Page 5 of He Has Santa

“Did you tell him who I was?”

She nods. “I had to tell him. He was my husband. And if I wanted to stay married, I had to keep Nicky from you. I understood why. He didn’t want another man interfering.”

I’m not another man. I’m her father.” I’m the man who was supposed to be the love of your life.

“He was committed—”

“Were you committed? To David?” I’m having a hard time digesting how she could run from me and attach herself so quickly and permanently to another man. The knowledge breaks me down. The knot of emotion rises from my gut, and I can feel my own unshed tears. I know they’ll stay unshed, like always. I’m defective that way. Had it pounded into my sorry soul that real men don’t cry. Not even when they need to, they punch walls instead. Sometimes they punch opposing players on the ice even when it’s a damn stupid idea.

We both know I’m asking if she loved David because I wondered how the hell she could have married the bastard a month after breaking up with me, after what we had. After all, I know she loved me. What we had was so real I still feel it to this day, even after betrayal and absence. And new fresh knowledge of another far worse betrayal.

Did she throw it all away because she thought she caught me kissing her friend? Sharon.

I’d been horrified that she didn’t trust me. Truly afraid, like the bottom had fallen out of all my confidence because she was the one sure thing in my life; her love was the solid ground I stood on. The one thing that I could always count on, that I knew was true and real.

Sure, she had moments, confessed about some jealousy. In my mind, what we had was so big, the idea of jealousy wasn’t real. We were eighteen. What did I know about proving myself to her, about insecurity and instilling confidence? I trusted her completely with my heart and soul, with my whole life. I’d invested everything I had in her, in us. And I’d made the mistake of believing she’d done the same.

She’s silent, and I see the pain on her face, identical to the pain in my chest.

I ask her again, “Were you committed to David?” Still not brave enough to ask point-blank if she loved him.

She doesn’t answer me, stares at me pained and silent, her eyes pleading and boring into me. What did she want from me? Forgiveness?

“So, you went off with a total stranger, married him, and had my child with him?” Disgust—mostly at myself for my cowardice and stupidity of six years ago--and pain mingle in my words producing an animal-like growl like the words were being ripped from me, leaving me bloody.

“I didn’t know until—”

“Yeah, I got that. Until after you were married to him. How could you—” I stop myself. She looks so pale all of a sudden, as if she’s been the one bleeding and is empty and about to collapse.

“Logan…”

“I would have married you, June,” I whisper the words, knowing they’re true. I’m an asshole for not telling her this six years ago when it would have mattered.

Technically I could have married her, could have at least gotten engaged, but we were young. And after the kiss, I was hurt, wasn’t sure she would even say yes. But I went out to buy a diamond anyway to prove that I was serious about her and wanted no one else. A week after our blow-up, I brought the ring with me to the bakery with grand plans. But I never asked her.

Instead of going inside and getting down on one knee like a cheesy cliché that I knew she’d tease me about forever because she was all about mocking cheesy clichés, I didn’t go inside. I stood on the sidewalk outside because what I saw in the window rifled through me like an arctic wind, freezing me solid.

She was flirting with some guy—who I now know was David—smiling at him and laughing, putting her hand on his arm. She’d touched that bastard. As soon as I saw that, blood lust shook me, and I wanted to bust inside and lay the guy flat.

But then I remembered. She ditched me. I almost puked on the sidewalk. She wasn’t mine anymore. Maybe we didn’t have the relationship I thought we had after all. Because I damn well believed we had the kind of relationship where she’d never in a million years flirt with some guy—not unless he was over seventy or under ten the way she did with the mailman and the kid next door, Smitty.

So, in another one of those cheezy cliché moves, I walked away like a wooden yet prideful shell, my emotions frozen. The empty crate on the sidewalk that I nearly tripped over had more life in it than I had. My efforts to kill the crippling hurt tearing at my soul ended up killing everything else in me with numbness, but at least I avoided feeling the loss, right?

The agony of betrayal didn’t stand a chance against the prideful, self-righteous anger I threw at it. In the end, all the life-sapping emotions canceled each other out in a storm that took me on a bender lasting several days and a dozen bottles of JD. My stubborn refusal to talk about it or deal with it in any way except to bury the tortured loneliness under as much anger and then indifference as I could find carried me right up to the dorm door and my first day at Dartmouth.

Then my devotion to hockey and fulfilling that dream took over. Except that my dogged pursuit held a boatload of empty satisfaction. At first. But team friendships, winning championships, and reaping the fruits of hard work finally gave me back some of the life I’d lost.

The one thing I never got back, though, was the desire, maybe even the ability to fall for another woman. Those feelings would never get stirred up in me for the rest of eternity.

Or so I thought until now.

CHAPTER 4

JUNIE

How could I feel so faint with my heart beating so hard? I step back and lean against the counter. I knew it would be like this. All those feelings for Logan resurfaced with a vengeance the minute I walked back into town, into my old life, as if my marriage to David and life in New York City had all been a dream, a pretend world I’d constructed to keep me from dwelling on all that I’d lost, all that I could have had with Logan. And Nicky. The life I’d thrown away because I was too afraid to take the all or nothing risk. Well, I lost anyway, didn’t I? Lesson learned. Don’t do that again—don’t ever be such a damn coward.

“Are you alright?” He takes a step closer, puts a hand on my arm like he needs to touch me. The contact shouldn’t make me feel better. Its warmth is too temporary, but it’s real and solid, and it’s Logan, so the touch has those superpowers that raise me from wherever I am to the next level, to the sky.