Stefan
I know letting her walk away is the biggest mistake I can make.
Or the second biggest considering the rest of my fucking idiocy in keeping up with this sham.
But…she’s asked for time.
And how can I deny her that?
Dan must have the same thought because he stays in place too as Brit turns and all but runs away. I listen to the sound of her footsteps on the stairs, across the kitchen, the slam of the door out to the garage shutting behind her. The rumble of the wide metal door opening and her car’s engine starting up.
A rumble that fades as she drives away.
Fuck.
I thrust my hand through my hair, clenching at the strands, wanting to rip them from my scalp.
I just let her go.
Again.
Dan sighs, shakes his head. “I’ll give her some time to cool down and go after her.”
“No,” I mutter. “I’ll go after her.”
Brit’s brother turns and shakes his head. “Haven’t you done enough?”
I grit my teeth. “I didn’t want to hurt her.”
“What did you expect?” he snaps, tossing up his hands. “How the fuck did you expect her to react when she found out you kept something this big from her?”
“I promised,” I say. “I promised I’d never get between her and her career. What do you think she would do the moment she found out I have cancer? She’d be here. Not with the team. Not on the ice. And she doesn’t have all that much time left to play and—”
Dan is suddenly in my face, hand gripping the collar of my shirt, big body shaking with fury. “Do you think she would honestly choose hockey over the man she loves?”
I drop my hand on top of his. “No.” I peel his fingers back, release my shirt from his grip. “I know she’d pick me,” I say. “And that’s why I couldn’t let her.”
His eyes blaze with fury.
Fury that fades as he slowly drops his hand to his side. “You’re a fucking idiot,” he mutters.
“Yeah,” I agree. “But I’m an idiot who loves your sister enough to do whatever I can to protect her. I’ll make it up to her. I swear I will.”
When I’m better and she finishes out her career, she’ll see.
She’ll understand.
I’m giving her a gift.
“Maybe,” he says, turning and heading for the guest room, “but have you considered how much that protection has hurt her?”
I open my mouth to reply, but he doesn’t give me a chance.
The door to the spare bedroom clicks closed.
And I stand there for a good long while, waiting for something, anything to happen—Brit to come home, Rox to wake up, Dan to emerge from the guest room telling me that he’ll help me figure out how to make this right.
But nothing does.
It’s just me in an empty hallway.
Just me alone.
Like it’s been from the moment the doctor first told me I had cancer.
I’ve gotten used to it—or convinced myself I had anyway.
But right now, staring into the darkness, after losing Brit again, it’s too much.
I turn around, walk down the hall, and lay in bed.
For a long, long time.
But eventually that solitude gets to me, and I give up on my bed, on waiting, hoping, praying to the universe that Brit will come home.
I toss back the blankets, slip into Roxie’s room.
And it’s there that I’m finally able to fall asleep.
To the sound of my daughter’s slow and even breathing.
“Daddy’s sleeping,” I hear my daughter whisper.
Which means she’s all but yelling.
“Well then,” my mom says. “Let’s not wake him up.”
I groan and roll my head from side to side, trying to ease the ache that comes from being too fucking old and deciding it was a good idea to sleep on my daughter’s floor.
“Too late,” I hear my dad say dryly as I rub a hand over my face and manage to peel open my eyes. “Mom, Dad, what are you guys doing here?”
“We’re supposed to go out to brunch with you, Brit, Dan, and Roxie,” my mom says. “And Tiff is going to meet us at Molly’s before she has to go study for her midterm, remember?”
No, I don’t remember.
Because I was doing my personal best to be a fucking idiot.
“Did Brit get in terribly late?” she asks. “We can always bring her something back if she needs to sleep in…”
I try to bite back my wince but clearly don’t do a good enough job because I see my dad’s gaze sharpen, my mom’s eyes widen. “What happened?” she asks, but I cut my eyes toward Rox, who’s tugging on her fluffy rainbow-colored unicorn boots—complete with a mane and horn in the corner of the room.
She understands my look and doesn’t press.
“Why don’t you go find Uncle Dan?” I tell her when she runs back over to me and launches herself into my lap. “That way, we can get breakfast.”
“’Kay,” she murmurs, throwing her arms around me for a quick, tight hug, and then she’s running from the room, yelling, “Uncle Danny!”
“What is it?” my mom says the moment she leaves the room.
I want to lie.
But I’ve been doing entirely too much of that as of late.
“Brit found out about the cancer.”
My dad’s lungs inflate in a hiss of air.
My mom grimaces and reaches out to take my hand. “Did she react very poorly?”
My dad—who hadn’t agreed with keeping this secret from the beginning—snorts. “What do you think, Diane?”
She swats at him. “Not now, Pierre,” she says. “Of course she didn’t take it well. Brit has to be hurt and”—she pushes up to her feet—“I should talk to her, help her understand—”
“She’s not here,” I tell her. “She asked for space, and since I’ve spent the last year doing what I wanted to do”—or what I felt as though I had to do—“I’m giving her what she asked me for.”
My mom nibbles at her bottom lip. “But—”
“Mom,” I say. “I owe her this much.”
She sucks in a breath. “Yeah, baby,” she says, cupping my jaw lightly in her hand. “I think you do.” A beat before she turns for the door, my dad trailing her. “Get changed and let’s feed the beasts. And we’ll buy some extra pastries for Brit.”
I crawl to my feet, start to follow them.
Which is why I see her mouth quirk up as she glances back over her shoulder.
“Because if there’s anything that gets through to a woman’s heart, it’s pastries.”