Be polite, be polite, be polite.
I forced a smile, and it made me think of what Winnie would say I looked like. Probably something horrible like a doe in heat with six bucks chasing her little white tail intent on a gang bang. In other words, wild-eyed. Panicked. Intent on escape at all costs.
Ridiculous, I know. But these descriptions often got lengthy.
“That’s nice.”
It’s so not fucking nice.
“But I’ve really got somewhere to be. I’ve got to go if we don’t have any real business to discuss.”
Well, that was blunt. But fuck, I was having a really hard time finding my finesse as I looked out the window to see fucking flurries falling.
Shit.
“I appreciate the effort,” I added, trying to make one of my own. “Really. But I’m sorry you came all the way out here.”
Disappointment suffused her features, but she managed to maintain her dignity. “I was actually hoping we could spend some time together—”
I stopped her before she went on with a raise of my hand and an apologetic smile. “Amelia.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. I’m seeing someone.”
She nodded and wrapped her hands around her gloves. “It had to happen eventually, right?”
I tilted my head in question.
“I always knew you’d settle down eventually.” She shrugged. “You’re a nice guy. And the nice guys almost always do.”
I reached out and squeezed her shoulder awkwardly.
I meant to stand up immediately, but for some god-awful reason—I was blaming this on Thatch and Kline—I started to talk.
“She’s amazing.” Amelia smiled as much as she could manage on the very cusp of rejection, so I went on. Babbling like a buffoon.
“She’s actually the new team physician for the Mavericks.” I blushed. “I didn’t think it was going to go anywhere—she fought me tooth and fucking nail, but yeah.”
“Wes,” Amelia said with a sweet smile. “It’s okay. I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you.”
I wanted to stop, really, I knew I was just using her for her ear at this point, but it felt so good to talk about all the things I’d been keeping bottled up for months.
“Good luck in the Divisional on Saturday. You guys have looked so strong all year.”
At the reminder of football, I finally stood up and threw on my own coat. “That’s where I’m headed now…a football game.”
Her eyebrows shot together, so I laughed and clarified. “Pop Warner. She, Winnie, my girlfriend,” I stuttered, “has a six-year-old daughter. They made it all the way to the championship game. She’s the kicker.”
Her eyes widened. “Wow. A six-year-old.”
I nodded and smiled just thinking about Lexi.
“How long have you guys been together?”
“Since October.”
“Jesus.”
I narrowed my eyes, and she covered her mouth before reaching toward me in apology. “No. God, I’m sorry. It’s just fast. Good, I’m sure it’s great, Wes. I…well, I was just thinking about myself. I don’t think I could know that quickly. Not with the added responsibility of a kid.”
My mind reeled. Sure, it’d been fast, but Lexi didn’t feel even remotely like a responsibility. And Winnie sure as fuck didn’t. “I really am sorry,” I offered again, and she nodded.
“I am too,” she murmured. “Especially if I held you up.”
I nodded.
“I’m sure they’re great, Wes,” she semi-repeated, apology in her eyes.
“They are,” I confirmed. Too good for me, that little voice of doubt whispered in my ear.
Goddamn, I hope she didn’t hold me up.
Winnie: We can’t wait to see you.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Lancaster,” my pilot said as he walked down the aisle of my plane toward me. “We’re going to be delayed. They’ve called a ground stop on all outgoing flights. Incoming planes are being diverted to Charlotte.”
I looked first out the window to the ominous dark clouds and blanket-like snow and then to my watch as sleet started to pelt the frame of the plane.
“How long?”
I knew the answer before I even asked. When the pilot came out of the cockpit to talk to me, no urgency in his manner, it wasn’t good news.
His face was apologetic. “At least a couple of hours.” He paused before admitting, “Probably more.”
I knew my face fell. I could feel it in every cell of my body.
Lex’s championship football game was supposed to kick off in an hour and a half, and I’d promised her I’d be there.
Fuck. I knew I shouldn’t have taken that extra meeting, not for the chance at the trade, not for Amelia, not for fucking anything—especially not without looking at the weather first.
“We can wait here, though. As soon as they lift the ground stop, we’re ready to fly.”
“Thanks, Josh.”
I backed out of Winnie’s message and pulled up the weather app on my phone, something she’d jokingly shown me how to do, and nearly wept when I saw the clear skies over New York and endless cover over Baltimore.
Lexi’s game was going to happen.
And I was going to be here.
As I dialed Winnie’s number and got no answer, a headache took root in the very base of my skull.
The two of them had never had a man to call their own that they could count on without question. We’d all foolishly trusted it to be me.
I hated myself—and they were going to hate me too.
It took twenty hours for the snow to clear enough that we could take off.
I’d considered renting a car, but with reports of dozens and dozens of wrecks and abandoned cars all along the interstate, Winnie had requested I not.
I’d finally gotten in touch with her—after the game—and the disappointment at my absence was stark in her voice. She’d tried to hide it, especially at the seemingly no-fault situation of a weather delay. But I’d yet to tell her all the details. That’d I’d put business before them, that I’d thought I could have everything, and that I was self-fucking-important enough to think the world would wait for me.
The whole situation literally felt toxic inside me, eating away at not only the organs, but all of the carefully cultivated happiness Winnie and Lex had planted there over the last several months.
I thought about the hours and hours they’d spent without me, waiting for my return, and the thought that I’d made a promise I hadn’t tried my absolute hardest to keep to a little girl with too few normalcies in her life plagued me.
It chewed and gnawed, and by the time I knocked on the door to Winnie’s house, I didn’t think there was anything left behind.
No certainty. No contentment. And absolutely no worthiness when it came to the love of these two women.
I’d finally decided I wanted it all, and I’d still blown it.
And now…I felt numb.
Winnie opened the door with a small smile, and I couldn’t match it.
I waited for her to usher me inside the door, then I pulled her into my arms and inhaled her smell one more time.
I had so many things I wanted to say, all of them coming together in my brain at once, but in the end, all I could say was one colossally stupid goddamn thing.
“I can’t do this.”
“I can’t do this.”
Those words hit me like a bullet to the heart, and thanks to our proximity on the porch and a day and a half of convincing myself all would be well, it was at point-blank range. The pain was damn near unbearable. My knees shook and knocked together, making it an impossibility to stand on my own, and I reached a shaky hand out and gripped the doorframe for support.
I blinked several times as I processed his words.
He can’t do this?
Over seven long years ago, I’d heard those same words from a different man as a tiny combination of the two of us grew inside of me. I could still picture Nick’s face, wide-eyed and apologetic—almost—as he told the woman to whom he’d pledged his eternal love, that a baby, a family, wasn’t in his five-year plan to dominate neurosurgery. That if I wanted to keep the life I harbored a few inches under the warm flesh of my rounding abdomen, I’d be going it on my own.
The wound felt nearly as fresh as I looked into Wes’s beautiful, wild, hazel eyes.
With a rough mental slap to bring myself back from the brink, I concentrated on the simple combination of words. So basic in their structure and vague in description, Wes could have been talking about anything. Overreaction and transference abounded in déjà vu scenarios like this.
Right?
Relax, Winnie, I told myself. Don’t dramatize his statement until you know the facts.
What…this…could he not do?
“You can’t do this?” I finally found the strength to repeat his words for confirmation, calming my voice and waiting for the relief to rush through my veins.
“I can’t,” he semi-repeated, nearly choking on the words as he pushed them out.
Programmed after months together, I reached forward and tried to pull him into my arms. Just for a minute. Just to make it stop hurting so much—for both of us.
But he stopped my progress with a tight grip on my upper arms, the prints of his fingers mottling the cold, flushed skin white.
“Winnie.”