Page 18 of Dirty Fighter

Dad would have loved to see it.

Why didn’t he ever bring her here?

“There’s more in the pot,” she says without looking my way.

It smells fantastic. Better than when I make it. “Arsenic already added, or should I add my own?”

A hint of amusement flickers over her lips, but then it’s gone. “Have some and find out.”

I pour a mug and bite the bullet. I’m not a chickenshit, and I hate that I was a dick.

“Look, Rowan. About last night.”

She faces me with a shuttered expression. Coffee in hand, waiting for me to go on.

I get it. She’s done begging me to hear her out.

“I’m really sorry about how I reacted. This situation is screwed up, yeah. But you’re not the one who made it that way. And that’s something I should have been able to see more clearly than I did.”

She could rake me over the coals here, lean into the fight between us. I wouldn’t blame her if she did. But instead, her posture eases. “Yesterday was a lot.”

“Yeah, it was. For both of us. But only one of us went round the bend.”

“Well, I mean⁠—”

“It wasn’t you. I shouldn’t have reacted like that, and I am truly sorry for it. And this isn’t an excuse. It’s just that I think you deserve an explanation for why I freaked out.”

She nods and I go on.

“When I was walking up the path yesterday, the only thing I expected to find in this cabin was memories of the family I shared it with. Before I walked through that door, this place was mine and theirs. Every log, every beam, every quirky knickknack. Every story, even the ones I only knew through the retelling.”

“But then, I was here.” She bites her lip, looking down into her mug. “Giving you the worst news you could possibly get after losing your dad.”

“Telling me something I couldn’t believe.” And would probably be cleared up in the next hour. “And then the call with your mom. I understand it wasn’t what it sounded like now, but at the time, the idea that you could be an active part in this, a driving force… It wrecked me. Because my dad loved you.”

I know he did. He stopped talking about Marsha within the first year of my moving out. He wouldn’t badmouth his wife. Ever. But what he didn’t say spoke more loudly than what he did.

Rowan, though?

“He talked about you all the time. He beamed when he shared news about how you did in school. The jobs and volunteer work over the summers. The cake you made for his birthday.”

The guy she was dating.

The job she got.

The apartment that was too far away for him but probably not far enough for her.

Bittersweet emotion flashes across her face, a flickering ghost of a smile followed by the wobble of her chin and watery-eyed blinks. “I loved him too.”

“I know. And that’s why I lost it. I was sure you did, except then, all I could think was that this girl who meant everything to him was here to break down everything he loved to sell for scrap. And it just broke my heart to think how much it would have broken his. I flipped out. I didn’t give you the chance to explain. It wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry. That’s not the guy I am.”

One brow arches. “A hothead with a reputation for protecting what you care about? Yeah. Doesn’t fit with anything I might have heard about you over the years.”

I cough out a laugh.

She’s talking about my team.

And hell, while I don’t love her thinking of me as a guy who gets aggressive on the ice… I’m kind of stuck on the fact that she knows anything about me at all.