks.

I nod, bottom lip already trembling.

He opens his arms.

I step into them. “I’m sorry I lied to you,” I mumble into his chest.

“I’m sorry I made it impossible for you to be honest with me.”

We stand there in the hallway for long minutes, me crying and him holding me. When I finally get control of my emotions I pull back.

“I can’t leave tomorrow morning without making sure you’re okay and having a conversation to make sure we’re okay,” he says. They have a two-game away series coming up.

“I might cry again,” I warn. But I don’t want him to get on a plane with this kind of tension between us either.

“I can handle tears better than silence,” he replies. He looks tired and worried. I did this to him. Upended his world. A bucket of shame isn’t big enough, maybe a lake would be better?

He pushes the elevator button and turns to face me. “How are you?”

“I’ve been better.” Might as well be honest since lying is what got us here in the first place.

“I could have handled things with more grace the other night,” he says as we take the elevator back to street level.

“You could have,” I agree. “But I’m also aware it was a shock.”

His expression is sad. “I just want to understand why you felt you had to lie.” The elevator doors open, and I follow him back into the warm spring afternoon.

“So many reasons.” I look up to the sky. “I was breaking the only rule you ever really enforced. And not with just any player, but with your best friend.”

His jaw tics, and darkness clouds his expression. “He should have come to me. It would have been the right thing to do.”

“But he didn’t. Because I asked him to wait.” And it took us months to even get on the same page. When we finally did, he put my wishes ahead of his own, because I told him that’s what I wanted. But all it took was my dad’s anger for Hollis to change his mind about me, about us.

He holds the diner door open for me. Our preferred table in the back corner is open, so we grab menus and slide into the booth.

“Just the two of you today?” Rainbow asks as she drops off coffee and waters.

I force a smile. “Just the two of us.” We’re back to how it used to be.

We order the usual, and she hustles off.

“But why did you ask him to wait?” Dad asks.

I hear the hurt. The still-present anger.

“Because I was afraid. I still am,” I admit.

“Of what? Why hide this from me for all these months?”

The bucket tips and the truth spills out. “What if you left me? What if I was too much? What if you hated me? What if all the sacrifices weren’t worth it and you should have left me with Mom?” I’m terrified that this could be the thing to break us. That everything I’ve tried to do to make his life easier will be erased with this one betrayal. “What if you resent me for taking your best friend away from you along with everything else?”

His expression shifts, anger fading into something like horror and then sadness. “Sweetheart, I could never resent you, or hate you. You are my entire world and you have never been too much to handle.” His eyes slide closed for a moment and when they open, I see his pain. He reaches across the table, and I set my hand in his. “Loving you, getting to be your dad, to have this relationship with you, to be in your life like I am? That was not a sacrifice for me, it was a sacrifice for Zara. It was the hardest thing she has ever done, and I am so fucking proud of her for it, because I know how deeply she loves you. And she would do anything for you, even if it meant having to love you from a distance.”

“I never wanted to be a burden for you,” I admit softly. “I thought if I could be the perfect daughter⁠—”

“I don’t expect you to be perfect, honey. That’s an impossible ask of anyone. You are a gift. You will always be my first priority. Our bond is special. We’re a team, you and me.”

“I know.” I line my silverware up on my napkin, relief over hearing this from him giving me the courage to say the things I need to. “But then I started working with Hemi. And I stopped being a student, and I started being a professional. I stopped seeing Hollis as your best friend, and he stopped seeing me as his best friend’s daughter.”

“Then that’s when he should have come to me.”

I swallow down the fears. “I was trying to protect you, Dad. And myself. I thought I could manage it all, have it all.” I roll my lip between my teeth. “And when I tried to bring it up, you weren’t particularly receptive.”

Dad arches a brow. “If Hollis was doing to you what Tristan does to Rix, I would have a hard time not putting him six feet under.”

For half a second, I consider defending Tristan, but decide against it. “Okay. Fair. But can you at least see why your reaction scared me from saying something?”

“But it was months of hiding.”

“All you have is me—and hockey and your teammates and Hollis, Dad. You’re so focused on me that you don’t leave room for anyone else. I was so focused on proving myself, to the team, to you, to me. And I was terrified of your reaction, and what the fallout would be.”

His expression grows pained. “There is nothing you could do that would make me stop loving you.”

More tears leak out of my eyes, and my dad moves from his side of the booth to mine and wraps his arms around me.

“I hate that I disappointed you,” I murmur.

“You haven’t, honey.” He kisses the top of my head. “I wish I’d left room for you to be honest. And it doesn’t help that he’s only six years younger than me.”

I sniffle and wipe my nose with a napkin. “You were a teenager when you had me. Even if I dated someone in their late twenties, you would still be weirdly close in age. And a twelve-year gap is not unheard of. At all,” I point out. “Hollis’s sister is married to a guy who’s fifteen years older than she is.”

“You can understand my struggle here.”

“Honestly, Dad? It really shouldn’t be a surprise that I ended up falling for one of the guys on the team. Just be thankful it wasn’t Flip.”

His eyes and nostrils flare. It would be funny if I wasn’t so emotional. “Dallas is still in his twenties!” he says. “He’s a nice guy.”

“Uh, he kind of has a thing for Hemi.” That’s the vibe I get from him, anyway. Why else would he put up with all the weird shit she makes him do?

“You’re not the first person to say that,” he muses. “And half the team is still in their twenties.”

“But they’re still hockey players and they’re not Hollis. Not that it actually matters since we’re not seeing each other anymore, secretly or otherwise.” The ache in my chest grows nearly unbearable with that admission. My eyes prick with fresh tears.

He frowns. “What? When did that happen?”

“You haven’t spoken to him?”

“I’m too angry to talk to him. Is this because of how I reacted?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

He’s back to looking angry. “Why aren’t you seeing each other anymore?”

I fight tears but lose the battle. I pull another napkin from the dispenser and dab at my eyes. “It’s not the right time for us.”

“Is that what he said?”

“Does it matter?”

“If he’s not going to fight for you, he doesn’t deserve you,” Dad says sharply.

I lean my head on his chest. “I know you’re still angry, but my heart hurts, and I just need you to be my dad and love me, and not give me shit for falling in love with Hollis, okay?”

He squeezes my shoulder and kisses the top of my head. “Okay. I’m sorry you’re hurting, sweetheart. Is there anything I can do to make this better?”

“Just be my dad.”

“Always.” He sighs. “I could kick his ass, if you want.”

“Thanks, but I’m good.”

“I figured you’d say that but, I thought I’d offer anyway,” he says softly. “Is there anything else you’ve been hiding from me that I should know about?”

“My favorite color is yellow, not pink.”

He pulls back and frowns. “Since when?”

“Since always.”

His eyes dart to my bag, and the hair tie around my wrist. His mouth opens and closes. He sighs. “Can we make a new rule?”

“Depends on the rule.”

“No more trying to be perfect. I love you exactly as you are.”

“Even if pink isn’t my favorite color.”

“Even then.” He kisses the top of my head. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”