Page 41 of Goal Line (Boston Rebels #4)

Chapter Thirty

LUKE

“ W hy don’t you tell me a little bit about why you wanted to meet?” Chloe says, and I try not to focus on how awkward it is to be talking to a therapist for the first time over a video call. How are you supposed to build an authentic connection with someone you’ve never even met in person?

If I hadn’t been so determined to be there at the end of Eva’s practice so I could take her to lunch and make sure she ate something, I probably would’ve flown down to Philadelphia to meet with Chloe.

“I’m going to be honest,” I say, before I glance over at my door.

I’m sitting in one of the chairs in front of the window in my bedroom.

Eva’s napping right now, and I know she’s unlikely to wake up and even more unlikely to barge in here with the door shut and locked, but somehow, I still feel like I need to keep an eye on the door anyway. “I didn’t really want to meet. ”

She nods, her blonde hair barely brushing her shoulders, but she says nothing.

“It’s not like I’m scared to talk about my feelings or anything,” I say, feeling the need to fill the silence. “It’s just that in my family, we don’t talk about things outside the family.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re always in the public eye?”

“Why?” Her eyebrows dip a bit as she asks the question, and I realize that she has absolutely no idea who I am, aside from the fact that I’m one of Zach’s teammates.

“My family is sort of...well known. I think the fact that we’re pretty close-knit and generally stay out of any rich-people drama makes the media constantly curious about us.” I shrug.

“Oh, so your family is famous?”

“Kind of.” My last name doesn’t seem to be registering with her, which is perfectly fine.

It’s not like we’re a household name—a very intentional move on our part.

There are plenty of other billionaires out there making complete asses of themselves, and that’s not what my family has ever wanted to be known for.

Dad focuses our efforts on the family business, the hockey team we own, and charitable work.

Mom’s always had her riding program. They raised us in the small town my dad grew up in and sent us to public schools—well, except for Tristan, because he was “exceptional.” I’m pretty sure that was code for “much too smart and not nearly humble enough to play well with others.”

“All right. So what made you decide to meet, despite not wanting to? ”

I glance away again, and then focus on my screen, noting that she’s sitting there with a polite but expectant look on her face. “It felt like the right thing to do.”

“Can you say more about that?”

I tell her what happened in Game 7. She asks some clarifying questions about Eva and my relationship with the Wilcotts, and suddenly I’m telling her all about both of our families, how my family owns our team, and my lifelong friendship with Eva.

“How did you feel about her being pregnant?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’ll bet.” She adds nothing else, just watches me, waiting for me to keep going.

I’m tempted to stare right back, just to prove that I can do that as well as she can, but what would that accomplish?

If I’m going to push through my issues on the ice, I need to push through my complicated feelings about Eva and figure out why I’m not able to compartmentalize them while I’m playing, whereas I can do that with everything else.

“We actually got married last weekend.”

“Oh?” The slight tilt of her head as she responds is the only indication that this information surprises her, which annoys me, even though I realize this is just her way of keeping me talking. When I don’t respond, she says, “What made you guys decide to get married?”

“She wasn’t sure about her health insurance if she had to take a break from skating and didn’t want her mom and dad to know the circumstances of her pregnancy.”

“Those are her reasons. What are yours?”

I lean back in my seat and glance at the door again. “She’s my best friend. I’d do anything for her. ”

“And you did this purely for altruistic reasons, based solely on platonic friendship?”

My laugh is practically a snort. “Maybe not solely.”

“So what were your reasons?”

I run my fingers through my hair, pushing it off my forehead. “Well, at the time, I thought I was just being a good friend.”

“And now?”

“Now, I realize that I am undeniably, irrevocably in love with my wife.” I don’t mean to say that, but it slips out of my mouth as soon as the words go through my head.

It’s not like I haven’t known for years that I was in love with Eva.

It’s just that its something I, up until recently, assumed I’d eventually outgrow, like you outgrow most things from your childhood.

“Normally, that wouldn’t sound like much of a problem.”

“Except she’s not in love with me.”

“That’s . . . a lot to process. No wonder you’re here.”

“Yeah,” I say on a heavy breath.

“I’m not a marriage counselor?—”

“That’s good, because we’re not really married.”

“I thought you got married this past weekend?”

“We did, but just for the reasons I mentioned—not because it’s a real marriage.”

“So, how long are you planning to stay married, then?” she asks.

I shrug in response. “We didn’t set an end date.”

She just looks at me like she expects me to say more.

“We can’t get divorced. We’d never do that to our families.”

“Are you sure that’s why?”

My jaw tics as I clench it, and I can see in the video how tense I look. “Why else would we have decided to stay married?”

“I don’t know. Why would you have? You said you’re in love with her...”

“Right, but she’s not in love with me.”

“And you’re sure about that?”

If she’d asked me this question a week ago, I’d have been more confident in my answer. “Yeah.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

I pause again, mulling over my answer in my head. “I’m pretty used to it.”

“So you know how you just paused and chewed on the inside of your cheek right there before you responded? What was your first thought? The one you had before you said you’re pretty used to it?”

I sit back in the chair with a sigh and glance down at my legs where they’re stretched out beneath the side table I’ve pulled in front of me to hold my laptop. “I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “Disappointed, I guess.”

“Does Eva know that you have feelings for her?”

“I . . . I don’t think so.”

“You’ve never told her?”

I shake my head.

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t want to be that guy—the one who’s pretending to be her friend but secretly waiting around for her to want more.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“I know it might look like that’s actually the type of guy I am.

But I assure you, I’ve done a damn fine job of shoving those feelings aside, reminding myself that wasn’t what she wanted from me.

But then...I don’t know...things changed when we got married.

Now we’re spending all this time together, and she’s pregnant and the hormones are messing with her, and she’s got these needs.

..” I trail off, already feeling like I’ve said too much.

Chloe is a sports psychologist; she’s not here to hear about my sex life.

“So the relationship has turned sexual?”

“Sort of?”

She presses her lips together and nods. It’s like she wants to say something but doesn’t think she should.

“What?” I ask.

“It seems to me that either the relationship is platonic, or it’s not?”

“Okay, so our physical relationship isn’t platonic, but our emotional relationship still is.” When she doesn’t say anything in response, I add, “I know that sounds crazy. It’s like a friends-with-benefits situation, but we’re married.”

“She must really trust you,” Chloe says, and I consider the way Eva is normally so determined to be independent, but she’s allowing herself to rely on me right now—to take care of her financially, to claim the paternity of her baby, to take care of her sexually...

“She does.”

“I find it interesting that you’re hiding your feelings from her, while also acknowledging that she trusts you implicitly.”

“Hmmmm.” The sound rattles around in my throat as my lips twist, and then I take a deep breath and say, “I don’t know how she’d feel about the truth, which is why I haven’t told her. I don’t want to make her uncomfortable.”

“Are you not telling her to spare her feelings, or your own? ”

Another hum rattles around in my throat, because fuck .

Yeah, I wouldn’t want to make Eva uncomfortable, but at the same time, maybe it’s more the fear of revealing my deepest and darkest secrets to her that really has me holding back.

The fear of rejection isn’t something I normally struggle with.

..maybe because no one except Eva has ever rejected me.

“Maybe your wife deserves to know how you feel about her?”

“Maybe.” Just the thought of doing that has my stomach clenching.

“Let’s bring this back to psychology, just so you understand why I’m asking you these questions, even though we met to talk about your on-ice performance.

Research shows that suppressing your emotions—like you’ve been doing for a decade now when it comes to the most important person in your life—can take a toll on your mind and body, leading to heightened anxiety like you experienced during Game 7, and leaving you feeling much less in control. ”

Could it really be that the weight of constantly hiding my feelings for her finally took its toll on me, making me unable to deal with the stress of my job?

“If that’s the case, and I’ve been hiding my feelings for her for pretty much my whole life, why hadn’t anything like that happened before?”

“Were you ever worried about her safety before?”

“No, I guess not. And it wasn’t just that I was worried about her, it was also the baby, and whether Eva’s mother was going to figure out she was pregnant. It all just...”

She gives me a sympathetic face. “. . . cascaded? ”

“Yeah. It was so overwhelming, I couldn’t think about or focus on anything but her.”

“That’s what anxiety is,” Chloe says. “It’s an emotional and physical response to a stressful or threatening situation.”

“Are you saying that keeping these feelings locked down means this could keep happening?”

“I’m saying that the more time and energy your brain spends forcing down very natural emotions, the more likely it is that you won’t be able to deal with other stressful situations when they come up.”

“That’s what being a goalie is, though...It’s stress. It’s taking care of your team. It’s protecting the net—using your body to guard a space much bigger than you can physically cover while guys shoot pucks at you at ninety miles per hour.”

“Perhaps, then, you need to free your brain up to handle that type of stress?”

“By telling my wife how I really feel about her?”

Chloe shrugs. “That sounds like a logical place to start.”

Logical, perhaps. But also terrifying, because there’s no way to admit my feelings to Eva without also admitting that I can’t remember a time I didn’t feel this way about her.