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She crossed her arms and glared at him. “I already have coffee.”
“Can I just come in?”
Nope. She was not going to go with it this time. Old Astrid wasn’t home right now.
“Please, Astrid,” he said, his voice breaking. “I need to apologize. I should have years ago. I can do it out here if you want, but I was hoping we could talk.”
She shouldn’t. She knew she should shut the door in his face and flip the deadbolt to really send the message home.
“BBQ chicken pizza.”
Fuck. Me.
Despite everything, neither of them used their code word for frivolous shit. The last time Tig had used it, his deadbeat never-around dad had made an appearance at the Rage’s team hotel with a film crew to record the reunion of the rookie who was going to change the game and his long-lost father. It had been a very, very bad night.
Letting out a tired sigh, she stepped back and opened the door wider. “Come on. I have a blueberry muffin we can split.”
She shut the door behind him, and they walked across to her kitchenette. He sat down on one of the bar stools on the living room side of the eat-in island while she stayed on the kitchen side of it.
“Nice place,” he said as he looked around after setting their coffees down on the counter. “It’s very you.”
It was. It was the smallest apartment in the building because Mrs. Duffy had the biggest, but there was so much natural light coming in through the windows that it didn’t feel cramped. There were plants on nearly every window ledge, colorful art prints on the walls, and mementos from her world travels were everywhere. And having Tig here made her realize just how much her apartments hadn’t been hers before. There was always large, overstuffed furniture that fit his body better than the mid-century modern stuff she liked. Having him here was like pulling out an old coat and realizing that it still fit physically but just wasn’t your thing anymore.
“Thank you.” She handed him a small plate with his half of the muffin on it. “I really like it here.”
He polished off his half in two bites while she tried to process the weirdness of having him in her space.
“I really fucked everything up between us.” He held up a hand as if she was going to interrupt him. “Don’t try to save my feelings by telling me I didn’t.”
She snorted. “I wasn’t going to.”
That made him pause for a second, but he recovered. “We’d been together for so long that when I left for the Ice Knights, I couldn’t imagine there was a time when we wouldn’t be together. I thought we were just on another break, not a breakup.”
“I thought the same thing.” She took a sip of the coffee he brought her. It was perfect. One cream, half a sugar, two shots of hazelnut. Unlike the big things, he always got the small things right. “I believed that wholeheartedly. Until you dumped me over FaceTime on our wedding day.”
“That call was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, and I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.” His shoulders slumped, and his gaze dropped to the crumbs on his plate. “It was a shitty way to treat someone who’d always been there for me.”
The bite of muffin turned to ash in her mouth as she stared at Tig—the man she’d loved so much that she’d picked her college based on where he’d gone. She’d stayed with the Rage way past when working with her dad seemed fulfilling. She’d cut off hockey with the brutal efficiency of an assassin when he’d dumped her because she couldn’t enjoy the sport she fucking loved without thinking of him. But all he saw when he looked at her was someone who’d always been there for him?
What. The. Fuck.
Was he kidding with that? Is that all she’d been to him, a supporter? Like some kind of elevated puck bunny?
“I’d say it was an awful thing to do to anyone, let alone someone you loved, but yeah, it’s also bad to do to someone who’d always been there for you,” she said, her tone drenched in angry snark.
“Exactly,” he said, either pushing past her dig or not even realizing she’d made it. He covered her hand with his as he looked at her like a man who’d had an epiphany. “Everything went to shit as soon as I got on that plane without you.”
Astrid’s stomach dropped down to her knees, and she slid her hand free. “Tig, don’t—”
“Yeah,” he continued, not reaching out for her again but not deterred in the least. “It took me a while to figure it out, too, but as soon as you came back into my life, it all changed.” He smiled at her, that confident, easy smile that was like a warm, thick blanket on the first cold day in the fall. “I started feeling the way I used to. Whatever that block was holding me back when I was in net, it disappeared because of you.”
“It’s called doing repeated drills in a safe, no-pressure environment until your brain and body remembers what it can do,” Astrid said. “You put in the work.”
“No.” Tig shook his head. “It’s because you came back into my life.”
Astrid didn’t have the words to respond. How could she? This was beyond uncharted territory. Five years ago, she would have agreed with Tig completely because when she looked at the two of them, they were a team, a unit, a couple that would be together no matter what. It’s what she’d believed since that first dance.
Tig really had been her everything, and she could be mad at him for that—stay mad at him for that—or she could admit that by making him her everything she didn’t have to think about her anything. She didn’t have to have her own dreams because for almost twenty years, she’d had his.
