Page 11

TEN

declan

I toss and turn for over an hour before I give up and grab my phone. He answers on the third ring.

“What?”

“I miss you too, buddy,” I say.

“What do you want, Dec? It’s late,” Finn complains.

“It’s ten pm where you are. Stop being such an old man.”

Finn sighs loudly. “What do you want?”

“I can’t sleep without Willa in my bed. What does that mean?”

“That this was a terrible idea and now you have feelings for your wife,” Finn says. He’s so monotone all the time I can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

“She’s my best friend. If I was going to develop feelings, it would have happened a long time ago. Is it possible I just got used to the sound of her little snores and now I can’t sleep without them? Like white noise or something?”

“When was the last time you were able to be together for a long stretch of time?”

“Probably the last time we went camping together. I moved to San Diego right after that trip,” I say. Any time we spent together since then felt like stolen moments in between chasing our dreams.

“That was nine years ago, Declan.”

“Yeah, but we talked every night. We even watched movies or binged TV shows together over FaceTime at least once a week. It’s not like she’s been absent from my life since then.”

Finn sighs even louder this time.

“What?”

“You want to know what I think?” he asks.

“That’s why I called you,” I say, laying back down and staring at the streaks of light that broke through my curtains and are painting lines on the ceiling.

“I think something was always there. I think you were too young and focused on hockey to realize it, but it was there, simmering under the surface. There’s a reason she’s the only person to ever be that close to you. There wasn’t room to let another woman in when Willa was already taking up all the space.”

“I’ve been with loads of women in a way I’ve never been with Willa,” I point out, even though his words are rattling around in my brain.

“Women you refused to kiss in case there could be feelings.”

“For them, not me.”

“That’s exactly my point,” he says smugly.

“I kissed Willa today. Twice,” I admit. “Well, technically, she kissed me the first time, but I asked her to.” I omit the painful erection I had the entire ride home or that I kind of wanted to keep kissing her. Which is weird for me. I’m not a kisser. Maybe I should have been this whole time.

I can hear Finn muttering distantly, like he moved the phone away from his face.

“How long are two going to be apart?” he asks.

“Seven weeks,” I groan dramatically.

“I suggest you use that time to figure out your feelings for her before you cross a line you can’t come back from.” The line goes dead. Apparently, he was done with me for the night.

I reach over and grab Willa’s pillow, hugging it to me and inhaling the smell of her sugary apple shampoo. My eyelids are soon too heavy to keep open. I replay the way she looked watching me play tonight. The passion on her face every time she screamed at the ref for a shitty call, or the way it lit up like a Christmas tree whenever I skated past her. The kiss. . .

My eyes fly open. Oh shit.

I think I might have feelings for my wife.