“I don’t have the reserves for this, Dan.” Weary. “Call Scott back up and take the tryout.”
“You don’t have the reserves for what? I’m not doing anything to you. I made a choice about my life.” She didn’t get to do that. Act like she couldn’t handle it, say she cared about him and still wanted him gone. She couldn’t have it all the ways she wanted, no matter what shit was going on with her family.
“My life is here now,” he said. It wasn’t the time or the place. It would blow up in his face, but like the time when he’d been a kid and hadn’t been able to rein it in—all the emotion and confusion and hurt and love—it took over. It spewed out. So he touched her. He squeezed her shoulders, then cupped her face.
That beautiful, obnoxious face.
“My life is here. I am not giving up anything. I fell in love with this place, and I…” He knew better, every part of his brain was screaming at him to shut the fuck up, but his heart always won when he didn’t run. “I fell in love with you.”
She looked stricken, as if he’d slapped her across the face instead of admitted the depth of his feelings. “No, you didn’t.” Her voice was shaky, her head twisting back and forth in his hands as she pulled away. “You did not.”
“I see you’re set to be perfectly rational about this.”
“I can’t do this with you right now,” she said, still shaking her head, still talking in something little more than a thready whisper. “I have…I have too much on my plate already.”
“I wasn’t planning on telling you right now, honey. I was saving it for a better time. Maybe a nice dinner, add a little candlelight.”
“Candle… Are you crazy?”
“I think I may not be the one you should be asking that question to right now.”
“Is it because you know if you try out, you’ll choke? Is that it? You’re afraid of screwing up hockey? Staying here isn’t safe, and it isn’t…sticking your ground. This is not your ground. You do not belong on this ground.”
“You believe so little of yourself, that I couldn’t possibly love you and want to be with you?”
“No, Dan, I believe that little in you.”
Chapter 24
Mel couldn’t catch her breath. It was all wrong. Everything she’d said since the moment she’d walked in. But she’d heard him talking about retirement and staying, and every piece of solid ground she thought she’d gained on the quiet drive over had disappeared.
No, it had gone up in flames.
He could not stay. Not now. He couldn’t ask her for more when she had no more to give.
He’d swept into her life and made everything wrong. She’d run away from her family. She’d been left with only “I don’t know what to do” as an answer when a real problem cropped up. Those things had never happened to her before he’d come into her life.
She hated it. She hated him. Yes, that was the feeling twisting up in her chest, around her heart, squeezing until she thought she wouldn’t be able to breathe. Hate. All-consuming, heartbreaking hate.
Yeah.
Dan cleared his throat. “I think I’ll pretend like I misheard you this time.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t.” There was no mishearing. There was no going back. She’d said what she needed to say to end this, because ending it was the only way to survive if he actually thought he loved her.
Loved her.
No. She could not allow that.
“Then say it again. Look me in the eye and say it again.”
She forced herself to look at him. She couldn’t manage eye contact, but maybe if she focused on the dark slash of his angry eyebrows. “I don’t—”
“You’re not looking at me, Mel.” There was a note she’d never heard in his voice. It was something beyond angry or irritated. It felt threatening, whatever it was. It sounded like bleeding, and she had to close her eyes against the thought that she was hurting him like that.
He’d hurt her first. He’d undermined everything she was, crumpled the life she’d always known, just by…just by standing by her. No, she couldn’t take that another minute.
She had to do this. She had to get some control back over her life, and getting rid of Dan was the best way. Besides, she was saving him from failure. He wouldn’t stay, and this way he could blame her instead of himself.
She ignored everything in the past few weeks that proved the opposite. The way he’d dealt with Mystery getting caught in the fence, the way he had built this place with only the very basics of her help. She had to ignore it; she couldn’t believe he would stay.
If he did, what would happen? She’d love him and what? Always feel ineffectual and lost? Always run away and not know what to do? No, she had to go back. Back to when she’d been strong. She was saving herself, like Caleb had said they needed to do.
If it felt wrong, if it felt like sacrifice and hurt and cruelty, then that was just the nature of saving herself, she supposed.
Had to be.