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"I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. I wanted to make sure that douchebag ex of yours never came near you."
"You failed." She grips her fingers tighter in her lap.
"I’m sorry, I asked you leave. I was hurting from Grams’ death. I knew it was inevitable, but when I lost her, I wasn’t prepared for how it would make me feel. It was like losing my parents and my sister all over again. I was an orphan this time, in the true sense of the word. My whole family was gone. I—"
"You had me," she says so softly I almost miss it.
"You're right, I had you. But I was in so much pain, I missed it, and I took it out on you. I truly am sorry for hurting you."
No answer. I risk a look in her direction to find she’s staring through the windshield with a pensive look on her face. "What are you thinking?"
"Would you forgive me if you were in my shoes? After how you set out to make me fall in love with you, only to tell me you did it all to hurt me. Then, you try to make it up to me. Except, when I start imagining a possible future together, you ask me to leave you?" She glances in my direction. "What wouldyoudo if our roles were reversed?"
My guts churn. My muscles bunch. A throbbing sensation pushes down on my eyeballs. WhatwouldI do, if the tables were turned? What would I do if I were in her position?
I swallow, then square my shoulders. "I would forgive you, but not easily. Not until I was convinced you were genuine in your efforts to make things up to me. That you truly loved me. That you would make me happy. That you would give me everything I want. That I was one-hundred percent sure you were the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, that I knew, without a doubt, you were the woman for me."
I turn onto the exit for Venice Beach. "And I intend to convince you to do so, even if it takes me the rest of my life. Because a life without you is no life at all."
We drive for another ten minutes, then I ease the car to a stop in front of her home.
She doesn’t comment or seem surprised that I know where she lives. She pushes her door open, leaving me to follow her up the path that leads to her place. I follow her up the steps, past the porch of the brightly colored two-story house and into her home. She drops her keys into her bag and walks past the living room into a kitchen where she places her bag on the island. She walks around to the sink, grabs a glass and fills it up. She takes a long drink from it, then places the glass aside. She walks over to a shelf at the far side of the kitchen and takes down a first-aid box.
Then, she walks back to the island to place it there before busying herself filling a bowl with warm water and grabbing a fresh washcloth. She places the items next to the first-aid box and gestures to the bar stool.
I follow her lead, and when I sit down, she takes my hand in hers. Dipping the cloth in the water, she presses it to the torn skin of my knuckles. Pain whispers across my nerve-endings, but it’s nothing compared to the ache that bubbles up in my belly. I’ve been so wrong in how I treated her. My sister’s actions weren’t her fault.
"I don’t regret asking you to share my room or using Grams’ condition and your douche ex as a reason to make you marry me."
"You don’t?" She scowls up at me. "And here I thought, you were finally going to apologize."
"I did, too. But then I realized, I'm not sorry for what I did because it brought you into my life."
She opens her mouth, but I shake my head. "Please, hear me out. I regret hurting you. The anguish I caused you. The months of your thinking I didn’t have feelings for you, when I do. I love you, Goldie."
76
Gio
"When I say I want you, I am more serious than I have ever been before. I won’t pretend to know how you’re going to react to this, or if you’ll every truly forgive me, but I have to tell you, I’ve lived the last few months without you, and it’s been the worst experience of my life. More traumatic than watching my friends die on the front. More agonizing than leaving the NHL. More heartbreaking than losing Grams. You’re what’s most important to me.”
He peers between my eyes.
“I never want to wake up without seeing you next to me. I never want to be in a position where you’re not in my life by my side. Where I can’t see you every day, where I can’t hold you and touch you and kiss you and take care of you. My life is empty without you. Nothing I do can make up for what I did to you. Nothing can erase the pain and the anguish I caused you, and maybe—” He swallows. “Maybe you’ll never forgive me. If that’s the case…" For the first time since I’ve known him, an uncertain look comes into his eyes. "I know it’s what I deserve. But if that’s the case, I am going to spend the rest of my life, and if there's an afterlife, making it up to you. I’m going to wait weeks, months, years, until the end of time, until you do."
My heart thrums, and my pulse oscillates. Heat flushes my face, but I push all that aside. I look away, then back at him. "And if I still don’t?" I hold his gaze. "What then?"
He swallows, and a shadow creeps into his eyes. He turns his big hand palm up, so he’s cradling mine. "I’ll never stop trying, Goldie. There’ll never be a moment when I’m not making it up to you in every way possible."
A knocking builds between my eyes.
"The world around us can collapse, temperatures can shoot up, all the ice can melt so we end up playing hockey on dry land, and I’ll still be trying to make it up to you."
The pressure at my temples rockets up. My eyelids feel like I’m trying to hold in a dam, so I look up so gravity will force them back down. I sniffle.I will not cry. Will not.
I try to pull away, and to my surprise, he lets me. Which, in itself, makes me pause. This man… He’s different from the one I left behind three months ago. He’s more open. He seems to be trying. Unlike the last time, his words are more heartfelt. But is that all they are? Just words? "So you ask me to forgive you, and I should? You say, 'I love you,' and I should believe you?"
His shoulders deflate. His chest rises and falls. "Before I met you, I felt no fear. I was angry when my parents died in a car crash. I was enraged when Diana took her own life. Upset enough to spoil my chances in the NHL. I was so filled with fury, it propelled me all the way to joining the Royal Marines. I faced down every physical trial thrown my way, looked the enemy in the eye, dodged bullets, killed men—all without fear. I took on the challenge of captaining the Ice Kings, jumped back on the ice, crashed with rival teams, men younger than me, fitter, faster, and I still, knew no fear.
