“I can’t leave this team, Hazel,” he whispers, worry in his eyes.
“I know.”
“After the game,” he says, holding my face, “we’ll go talk to Ward about the trade, okay?”
I nod, and he presses another kiss to my mouth. God, I hope Ward keeps him. The idea of Rory playing for another team after everything this season feels so wrong.
“Miller, let’s go,” Ward calls.
Rory presses one, two, three more kisses to my mouth before pulling away, and I watch him skate to center ice for the puck drop.
For the rest of the game, my stomach is in knots while the fans murmur around us about the trade.
CHAPTER 80
RORY
Outside Ward’s office, we can hear him talking on the phone, probably fielding calls from other organizations. Nausea rolls through me, but Hazel slips her hand into mine.
“Freaking out yet?” I ask.
She shakes her head, eyes steady on me. “Nope. I meant what I said about us figuring it out.”
“Your studio—” I start, but she covers my mouth with her hand.
“I said we’ll figure it out.”
I sigh, nodding, and she replaces her hand with her mouth on mine. I think about her snapping at the security guard to back off while telling me she loved me and I feel like laughing, but then I remember that I might get sent away and leave everything good I’ve collected this season, and the ugly feeling in my chest hardens.
At our side, someone clears their throat, and we break apart.
My blood runs cold at the sight of the man in front of us. “Dad.”
I didn’t even know he was in town. He’s the last person I want to see right now.
“Rory.” He shifts, glancing between me and Hazel, and for the first time, he doesn’t look like the stern man who raised me.
He looks worried.
Hazel stiffens, removing her hand from mine before sticking a finger in my dad’s face.
“You,” she says in a demonic voice. “I have a bone to pick with you.”
My dad’s eyes go wide.
“You’re the fucking worst,” Hazel spits out, stabbing her finger in the middle of his chest.
“Can I—” he starts.
“No.” She pokes him again. “I’m talking. Your only job was to love Rory, and you fucked up, Rick. You fucked up big time.”
She’s terrifying.
My dad turns to me with a strange expression, eyebrows at his hairline and eyes flashing with pain. It’s the expression he wore when my mom walked out, I realize, and my chest aches.
“Is that what you think?” he asks in a low voice. “That I don’t love you?”
My exhale is shaky, and I swallow. “I think you love hockey.”
He takes a step toward me, but Hazel moves between us. My territorial dragon, ready to strike. My hand comes to her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. Nerves are spilling over inside me, but after the conversation I had with my mom today, I know I need to be more up-front with my parents. I can’t run from this with him.
“I’ll never be enough for you,” I tell my dad, “and now you’re trying to trade me away from the only team I’ve ever loved playing for? The only coach I’ve looked up to?” My heart races. “I don’t want you to be my agent anymore. We want different things for me.”
He looks crushed. “I thought this was what you wanted.” He shakes his head, confused. “You’re not playing your best anymore. When we started getting offers, I figured a new team would get you back to where you were last year.”
“What, fucking miserable?” A cold laugh scrapes out of me. “I am playing my best, but all you care about is the points on the board.”
He shakes his head again, not getting it. “I just wanted you to be at the top of the league so you’d be happy.”
Something in my chest deflates with exhaustion. “That doesn’t make me happy anymore. I don’t know if it ever did. You want me to be you, but I’m not. I don’t want to be the star anymore. It’s…” I swallow. “It’s lonely.”
“Life is lonely,” my dad says in a flat tone, like it’s a fact.
Our lives are about hockey first, he said on the phone a couple months ago.
“No, it’s not.” My gaze goes to Hazel, and she gives me a small, supportive smile. “It doesn’t have to be.” Emotion hitches in my throat. “I’ll never be enough for you, but I don’t need your approval anymore.”
I have Hazel’s, and I have my own. Even if I get traded, I like the player I’ve become this season.
“Not enough for me?” My dad blinks at me. “You’re everything to me.”
“Every game, every pass, you’re watching and making notes so you can call and tell me everything I’ve done wrong. We’re done with that, though.” I fold my arms over my chest. It hurts saying this.
He stares at me before he looks away. Defeat pulls tight in his features. “My dad never gave a shit about me playing hockey. It didn’t matter that I played professionally or broke records.”
My grandfather on his side passed when I was a baby; I never met him, and my dad never spoke about him. My mom once mentioned that he was a professor, a workaholic, and an alcoholic. My dad runs his hand over his hair, and it’s like looking in a mirror.
“I didn’t want you to think I didn’t care,” he says quietly.
He shows it the only way he knows how. Through his eyes, I see his calls and emails in a different light. I see him wanting what he thinks will make me happy. “That’s what Mom said.”
He stills. “You talked to Nicole?”
“We’re trying to patch things up.” Vulnerable honesty flows out of me like water from a faucet. It’s addictive, telling the truth like this.
He stares at me for a long time, frowning, regret flashing in his eyes.
“She asked about you.”
“She did?”
“Yep.”
A long pause. “I think about her every day.”
His honesty shocks me. Rick Miller doesn’t care about anything but hockey, or so I thought. “Maybe you should call her.”
He shakes his head, glancing down with a hard set to his jaw. “She left me.”
The corner of my mouth tilts in a sad smile because for years, I told myself she left me, but my dad has his own lies he tells himself.
“I compare everyone to her,” he says quietly. “That’s why all my relationships fall apart. No one’s Nicole, and it’s only a matter of time before they realize that.”
My chest aches, and even though he’s made me feel like I wasn’t good enough for years, made me think hockey was my only value, he’s still my dad.
“Call her,” I tell him, “because I think she thinks about you, too.”
He grunts, acknowledging but not agreeing, and the three of us stand in silence.
“Hockey’s the only thing we have in common,” he finally says, looking lost. “I don’t know what else to talk to you about.”
“Maybe we should change that.”
At my side, Hazel watches, guarding me. My dad’s gaze swings to her and he clears his throat.
“Hi.” He sticks his hand out to her. “Rick.”