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She steps out of reach, shakes her head. “Maybe,” she says. “But—” A sweep of her arm. “What do I do with that?”
My stomach clenches. “I know I messed up, baby. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Everything that happened with my mom after her diagnosis, how sick she was, how tough the recovery was. I…just went a little crazy. All I could think about was putting you and Rox through that, and I…” I shove a hand through my hair. “I just couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t put me through that.”
I shake my head. “I couldn’t, baby. I knew I could get it taken care of without either of you knowing, just like I know I can make this right. It’s why I didn’t fight you for the houses or the money. I was trying to make it as easy as possible so that when the cancer was gone for good, we could?—”
She’s turned into a statue.
So fucking still that one little push would send her toppling over, shattering into pieces.
Then she speaks, the words so quiet that I can barely make them out. “We could what?”
I—
Fuck.
“Baby—”
“We could what, Stefan?” she asks, stepping further away from me. “After the cancer was gone, we could what?”
I close my eyes.
And apparently that’s answer enough.
“Work,” she murmurs. “The team. Thinking I failed in our marriage. Worried about what kind of woman, what kind of wife I was.” She sighs, fisting her hands at her sides. “Roxie having to go between two houses. And through all of that, you never stopped—” She drops her head back, exhales. “Through all of that, you never stopped to think that you could just fucking talk to me?!”
Thirty-Six
Brit
I’m shaking.
Actually fucking shaking.
But I don’t know if I want to curl up in a ball and start crying again or if I’m so fucking pissed that I want to throttle a man with cancer.
“What was the point of it all?” I whisper.
“The point of what?” he asks.
I just lift my brows.
His big, broad chest expands and then he’s rubbing at his temples, pacing away.
I wait for an answer, but inside I’m dying a little more as each second passes, as the silence grows.
Because…I love this man.
But I don’t know how to come back from it.
From this.
“I was trying to spare you the terror of it,” he finally says, voice so soft I can barely hear it. “I remember what it was like with my mom, how the worry for her stole the air from my lungs and made it nearly impossible for me to focus, to play clearly. How I didn’t want to be on the ice in case she needed me and I wouldn’t be available. Worrying every time I got off that I’d have a call waiting telling me something terrible had happened. I couldn’t risk that for you because…baby”—he comes close, touches my jaw—”you don’t have that many seasons left. I didn’t want to steal that from you.”
My heart pulses—but I can’t tell if it’s from pain, or because part of me understands exactly what it’s like to want to protect the people I love from anything.
Even if it means hurting them?—
