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Because I absolutely promised that.
“Did I stop you from playing?” A beat. “Even then?”
She exhales, shakes her head, and I know she’s trying to keep her voice calm when she says, “Did I go back too soon? Yeah, I did. I thought the team needed me, and?—”
“The team needed you? Not Rox and I?”
That’s a low blow, I know, after she worked so fucking hard to bring the team together, to create that family she’d always longed for.
The family I love too.
The family I absolutely consider my own as well.
It’s just?—
“That’s not fair,” she whispers. “And you know it.”
I inhale sharply, hold it long enough to feel my lungs protest, but it still doesn’t help me control my emotions, doesn’t refocus me away from this shit storm of a conversation back onto what I should be concentrating on?—
Getting Brit to rest.
Because she needs it, and I love her enough to make sure she gets it.
Fuck.
I can’t think that shit.
She clenches her jaw tightly, eyes sliding from mine, clearly taking my silence personally.
Then she looks back and I see she’s chosen violence.
I brace, but I don’t do it fast enough or strongly enough to withstand the force of her question.
“Why did you really divorce me, Stefan?” she asks quietly.
I wince, stagger back a step.
“Because I know that it’s not about me being shot.”
Another step away from her.
She follows me. “And I know it’s not about hockey or my traveling or even you disagreeing with my coming out of retirement.”
One more step back and I find myself bumping into the wall.
“It’s not about wanting more kids—” she begins.
I clench my teeth together so tightly that a bolt of pain shoots through my jaw.
“So why, really?” she presses. “Why did you sit downstairs and ask for a divorce? Why did you spend months pushing me away? What secret are you keeping from me?”
I don’t have a choice.
Really, I don’t.
Or maybe it’s that I’m willing to do anything, absolutely anything, to avoid having this conversation.
Maybe that’s why I do it.
