Elliott switched off the stove and dumped the pot of water in the sink.
“She’s still ignoring letters from my lawyer.” He sighed and rubbed his neck. “I don’t know why she’s being so difficult. It’s not like she wants me back.”
King-of-the-side-eye Dad, narrowed his gaze. “And what about Clare. You’d been seeing a lot of her there for a while and these past weeks…” He snapped his fingers. “Not a whisper. Did you fuck it up again?”
Good ole Dad, telling him how it was. Had he fucked it up again? Had he bailed too fast? Should he have stood his ground, planted his feet, and told her he wasn’t going anywhere?
Yes. On all fucking counts, yes.
It had only been a couple weeks, but the pain of not seeing her smile, not hearing her laugh, or make him the butt of her jokes had left a black hole festering in his chest.
“She—”
“That woman has had a rough go of things, son. And I know we should have told you about it at the time, but your mom and me… We didn’t want you getting stuck here, especially for a kid that wasn’t your own.” He rolled the egg on the counter to soften the shell. “We wanted you to go and follow your dreams, to chase the big scary stuff.”
He picked at the shell, tossing it into the trash as he plucked pieces from the egg. “That said, you still found your way back to each other after all this time. Maybe you’re supposed to be together.” He shrugged like he wasn’t commenting on the biggest relationship of Elliott’s entire life. “Maybe we shouldn’t have stood between you.”
There was no point in getting into an argument with him over something they could no longer change. As much as Elliott didn’t agree with his parents’ decision to keep the truth about Clare from him, he understood it. It came from a place of love to protect him from himself.
“Why do you think it was something I did?”
For a long moment all Dad did in response was raise an eyebrow. “You’re standing here moping in my kitchen aren’t you?”
The man had a point. Kind of. But she’d as much as told him if he’d left again he’d better stay gone. And he had. He’d stupidly left her standing at the side of the road. He’d ruined everything. Again.
He smashed his egg onto a slice of toast. “Whatever you did, I’m sure you can fix it, as long as you fight for her. She might not forgive you again if you don’t.”
He wasn’t sure she’d forgiven him for leaving her the first time, never mind abandoning her at the hospital when her kid was hurt, and not checking in with her since. So, yeah, okay, he had shit going on in his life, and yeah, okay, she was stressed out and had shit going on in hers, but at the end of the day, it really was him who had left her, once again.
Jesus Christ.
Maybe if he’d listened to what she had to say instead of knee jerking and pushing her away, he wouldn’t have spent the past while missing her so damn much. It wasn’t so much a miscommunication as it was him just being a dumbass.
But if she hadn’t even forgiven him for the first time, what could he do to convince her that he wasn’t going to leave her again when it was all he seemed capable of doing?
***
“Coach?”
Elliott lifted his head from his hands and met Linc’s concerned eyes and furrowed brow. “What can I do for you, Lincoln?”
“I came here to ask you the same thing, Coach.”
Elliott jerked his head back, and Linc pushed himself away from the doorframe and stepped inside his office. As he closed the door behind him, Elliott stretched out his leg, pushing the chair in front of his desk closer to Linc. “Take a seat.”
Linc dropped onto it with a sigh. “You killed us out there this morning, Coach.” He rubbed his thigh. “Kenzie is gonna have to work overtime to get all these knots out.”
Elliott chuckled. Hehadpushed them hard during practice. Whether he was punishing them, or himself, he wasn’t really sure. “You can take it.”
Linc’s nod was slow and something in his eyes suggested he wasn’t sitting in Coach’s office to talk about how exhausted he was. He had never been one to complain about some hard work.
“What’s going on, Linc?”
The kid scratched the back of his head, but to his credit, he never broke eye contact. “I know you won’t want to hear it, Coach. But we’re worried about you.”
Tension ratcheted up a notch in Elliott’s heavy shoulders despite warmth spreading in his chest at his team captain’s obvious concern. “You’re right, I don’t want to hear it.” Partly because they were well within their right to be concerned about him, and partly because the thought of his team gossiping about him made him queasy.
He sighed, urging his shoulders to leave his ear-space and go back to where they were supposed to be. “But I told you the day I handed you that ‘C’ that I’d always listen to what you had to say. Always. Even when I don’t like it.”
