Page 17

Seventeen

Henry

I honestly can’t believe Jade agreed to come to my condo. Guiding her toward my place with the intention of asking her to come up and talk was taking a chance that she’d run.

Jade doesn’t like to address anything that makes her uncomfortable, whereas I always want everything to be cleared up, or it feels as though a dark cloud looms over my head. Maybe I was born like that or maybe the deaths of my parents and always feeling as though there’s a chance I won’t get to say what I want to is the reason I hate anything to be unsettled. I still remember the first time I met Jade and told her that my parents had died in a car accident. As though if I told people right away, it wouldn’t be a big deal, and maybe they wouldn’t look at me like they always did when they heard that news.

I walk her to the security gate and press in the code.

“Why do you live here?” she asks, looking at The Nest sign and the notes that have been affixed all around it.

I pull the gate open, and we both walk through, allowing it to shut behind us. The urge to take her lips grips me now that there aren’t any prying eyes. I wish I could push her up against the wall, run my nose down the length of her neck, and hear the purr of a moan in her throat, smell her perfume before taking her lips.

“You think I’m a bad dad.” I step on the first cement stair and wait for her to join me.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But?”

She shrugs, walking with me up the stairs to my condo. “It doesn’t seem very kid-friendly.”

I laugh. There are nights it’s not, but Tweetie has been more settled since the season started.

When we reach my door, I hear another door open above, then Conor comes bounding down the stairs.

He stops, stares, and bites his lip to keep from smirking. “Hey.”

He jogs down the rest of the steps until he reaches us. He’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with a ball cap. Now that the team is doing well, he’s getting recognized more.

“Jade, right?” Conor asks, stopping on the landing in front of my place. He puts out his hand.

“Yeah, hi.”

“I’m Conor. This guy sucks at introductions.” He thumbs in my direction. “Then again, you two seem to be in your own little world when you see one another.” He smiles, his dimples indenting.

“You gotta go, Conor? Cool, see you later.” I give him a look that says to get the fuck out of here.

He puts up his hands and does a shallow bow. “Sorry to interrupt. I hope to see you around more, Jade.” Then he laughs and jogs down the steps, stopping right before he opens the security gate. “We’ll be downstairs watching the game if you want to join after… I mean, you gotta eat and rehydrate, right?” Without waiting for an answer, he pushes through the gate.

“Sorry about him.” I key in the code to my apartment.

She steps into my space, and I watch her look around the condo where I’ve made a home for Bodhi and me. “It’s very you.” She picks up a piece of mail that sits on a stack on the table by the front door and drops it on the floor, laughing. “Still organized Henry, huh?”

I bend down to pick up the envelope and place it back where it was. “I imagine your place still has dirty dishes in the sink?” I arch an eyebrow, the corner of my lips tugging up.

She turns around, shrugging off her coat and tossing it over a chair. Her challenging smile at me tells me she knows I’m itching to hang it in the closet. “All your cans turned label-side forward in the cupboard?”

“Go check.” I cross my arms and watch her in my open concept kitchen, opening cabinets where yes, everything has a specific place and is front facing. “Is your bedroom floor still your laundry basket?”

She swivels around, her hands pressed to the counter, her back slightly arched, giving me a view of her tits in the snug sweater she’s wearing. “I don’t remember you complaining when you were picking up my thongs off the floor.”

I shake my head and say nothing.

She pushes off the counter. “Toothbrush still have a specific compartment in the drawer? Contact lenses pulled out of the boxes, stacked and ready for the week?” She disappears into my bathroom, and I hear her opening the drawers.

“Your toothbrush still dead since you’ve probably lost your charger?”

She chuckles, walking out of the bathroom seeming satisfied that I’m still the guy I was when I was with her. “Still does the job.” She shrugs.

“Just not as well.”

She glances in my direction, and I can’t help but relate her toothbrush to me and the ex-boyfriend. I’d bet he didn’t do half the job I did in getting her off because he didn’t have years to discover all the places that drove her wild until she was begging for my dick.

“Suits organized by color, I assume?”

“Looking for a reason to go into my bedroom?”

“Maybe.” She pushes the bedroom door open wider to look inside, then steps over the threshold.

I follow her, resting my shoulder on the doorframe as she opens my closet, her fingers running along my suits that are in fact hung by color.

“I won’t pry, but I bet all your boxers are black now. No more array of different colors that you found on clearance.” She quirks her eyebrow.

I almost point her to the drawer she’s asking about, but I’m not sure I could control myself if she had my boxer briefs in her hand.

She sits on the edge of my bed and pats the spot next to her. When I don’t move right away, she says, “Afraid of me, Henry?”

“Deathly,” I admit, pushing myself off the wall and breaking the distance between us.

I love this playful side she’s showing me, and I don’t want it to end because when it does, we’ll have to address the big ol’ King Kong-sized issue between us. I sit on the bed but not right next to her, purposely leaving space. We’re in dangerous territory sitting in my bedroom, on my bed. The same bed I’ve masturbated in to remembrances of us fucking too many times to count.

“You want to talk in here?” I ask.

She nods. “I think it’s fitting, don’t you? Maybe we should reenact the scene when you left me in a bedroom, turned on and wet, with no explanation.”

I grab her hands because I knew this whole thing when she walked in was her defense mechanism. I can’t imagine how unnerving it would be if I walked into her space, the place she made a home without me.

“You have no idea how hard it was for me that night.” I guess we’re just going to dive in. Maybe we can get this part over with and move on. I have no idea in what direction we’ll go, but I know for sure that the incident three years ago is blocking us from moving forward. “I wanted to be with you. I wanted to be the guy who swept you up and made all that pain and fear of a future without your grandma disappear. Fuck, I so desperately wanted to be that guy, but…”

My mind travels back to where I was in my life at that time—the crossroads I found myself at.

She doesn’t say anything, still waiting for an explanation.

“Bodhi’s adoption was almost finalized, and I’d just gotten traded back to Chicago, which threw a bit of a wrench into my plans. I wasn’t sure I wanted to come back to Chicago after the years the town turned on me. I guess for you to understand, we have to go back to before that night.”

“You know what? Forget it.” She slides her hands from mine and stands, but I grab her wrist before she reaches the door.

She doesn’t turn around, and I watch her back rise and fall with a deep breath. We have to address the pain I inflicted on both of us the day I let her go. “Please. We can’t keep pushing it away.”

Circling around, she lets me guide her back to the edge of the bed.

“After I let you go, I thought hockey would distract me. I’d reached my goal, made it into the league. But it wasn’t enough, not without you there. I lost my passion. Lost focus. I stalked you on socials like it was my goddamn job. I was a fucking mess.” Remembering those years makes me realize the power Jade had over me, probably still has over me. “I wanted to say fuck it so many times and buy a one-way plane ticket to find you.”

“I wish you had,” she whispers.

A big part of me feels a massive amount of relief at hearing her say it.

“But all the work, all the sweat and sacrifices I, and other people like Reed and my grandparents, made to get me there stopped me from running to you and telling you I’d made a mistake. That, and knowing you needed the space but would never ask for. So, I stayed where I was when enjoying it was futile without you by my side. I went to a sports psychologist who said that I was self-sabotaging. Even to this day, I’m not sure I believe him.” I look at her and wait for her gaze to float up from her hands and meet mine. “I just missed you. Plain and simple. I lost the love of my life. Actually… I gave her up willingly, which somehow felt worse because I was the one who sent her packing.”

A soft smile creases her lips. “Not for nothing. I promise you, Henry. You saved me. You might have saved us both.”

My eyes squeeze shut. Those first years without her were the hardest. I hope what she’s saying is the truth.

“The two other times we hooked up when you came home from abroad, I fell into a depression for a few months afterward. I’d second-guess all my decisions. I’d want to chase after you, then reprimand myself for not appreciating what I had. Other guys worked tirelessly to get to where I was, and there I was, wanting to give up my opportunity. I had no idea whether you still wanted to be with me, but I couldn’t tell you. I’d never ask you to give up your own dreams to sit idly by and watch me live out my own.”

She nods with a sad sort of smile. “I understand. It was always hard to find my footing again without you as my safety net after I left.”

I hope she understands I did what I had to do back then, but I think it’s time for both of us to let go of the past and move on. “I wasn’t going to come to your grandma’s funeral. That’s why I was late. I flew into town the night before and stayed in my hotel room. I didn’t tell my grandparents I was home. I didn’t tell Reed I was practically down the street when he called that night to ask about the trade news. For the first time in five years, I felt like my life path was making sense. I’d found where I belonged again. And I knew the power you had over me. The power of us together had over me.

The longer I sat in the hotel room, the more I convinced myself I wasn’t that guy. I’d promised you a long time ago that you could always depend on me to be there when you needed me. And I knew I’d probably broken that promise while you had lived a life far away. A life I only witnessed through pictures. And when I saw you at the top of the stairs of the church…” I cringe. “Fuck, Jade, I knew right then the damage I’d done by choosing to come. I knew I’d console you. I knew I’d hold you. I knew that I would follow you to your hotel room, and we’d connect again. What I didn’t know was that I wouldn’t be able to go through with it.”

“Why?” she whispers, but I sense she already knows the answer.

“Bodhi. I was adopting him to give him a second chance at life, and I couldn’t fail him. I couldn’t let him come into my home and have me be a mess. That’s not to say that I wasn’t upset. That just those hours with you didn’t affect me, but had I slept with you and spent the night with you, I’m not sure the man I would have woken up as.”

A tear trickles down her cheek, but she nods. “Why didn’t you just tell me that night?”

I turn her toward me, running my thumb along her cheek, catching her tears. “It took everything in me to walk out. I had to get out of the pull of our orbit. And I’m profoundly sorry I hurt you. The willpower that I pride myself on crumbles when you’re near, Jade. And I had to choose Bodhi. He had to come first in that moment, and I had to push my own desires away. I wasn’t going to tell you that the day you buried your grandma.”

More tears run down her cheeks. It’s crushing to have to tell the woman you’ve always loved that she’s second now. She was always my number one, the one constant, the one I lusted over, loved, but when I decided to become a father to Bodhi, I made a promise to him that I would always be the best version of myself. That I’d be the dad he deserved.

“I understand.” She nods. “Thank you for telling me.”

Unwrapping her hands from mine, she stands and walks toward the door. I don’t want her to leave, but I’m not sure what to say or do in this moment. So I stand and follow her. I watch her pick up her coat, shrug each arm into it, and zip it up. She steals a glance at the family room where Bodhi’s toys are neatly organized in bins. It represents a part of my life she’s never known.

“You’ve done really well, Henry.” Her eyes glisten, and every part of me aches to take the pain away from her. I want to make it better for her, but that’s not my job right now.

“Thanks.”

She nods and walks to the door, picking up the piece of mail and dropping it on the floor. “I just feel like I should leave my mark.”

Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes, and she opens the door, shutting it behind her when she leaves. I stare at the piece of mail and run my hand down my face while I blow out a breath, wondering if the need to go after her will ever stop.

Maybe one day there will be a reset button for us.