“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“No, I don’t have a fucking clue. But I know she needs to want it, she needs to want to be with me and believe me when I say I’m not going anywhere. I can’t help her do that because she doesn’t hear me when I tell her.”
I dropped my head in my hands again. My entire body felt hot, my heartbeat was pounding loudly in my head, and I couldn’t seem to silence it.
“I know you don’t think she trusts you, but do you trust yourself?”
“What d’you mean?”
“Your gut, is it telling you that what you’re doing is the right thing, even though you’re hurting?”
What was I feeling underneath the anxiety? It was almost too hard to tell. My gut was currently the meeting place for everyemotion I had, but if I zeroed in hard enough, I could hear one voice above the rest telling me that Molly had to do this alone.
“Yeah, it is. But I didn’t really have time to think it through, I just left. Fuck, what if I’m wrong and she doesn’t come back to me?”
“It won’t come to that. You know how stubborn she is, how fiercely independent she is, she just needs to get there on her own. This is probably what she needed. Molly loves you, she always has. This is just your first big fight, it’s like a rite of passage, and every couple has one. You’ll get through it.”
His confidence was reassuring, even if I didn’t feel an ounce of it myself. I used to think we could get through anything, because for twelve years we had. But maybe the change had been too much for her. And now, here I was, nursing a broken heart with Drew’s whiskey.
“Drew, I’m not as strong as she is.”
“Yes, you are. You’re doing the right thing, you know you are.”
“What would you have done if Emerson had left and gone back to California after everything that had happened with her job?”
“I’d have been on the next flight out.”
That sounded about right. He’d lost her once, there’s no way he’d ever lose her again. And if he’d fucked up, he would do everything in his power to make it right.
That’s what I was trying to do, trying to make it right with what little power I had, even though this wasn’t my fuckup. The only power I had was my love, and I needed Molly to see that.
He placed his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, buddy. I’m here for you. You can stay as long as you want.”
“Thanks.”
I reached for a half-full bottle of water sitting across the counter and swigged it, not wanting to keep drinking whiskeybefore it was even lunch time. That would only lead me down a pathway to trouble. I needed to be alert today.
I looked at Drew who was still staring at me, and swallowed the water in my mouth. “How would you feel about making next season the last one?”
His bottom lip rolled out before he started nodding. “One more season? Then we retire?”
“Yes.” I breathed in deeply. “I want one more season on the ice, to prove to myself I can get back to where I was before my leg broke.”
“Okay. One more season. That gives us the next year to set up the foundation properly, get the ground work done, then it can launch next summer.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
He held his hand out to me, a grin plastered wide across his face. “I’m in.”
I took it, then pulled him forward into a hug, choking through the emotion that had resurfaced. “You and me, man.”
When he moved away, the grin had dropped.
“What? You change your mind already?”
His mouth set in a hard line as he shook his head. “We’re going to have to tell Mary.”
I groaned. The conversation with our manager was not one I was looking forward to having.
