He gave her a look. “If we did that, nothing would ever happen.”
She considered that and then shrugged. “You could have a point.”
“Exactly. No, come on. Three months?”
Rolling her eyes, she shook her head. “Yes. Three months. We will revisit this notion in three months, you crazy.”
He nodded, visibly calculating in his head. “So end of February.”
“Oh.” She paused. “I thought you meant the length of time of us being together.”
He liked that better, his eyes lighting up. “So, end of January. I like that.”
She tried to act like it didn’t give her butterflies or a gushy feeling as she nodded. If they kept on the way they were, she’d be living with Benji when she came back from Florida. Maybe he’d want to come? “I’m actually going to Florida to do the design for Shea and Elli. Maybe you’d want to go with us if you aren’t in the All-Star Game.”
“I probably won’t be, so count me in.”
“If we’re still together.”
“See! Stop trying to expire us,” he demanded and she smiled.
“Yeah, yeah,” she laughed, snuggling into his side. But then she paused. Her heart was pounding at the possibilities, but one thing was for sure. Lifting up, she looked down at him. “I want to be in love before we move in, by the way. I don’t want us just moving in ’cause it’s easy. I want it because we love each other and want to build a home together. If we aren’t there at three months, then it’s okay. Okay?”
As she gazed at him, his eyes were dark and she swore he was holding something back when he looked up into her face. His lips curved and he nodded before whispering, “Okay, but I want you to promise me something right now.”
“Okay?”
“You stay with Jayden till then, or with your mom. But don’t go get an apartment or a hotel room. Okay?”
“But what if we decide we don’t want to live together at the end of January?”
His face was stone as he held her gaze. “We will.”
“How do you know? You frustrate the hell out of me, you know that?”
He scoffed. “Good, I love the way you look when you’re mad,” he said, nibbling at her jaw. Rolling her eyes, she wrapped her arms around his neck as he looked up at her, his nose pressing into hers. “This is going to work. Me and you. Just accept it.”
“Anything can become a factor, anything can break us.”
“Not if we don’t let it.”
She eyed him, unable to understand how he could be so confident about them. “How? How are you so self-assured?”
“Because I met someone who, without even realizing it, reassures me to believe in us.”
Her lips curved. “I do?”
He nodded. “Yup, every time you try to fight what’s happening between us, it only makes me want to fight you harder for you. Just FYI, I’m a scrapper. I will win.”
She grinned. “Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, rolling them over. “I beat alcoholism, I worked my ass off to earn my spot back in the NHL, and every day I strive to be a good man. It used to be for Ava and Leary, but now, I want to be a good man for you.”
She paused, her heart stopping in her chest. “Do you still miss them?”
He met her gaze and he nodded, his pain visible. “I miss the stuff I can remember. I miss their smiles. The way Leary said ‘Daddy.’ How Ava used to look at me with love in her eyes when I was me, not the drunk. She hated the drunk. Can’t blame her. I hated him too because I missed a lot.”
“That’s awful,” she said, her eyes widening as he nodded.
“It is. I don’t remember the cool things at all. Like Leary’s first steps, her first words, or anything like that. It’s sad and it’s something I have had to learn to deal with. I asked for a lot of forgiveness. For the longest time, I blamed myself. But I was sick. So sick.”
“Alcoholism is scary.”
“It is,” he agreed as her heart ached for him. “I know now, if I had a chance to go back to all that, to do it differently, I—” He paused, and she knew what he was going to say next. That he’d go back and do it all over again, that he’d be the husband Ava needed and the father Leary deserved. She expected it. It was who he was, a good man, no matter that she never would have had the chance to be with him. That she never would have had the chance to be fully happy.
Looking down, he cleared his throat. “I would have gotten divorced when Ava asked the first time, and then I would have been the father Leary needed once I got clean.”
She exhaled deeply, surprised. He looked up, their eyes meeting. “I hurt them enough. I broke their trust. I lost my chance to be good for them. I know that now, and I’m not trying to disrespect their memory—”
“Never,” she answered. “I would never think that.”
“But they would have been better off without me.”
Her heart was in her throat as she held him. “It takes a real man to know that.”
“I’ve grown from it, accepted it, learned from it. And now, I just want to be better than what I was to them. I want to honor them by making you and Angie happy. I want to do right by you two.”