Delay of Game (41 page)

But none of it seemed to matter because I couldn’t celebrate it with Sara.

AFTER THE GAME
was over and they’d aired the handshake line, they moved on to analyzing the Storm’s chances in the next round. We’d been watching that for a while, but then Daddy surprised me by turning off the TV and climbing up the stairs.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making sure Rose left the guest room ready for someone to stay in it tonight when she was cleaning today.”

Oh. He’d probably worked out who would be coming to spend the night with us tonight while I was in the hospital or hiding out in my room earlier. I might have been able to handle spending the day with Cam around, if not for the fact that his family had been there, too. That had just been too much for me, too many people trying to make me feel better when there was nothing at all that could possibly make me feel better. I hadn’t wanted anyone trying to hug me. I hadn’t wanted to talk about it. I hadn’t wanted to do anything at all, and so I’d gone into my room and done just that.

It had only been after they’d all left, when it was just me, Daddy, and Buster remaining in the house, that I’d been able to face the thought of coming out of my room. Daddy knew better than to push me into talking about things until I was ready, and Buster was possibly the perfect companion for a time like this. All he wanted to do was cuddle, which was fine with me. That was what we’d done through the whole game, and he only stopped now to race after Daddy on his way up the stairs.

I was fairly certain that it wouldn’t be Cam coming back to the house after the way I’d brushed him off the last couple of days. Maybe Dana or Noelle was coming. Either of them would be fine.

But then…why would Cam have left his dog here if he wasn’t planning to come back? Surely he wouldn’t have, would he? I got up and went into the kitchen to fix a cup of tea. The whole time I was doing that, I attempted to sort out how I would feel if Cam walked through the door in a little bit.

You might be in luck. You might be off the hook.

I still couldn’t believe I’d said something so cold and heartless to him. More than that, I couldn’t believe he hadn’t completely turned his back on me afterward.

Was that what I’d been hoping for when I’d said it? That he would think I was as much of a bitch as I felt like I was and that he’d walk away? He hadn’t. The nurses at the hospital told me he’d slept in the waiting room all night, that he’d been unwilling to leave. One of them had encouraged me to let him come into my room, but I couldn’t face him after saying such an awful thing to him. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing the hurt on his face. Even when he’d brought me home today, I’d carefully avoided looking at him, but I could feel his pain creeping into the space between us. That had only made me hurt more than I was already hurting.

When Daddy came back downstairs, he opened the back door to let Buster out and then joined me in the kitchen to fix himself a snack. He reached for a banana from the fruit bowl and opened the fridge to find something to go with it. “So how long are you planning on hiding from him and trying to push him away instead of talking to him?”

“I’m not trying to push him away.”

“Could have fooled me.” He came away from the fridge with a small tub of yogurt. “I’ve known you for twenty-three years, Sara. Your whole life. This is how you always react when someone gets too close. You lash out. You try to hurt them before they can hurt you. You try to make them leave you because you believe they will.”

“You’ve never left me.” I stared into my cup of tea, trying to quell a fresh wave of tears.

“No, I’ve never left you. But the only person who
has
ever left you without you trying to run them off is your mother. The rest of them were your doing.” He removed the foil lid from his yogurt and grabbed a spoon from the drawer. After he took a bite, he looked at me for a long time. “I don’t think Cam’s going to be as easy to run off as the rest of them were. But you should really stop trying to hurt him, baby girl. You’re hurting yourself in the process, too.”

The front door opened, and Cam came through it. He was still in his suit, but his tie was loose and hanging limply from his neck, and he looked like hell. As soon as he saw me, he stopped, stiff as a board, his eyes boring into me.

“You two need to talk. I’m going to bed,” Daddy said. He let Buster back inside, took his banana and yogurt with him, and went down the hall. “Good night, you two.” Buster barked excitedly and followed him.

“Hi.” Cam moved further into the kitchen. He took a glass down from the cabinet and filled it with water, keeping a little distance between us.

I couldn’t help it. Now that we were alone, and the world wasn’t racing by out of the car windows, I couldn’t stop myself from looking at him. At the worry creasing his brows. At the pain pinching the corners of his lips. At the anger tensing his shoulders. I’d caused all of that. Daddy was right. I was hurting Cam, and that was hurting me, but I didn’t know how to stop it.

“Hi,” I finally replied. Just that one little word was almost enough to force those tears to start falling, the ones that had been on the verge of spilling over since Daddy had started in on me.

He downed his water and set the glass on the counter, then took off his jacket and tie, laying them beside the glass. “Listen, I…” He scrubbed a hand over his buzzed head with a tortured sigh. “I can’t do this.”

Daddy might have been right about me, but he hadn’t been right about everything. Cam was going to leave. I’d gone too far, I’d fucked up too badly, and he was going to run out of my life even faster than he’d come into it.

I dumped the last of my tea down the drain and put my mug in the dishwasher. There were a couple of other random dishes in the sink, so I started loading them, as well, hoping to distract myself enough with mindless tasks that I wouldn’t break down in front of him. I could hold out. I could wait until he was gone, and then I could shatter.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I was awful to you, and I acted like a bitch, and you didn’t deserve that,” I started, still facing the other direction. “I’m sorry I said those things to you. I never should have, and you deserve so much better than—”

“Sara,” he interrupted. He was behind me, close enough that his breath feathered through my hair and made me shiver, and he put his hands on my upper arms. “Don’t ever try to tell me I deserve better than you. There’s no such thing as someone better than you, at least not for me.”

That simple touch felt so good, so calming, I just wanted to lean back against him, to melt into him and let him take all my pain away. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t as simple as that, no matter how much I may want it to be.

“I was horrible to you,” I said.

“You were hurting.”

“That doesn’t excuse it.” There was nothing that could excuse what I’d done, no matter how much pain I had been in, no matter how emotionally distraught and confused I may have been.

His hands slid down to my elbows and lower, until he could link his fingers through mine. “But it does explain it. I knew why you said it as soon as the words left your lips.”

“You should hate me for that.”

“There’s nothing in the world you could do that would make me hate you. I definitely can’t go from loving you so much it hurts to hating you in the time it takes you to snap your fingers. It doesn’t work that way. I’m sure as hell not as fickle as that.”

A hot tear dropped from my cheek to land on my shirt. “You said you can’t do this, though.”

“I meant I can’t handle loving you so much and knowing you’re hurting, but you keep pushing me away. I can’t handle the silent treatment, Sara. I can’t deal with you not letting me love you through it.” Still holding my hands, he wrapped our arms around my body, hugging me close to him from behind. He had to feel the tears that kept falling from my eyes. Half of them were landing on our arms. “I’m not going anywhere. I wasn’t looking for a way out. I just want to love you.”

“I want to love you, too,” I admitted on a sob. “But I don’t know if I can.”

“Why not?”

“I’m s-s-scared.” Fucking hiccups.

“Tell me what you’re scared of.” His lips pressed to the crown of my head, and he slid the pads of his thumbs along the sides of my hands. “Let me help.”

“You s-say you’re not g-going anywhere, but if I l-let myself love you, you will. You’ll l-leave. Everyone leaves me.”

“Your father hasn’t left you.”

“Everyone else h-has. My mother. All the p-people I got cl-close to with Daddy’s t-teams over the y-years. I was just s-starting to fucking love the idea of this b-b-baby, and now it’s fucking g-gone, too. I can’t—” I couldn’t keep talking. The massive sob that rushed through me buckled my knees.

Cam had me in his arms in an instant. He carried me to the sofa and sat down, drawing me onto his lap and letting me snot and blubber all over him. I cried so long and so deep and so hard that my head was throbbing and my eyes felt raw, and still the tears wouldn’t stop. He held me through it all. Not once did he tell me it would all be all right. He didn’t try to fix anything for me. He didn’t try to foist a bunch of tissues on me in the hope that it would stop. He just held me and let me get it out.

When it slowed to a drip instead of an outright flood, Cam tipped my chin up so I would look at him. “I know you’re scared. But I promise you, I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not going to stop loving you. You can’t make me.” He said the last part of that with his lips quirked up, teasing me.

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to let myself love him, this man who was so good to me even when I behaved like a shrew toward him, who had wanted to be the father of the baby I would no longer have, who was so unlike any man I’d ever let myself get close to.

I really wanted to.

But right now, my fear was bigger than my love. It was as though all the fear inside me just kept expanding, blocking out the love that was trying to seep through.

“I’m too scared to let myself love you,” I whispered.

Cam kissed the end of my nose, and then he kissed me full on the lips, even though I was disgusting from just crying up a storm. “Then I’m just going to have to work really hard so I can prove to you that I’m not going to leave you.”

TUESDAY MORNING, MY
family flew back to Winnipeg and returned to their schools and jobs and all the things that go along with everyday life. That night, the Kings beat the Coyotes in a thrilling Game Seven, but they needed three overtime periods to accomplish it. Our team was dead tired heading into the next round, but the Kings were going to be even more exhausted than we were; their series against Phoenix had been a virtual bloodbath, fast and physical, and they’d gone to the full seven games. Even though they were the higher seed and everyone expected them to walk all over us, we knew we had a chance. As long as we played the type of game we’d been built to play.

We had a few days before the second round was going to get started, and so I spent all of my free time during those days with Sara. I still had to go in for practices and team meetings, and Hammer was really pushing me harder on the ice when I stayed late after practice than he had been, since there was a possibility I would be able to play again soon. Even with all of that, I had plenty of time to prove to her that I wasn’t going to leave her. Three days after her trip to the emergency room, the cramping from her miscarriage stopped. Her tears didn’t, though. The tears probably wouldn’t stop for a long time.