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The way she’s looking at me, it’s like she can’t even imagine this other version of me. Like she doesn’t believe it. And hell, I’ve made damn sure I never gave her a reason to suspect that other part of me existed. But tonight, I need her to know. I need her to want me anyway.
“My head wasn’t in a good place.” I run my hand over her hair, wondering if this time I’ll be able to tell her. “I got kind of messed up over this girl.”
Her brows lift, but unlike the past times women have come up, there’s no teasing lilt to her voice when she echoes, “A girl?”
And I get her surprise. For as long as Cammy has known me, girls have been a passing thing. Casual company. Everyone knows I don’t really date in any meaningful way. I’m not looking for forever, I don’t want the things most people want.
Marriage.
Kids.
Fuck.
But there was a time it was different.
“We dated in high school and through Juniors.” I can feel the vise tightening on my lungs just thinking about her. Beth. “I thought we’d get married.” I’d tried.I’d begged.
Cammy is completely still against me. Her eyes wide with shock when she asks, “What happened?”
“I screwed it up.” I swallow, hating how insufficient that explanation is. How it doesn’t even begin to convey the magnitude of what happened. I want to tell her, but Christ, I can’t do it. “Made mistakes. You know me, rash, impulsive. Don’t always think before I act. Surprisingly, I wasn’t any better at twenty,” I say, trying to make light. But Cammy doesn’t smile.
“Rux, I had no idea. How do I not know about any of this?”
I clear my throat, take a breath. “Yeah, well, things ended badly. I have… regrets.” I remember that damn ring leaving my hand, the light catching on the stone as it catapulted toward the river. That sick feeling twisting my gut, cutting off the air in my lungs. The pain. “Don’t really like to talk about it.”
I try to say more. Explain. But I can’t force the words past the knot strangling my throat. I can’t tell her what my actions cost me. How what happened changed me.
Cammy waits, but when I don’t say more, that hand over my heart presses closer. “I’m sorry.”
Not as much as me. “I was pretty messed up after. It didn’t affect my play right away. But eventually, no one could even see my game past all the bullshit outside of it. I didn’t recognize what I was doing, how bad things had gotten. There was just this angry red haze around me all the time, this noise in my head I couldn’t tune out.”
“I can’t even imagine you like that. It breaks my heart to hear about you in so much pain.”
I don’t deserve her sympathy, but I can’t manage to set her straight either. And I can’t let Beth spend any more time in my brain than she already has or I’ll start thinking about—
Don’t go there.
I force another breath, clear my throat, and pull Cammy’s hand up for a kiss. “But something happened when Greg and I paired up. Something changed. He recognized the potential before I did, just like he recognized that as good as we were on the ice, what I was doing off the ice could blow it all. I still remember getting into it with one of the guys in the locker room after a practice because I didn’t like the way he’d been looking at me or some stupid shit. Greg caught me before I swung and nearly laid me out right there. He got up in my face and didn’t get out of it until I could see that this wasn’t just aboutmy shotin the NHL, that it wasn’t just his. That it was our whole team’s chance and what we did mattered to a hell of a lot more people than just me or him. That there were mothers and sisters and friends and coaches and mentors behind every one of these guys, all of them making sacrifices… all of them owed the best we could do. By the time he was done, I felt about as low as I could for the way I’d been fucking off. For not getting my head straight and not being a part of the team that needed me.”
The corner of her mouth tips up. “So you turned it around.”
“I turned it around. Got over myself. Grew a pair. Whatever.” My head drops back, and I let out a short breath before meeting her eyes again. “You know the expression ‘fake it till you make it’? Man, Greg hammered that shit into my headhard. ‘Not friendly with the guys on the team?Fake it.Ask ’em about their weekend, their mom, their girl. Don’t care about the answer?Fake it.Get elated about whatever trivial bit of shit they share with you. Get excited about their game.Just fake it until you don’t have to.’”
Squinting past my shoulder, Cammy shakes her head. “No way. You’re so over-the-top friendly and excited about… everything. You’re genuine.” Her brows pull together. “I know you’re not faking it. You can’t be.”
“Nah. That’s the thing, it feels a fuck-ton better being happy than being pissed. It feelsgoodto see someone smile, to make them laugh. It’s addictive. And yeah, it took a while before I totally meant it, and even longer before my teammates trusted that I wasn’t just screwing with them—”
“Because I’m guessing you flipped it on a dime?”
I run my hand over her back, holding her close. “Probably. And they didn’t know me before things got dark. The way I am now is a hell of a lot closer to the way I was before things went to shit.”
“My man of extremes.” There’s affection in her words, but I can’t help wonder how long it will last before this or one of my other personality “quirks” starts wearing thin. A while, I hope.
“Yeah, yeah. All or nothing. I know. But Baxter was right. It worked. I was seeing more game time, and that haze cleared. The noise in my head went quiet and the cheering crowds got loud. And ever since, we’ve been a package deal.”
“What happens to his career happens to yours,” she offers gently. “Same agent. Same teams.”
And yeah, she gets it.
