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I drop my hand from her back and shove it in my pants pocket. With a strangled cough, I clear my throat. “Right.”
“We need to clear the air, Maddox. Sooner rather than later if we want this to work. I can’t do this with you if I constantly feel like you hate me. It’s only going to get harder from here. Your sister posted a picture of us earlier, and your page is already overrun with questions.”
She sounds exhausted, and I won’t pretend I don’t feel the same way. It’s time to get everything out in the open, even if that doesn’t bring the forgiveness she’s hoping it will. I need this fake relationship to work, and if we react to each other the way we did before the game tonight, nobody is going to buy it.
There is only a month and a half until the adoption day. We can handle each other for that long. Right?
“You’re right. It’s time we cleared the air.”
* * *
BRAXTON
Maddox’s chest is nearly pressed to my back as we stand on my front porch, and I unlock the door. Thankfully, it’s late enough that I won’t have to worry about my neighbours seeing him here. Especially not Ralph, the hockey fanatic.
I’m relieved Maddox didn’t fight me on my offer to come to my place instead of his again. If we’re going to do this, I need to be somewhere comfortable, and his stone-cold penthouse is not that place.
I push the door open, and he mutters, “Cute.”
It is cute. It’s bright and smells like the strawberry-scented wall plug-in in the living room. My furniture is mostly handed down and repurposed besides the fluffy white, faux-fur rug tucked in front of a velvet, teal couch and cozy black armchair. I was going through one of my aesthetic moods when I stumbled upon it, and I folded like a lawn chair in the wind at the image of it inside my home surrounded by vibrant colours.
“Thanks. Living room okay?”
He grunts a reply, and I take that as a yes, leading us through an archway that he has to duck his head under. I stifle a laugh and flip on the light.
“You live in a hobbit home,” he grumbles, sitting on the couch. Surprisingly, he doesn’t have any complaints about it. He just stretches out his legs and drops his head to the couch back and stares at the popcorn ceiling.
“I don’t. You’re just massive.” With a slight turn of his head, he cocks a brow at me. My eyes go wide as my body heats. “Screw you.”
The corner of his mouth twitches slightly, but he doesn’t smile. “Who’s starting? You or me?”
“You make it sound like this is a simple business transaction.”
“I’m just tired, Braxton.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek. “Tired of tonight or all of this?”
“I’m tired of everything at this point.”
“I’m sorry.”
He looks back at the ceiling, his jaw tensing. “Just tell me why you did what you did and then took off. You ruined everything and then left us all behind. I’ve racked my brain for years trying to figure out why your first instinct was to run from me after everything we’ve been through, but I still can’t figure it out.”
“Would you have forgiven me if I had stayed?”
Silence. Another jaw tick.
“Exactly. I didn’twantto leave. I had to.”
“Bullshit. You didn’t have to go anywhere. I would have forgiven you. I loved you.”
Scolded, my eyes fall to my lap as they begin to well with tears that I quickly blink back. “I couldn’t even look at you after what happened.”
“Yeah, well, you were the only one I wanted to see.”
I flinch. “I was young and couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. I thought I was doing the right thing for me.NowI know I was wrong, but I made a mistake. There’s nothing else I can say in my defense. I’ve paid for my actions every single day for eight years.”
“A mistake?” he echoes, shooting forward on the couch. His eyes are wild and angry when they meet mine. “You told me you thought your father’s idea for me to reject my draft offer was the right one for me. You knew the risks that came with that choice, but you let him talk me into it and then helped convince me it was the right move when you knew it wasn’t!”
