“Okay,” I say carefully, because now he’s thrown me off. “?‘Our’ deception. Brooke was so worried about you that she thought she was doing the right thing by making you believe she was in a relationship with me.”
Coach glances over at the stragglers deplaning before looking back to me. He steps in closer and looks me right in the eye. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. You and Brooke were bullshitting no one. At least not me. You may have had others fooled, but I knew from the minute she told me you two had been dating that it was nothing but pure bullshit.”
“Excuse me?” I say, completely stunned.
“Do you not think I know my own daughter, Scott?” His pointed use of calling me by my last name rather than Bishop tells me he’s still very much pissed, though. “Do you think that sweet and caring woman who pretty much took care of me for months after her mother died could make me believe she was dating someone without me knowing it? Especially when she spent all her time either working or checking up on me? I was on to Brooke’s game from the start.”
“Then why didn’t you call us out on it?” I ask him.
Coach looks away again, and this time I think it’s to hide the sadness in his eyes. When he finally gives me his attention again, his expression is composed, but his words are still packed with emotion. “I didn’t call her out because when I walked into that office and saw you two close together, I saw something on her face that I’d not seen in a very long time. And it was happiness. I had been so mired in my own grief that I let Brooke put her life on hold to help pull me out of it. I took advantage of her, and I thought, why not go along with her shenanigans? She clearly liked you. This was obviously going to be exciting, seeing if you could hoodwink me, right?”
“Um…right.” Although I fucking have no clue what’s right or wrong anymore. “But why push the engagement? That was ridiculous.”
“It was fun,” Coach tells me bluntly. “As a father, it was my prerogative to make you sweat a little for even thinking you two could pull one over on me. Consider it my payback for the lie to begin with. Which, by the way, makes me kind of sorry you went and spent money on a ring.”
“I didn’t,” I correct him. “It’s my mom’s. She let us borrow it.”
Coach’s eyes flash with slight surprise, but then it’s gone. I guess it’s neither here nor there to him.
“If you knew about the charade, then can I ask why you seem to be very pissed at me right now?” I ask him.
“Because all this shit is out in the open and part of it is on you,” he tells me. “It’s on Brooke too, and I’m not happy with her either, but I’m also worried about her, which makes me slightly more pissed off at you. Plus you’re the closest to me right now to take it out on. I have no clue if you’re fucking with my daughter’s emotions or not.”
“I can assure you I am not,” I say. “We may have started this out as one thing, but it turned into something else. I care for your daughter a great deal. There are no lies or deceptions when I tell you that, and I’ll tell Brooke too as soon as I can talk to her. I’m headed to her house right now.”
“Don’t bother,” Coach says, and for a moment I think he’s saying it because he’s forbidding me to see his daughter. But then he adds, “She’s in New York.”
“What?” I snarl, completely outraged that she’s in another state and I can’t see her, as well as really fucking pissed he knows this and I don’t. “When did she go to New York?”
“Last night,” he says, and I can hear the empathy in his voice. “She wanted to get away from this fiasco, especially since it was going to hit the news. She asked me not to tell you because she didn’t want to get your head all messed up. She wanted you to play good hockey, and she was right to hold it from you for that very reason.”
“Then I’m headed to New York on the first available flight,” I tell him.
“We have a home game Saturday,” he points out.
I didn’t need the reminder. It was in the wee hours of Thursday morning and I knew this would be tight. “I should be back by then, but only if your daughter is on the plane with me. If not, you can put me on the injured list. My hamstring has been acting up lately.”