He continued, “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I just didn’t want you to know.” My eyes watered. “Maybe I was just waiting for you to leave so I could avoid the conversation.”
His head reared back. He blinked his eyes. “Wow! So that’s how this is?”
My anger rose. I stood so I was more even with him. “You blow into town, profess love to someone you don’t even know, and I’m just supposed to open up my soul and share my whole life with you? That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not your soul, but as soon as you knew who I was, what I did for a living, it might have been a fun conversation to have. Who we might both know, and the world I live in.”
The tears pooled.
He stepped back and put his hands back on his hips. “Oh, I get it. It’sbecauseof who we might know. Okay.” The corners of his mouth turned down in a frown. He nodded, realization dawning. “And it’s why you don’t date hockey players.”
“It’s not an experience I want to repeat.”
“You use up your hockey player allotment? I would’ve never taken you for a rink bunny.”
His words felt like a slap.
“I wouldn’t have thought you would.” I crossed my arms.
He raised his voice. “He cheat on you? Break your heart? Blah, blah, blah?”
I inhaled sharply. “Something like that.”
He leaned towards me and sneered. “Get over it. Shit happens.”
“And this is supposed to endear you to me?” I frowned.
“Let me tell you somethin’ darling, any man can cheat. Anywomancan cheat. That’s not who I am. And it isn’t who I will ever be. I may have come at you in a very unconventional way, but I’m a good guy.”
He stepped closer to me. He grabbed my cheeks in his hands and said, almost as if the words pained him, “I’m not joking when I say this, so hear me well. I’m not him. Don’t throw away a future with me because of a fucked up past with him.”
The tears overflowed. One dropped down my cheek.
He brushed it away with his thumb. “I know you, Elizabeth. I can feel you’re part of me. I knew as soon as you came back to the hospital that I would cross the planet for you.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“Tell me who he is.”
I shook my head.
“Tell me.”
“Does it matter?” I choked and pulled his hands away from my face.
“Yes!” He dropped his forehead to mine. “Because he’s keeping me from you. Woman, I adore you.”
I could barely choke out the words. “I need you to leave, Brett. I don’t want to continue this with you. I don’t want that life.”
“You can’t be serious.”
I stood. “Please.”
He chewed on the inside of his bottom lip. I was the first to look away. Then he stepped back again. “I’ll leave. But only because I have a game in three days. And if I don’t get back, they’ll suspend me again.”
“I understand.”