Page 56 of Over the Line
I was nodding as he spoke. “That makes sense. Is that a lot of pressure for you? Being the captain?”
Liam pushed out a breath. “Not gonna lie—it’s a lot of pressure. Like I’m happy to do it, and the guys obviously trust me with it. But it does mean a lot of pressure.” He paused. “Probably one of the few things I won’t miss after I retire.”
“What else is on that list?”
“The constant traveling, for one. My own bed is a novelty for more than half the year.”
“Oh God,” I said. “That must be…” I didn’t know how to describe it.
“It’s tough. It’s the price of admission for the best job in the world, though, so…” He offered an adorably lopsided smile and a half-shrug.
I chuckled. “Yeah, I guess there has to be a downside or two to everything.”
“Right? Eh, it’s not so bad. Just means I have to play Dad sometimes.”
I snorted. “Kinda sounds like it.”
“I know, right?” He paused. “I actually had a lot of one-on-ones with Chris when he first got called up. Not bad ones—just kind of helping him find his footing.” He smiled, unaware of what that always did to my heartrate. “I don’t know how much help he actually needed, though. He was a little overwhelmed—everyone is at first—but he impressed the hell out of everyone whenever he was on the ice.”
Pride swelled in my chest. “I’m sure he did. He worked hard to get where he is. I’m glad to see it paying off.” I paused. “And I’m glad to, you know, see it. In person instead of entirely on TV.”
Liam’s smile faded. “That must’ve been hard.”
“It was. It was hard with all the kids, but they weren’t constantly on TV or mentioned in articles, you know?” I exhaled. “It was kind of… salt in the wound, I guess. But I’m glad we’re past that now. It’s been amazing to actually see him regularly.”
“I bet.” There was something in his expression that I couldn’t quite read. Something that gave me an unpleasant spike of anxiety.
I cleared my throat. “What’s on your mind?”
“Well…” He gazed offscreen for a moment. “I guess, if you don’t mind me asking…” He studied me for a few beats. “What happened with you and Chris? When things got… um…”
I winced and pulled my gaze away from my own screen. “Why were we estranged?”
“Yeah. You don’t have to tell me. I’m just curious.”
“You’re fine. It’s just… It’s tough to talk about. It wasn’t my finest hour, let me tell you.”
He didn’t answer, and when I looked at him again, his eyebrows had climbed with a mix of alarm and curiosity.
Well, damn. Now I’d tipped my hand far enough to let him speculate, which meant I needed to show these cards before he imagined the worst.
Guilt wound my insides into knots, but I kept going. “Taylor and I, we were that couple who stayed together for the kids. We were absolutely miserable together, and by the time our oldest was in fourth grade, we both knew we weren’t going to make it.”
“But you stayed together?”
“We thought it would be better for them. We’d always heard so many people talking about broken homes and how divorces are terrible on kids, and…” I shook my head. “It never occurred to us that us staying married would be worse for them.”
“Oh, shit,” he whispered.
“We thought the best thing was to stay together until our youngest was out of high school.” My shoulders sagged as I pushed out a breath. “We were so, so wrong about that.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “In hindsight, it’s so damn stupid. I mean, we fought…” I huffed out a breath. “God, we fought so much. Like, all the time, over every goddamned thing. If we weren’t fighting, we weren’t talking at all. But people always talked about how a broken home hurts kids, and we’d been through our own parents’ divorces… We just never realized that we’d hurt our kids so much more by staying together than by splitting up.”
“I’ve always wondered about that,” Liam said. “If a divorce is really worse for kids than… well, that.”
“I found out the hard way. When we finally did split up, the kids—especially the oldest two—were absolutely livid. Turned out they’d been hoping and praying for years that we’d separate. We thought we’d kept it out of sight, but…” I shook my head.
