Page 123 of Heartbreak Hockey

“What?”

“I’m sorry, Jack. I—”

I hold up my hands. “Apologies can wait, Rhett. Tell me what he did.”

He leans back and raps the knuckles of his left hand on the table as he searches for the right words. “I had nothing to do with it,” he says. “I swear. You have to believe me.”

“Dude, first you need to tell me what the fuck happened.”

He’s stalling, which means it’s really bad. Rhett’s a straightforward kind of guy. He doesn’t beat around the bush. As a general rule, he’s not afraid of anything.

“Sorry, I’m fucking this up.” He sighs. “There’s no good way to tell you this. Father’s been intercepting potential draft possibilities for you. You got lucky with Vancouver. He was preoccupied until he wasn’t, which is why you lost that third game.”

My face twists into complete consternation. It’s not computing.

And then it does.

“He’s been doing this since we got serious,” I say, putting two and two together.

Rhett nods. A lone tear trickles down his face. “You were right when you said that I’d let my father influence our potential future. He didn’t believe we could be hockey players and raise a family. I’ve been letting that ring in my head.”

As he says the words, my heart sinks. My hockey dream’s been ruined because of fucking Elkington Senior. “And he wasn’t gonna make you the stay-at-home husband.”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“We haven’t been together for going on two years, Rhett. Why is he still ruining my chances?”

“Because I still want you, so fucking bad, Jack, and he knows it even though we haven’t directly discussed you for some time. I miss you with every heartbeat. I was trying to get you drafted with my team—which must have been a clue for him—so that we’d be together, but turns out, he ruined that too. I was going to say screw having a family for a while. Being with you would be enough. We could play hockey together again, be us again. Just be.” His bottom lip trembles.

I fish for a memory of Rhett as dejected as he is right now, and I can’t find one. Guess that’s why it looks so wrong. It pulls me to him, tries to at least, but I firm up my insides. I don’t want to feel sorry for him right now. It’s hard not to. “Then tell him we aren’t a thing, Rhett.”

“You don’t think I’ve tried since I discovered what he’s been up to?” he says with enough frustration bleeding through that I believe him. “The experience has been enlightening.”

Rhett has his dad on a pedestal, and I get it, I feel the same way about my parents, but it means he’s blissfully ignorant about Elkington Senior’s shortcomings.

“He thinks I haven’t tried hard enough to get you back.”

“That you haven’t manipulated me enough is what he really means,” I add, leaning back and crossing my arms.

“Okay, fair. I can admit that.” Even now, he doesn’t want to believe there’s anything wrong with his father’s behavior. His dad is his idol. That he could be anything less than perfect is yet another thing for Rhett to come to terms with.

“Fuck, Rhett. So, my hockey career is ruined because your dad is a manipulative asshole?” I hold my finger up to stop whatever thing he was going to say about me calling his dad an asshole. “I’m entitled right now, Rhett. Seriously fuck him to hell.”

Rage sizzles through me until my nerves are fired and I’m rendered numb from it. I rub my face. Where the fuck do I go from here? My heart breaks into a thousand pieces. I clutch my chest with the pain of it. Hockey is my whole life.

Neither of us has the capacity for words and time stretches on while the chaos of the busy restaurant plays out around us. Servers whizz by with heavy plates of food. We’re at the quieter time of the night and the music’s still soft;Waiting for a Girl Like Youdrifts over our tragic scene. We sit there so long a server eventually notices us and offers Rhett a drink since my beer is still three-quarters full.

“I’ll take a Glenfid fifteen, neat,” he says with the relief of having a distraction from this nowhere conversation clear in his demeanor.

Rhett raps his knuckles on the table again in contemplation. “Are you sure Mercy isn’t a rebound, Jack?”

“He’s not a rebound, Rhett.”

“We have history. We know how much we love each other. I know we could make this work and I’m willing to do whatever you want despite what Father thinks about it. It’s what I should have done from the beginning. I know that I can make up for that blip in my judgment if you’ll let me, Jack. It would be foolish not to give us a second chance.Please.Don’t let this be the end of us, sunshine.”

Rhett’s begging. That alone is cause for alarm, but he’d go against his father’s wishes for me? Unheard of. And a huge deal.

It’s definitely part of Rhett’s personal evolution.