Page 97 of The Promises We Were Never Meant To Keep

As much as I tell myself I don’t want to be around her, I’ve been counting down the hours until Tuesday morning when I get to see her again.

The weekend has felt like torture.

Replays of Thursday night at my parents, with her and her kids—damn, but they’ve haunted me.

Her little girl, my niece, is sweet and feisty. She looks like my brother, only prettier. And Owen. That kid reminds me of me when I was young. His passion for soccer is obvious in every word he speaks.

Over the years and through the photos Tate sent me, I feel like I know the kid. It’s weird feeling that way about someone you’re only just meeting. But I felt connected to him in a way I can’t explain. Protective.

Tate had sent me photos of Mabel, too. But never as many or as frequently as he’d send photos of Owen.

I wonder if Faye knows. I wonder if Tate knew how every photo stung like salt in the open wound of the heart they shredded with their betrayal. Because every time I looked at a picture of Owen, I couldn’t help but think he was meant to be mine.

There was once a time, a really dark time I can admit now. A time driven entirely of desperate and ugly hope that I could make Faye mine again. That I worked back from her expected delivery date to find her date of conception. I’d been crushed when I found out it would be impossible for him to have been mine.

And I remember Tate’s text when he was born too early. He’d been afraid for his new wife and son, but assured me they were well.

That had been the only text I’d ever replied to. I’d told Tate his son looked like me.

I’ve regretted that text more in the last fourteen months than I can ever explain.

More, I regret that I know Tate’s looking down on us all now. I regret that, as soon as Owen walked into my parents’ house with Faye, I took one look at the kid and had the same thought I had all those years ago. He looks like me.

Shame sucker-punches me now as it sucker-punched me then.

I wonder if Tate could somehow hear my thoughts.

It’d been hard to force an easy smile to my face. I’m not sure I could have done it if I hadn’t spent the last thirteen years in the public eye. I’m not sure I could have fooled them if I hadn’t perfected the art of fooling everyone around me, during events and interviews and paparazzi for the team.

I’ve been waiting for Tuesday to come around, but now that it’s here, I’m in a mood.

It could be worry for Dad. He goes in for surgery today.

That’s the lie I tell myself as I enter the office early. I’m way earlier than I need to be here, and way earlier than she needs to be here. Still, I’m irrationally pissed not to see her.

She has kids, man. Your brother’s kids.

That cools the flame, but only a little. I feel like a live wire. One touch and I’ll decimate.

I flick on the lights and wander across the office to her desk. There’s a sticky note on the corner, curling up on one side. Curly writing spells Tanner and an arrow and then Mrs. Kepler.

Just seeing Tanner’s name in her writing has that unchecked electricity flowing through me once again.

I scrub my hand down my face and give my head one rough shake. Then I stomp into the back office. My Dad’s office. For the next five months, my office.

I slump into the chair behind the desk and curse.

There’s shit everywhere. Blueprints are stacked on the extra desk to my left and to my right are filing cabinets stuffed to bursting with files. The man clearly hasn’t entered the twenty-first century, which is surprising given the success of Wilder Builds and Reno’s.

If I was here for more than five months, I’d be making changes. Real, big changes.

But I’m not going to be here for more than five months. Unless I really shit the bed next season, I’ve got another four years to my contract. Maybe, hopefully, if I can keep myself in shape, I’ll have more than four.

I don’t know what I’ll do without hockey. I don’t know how I’ll live. Financially, I’ll be fine. I have more than enough money to live more than comfortably for the rest of my life. It’s all the other crap that life entails. I won’t be fine with that.

Over the last thirteen years, hockey became more than just my passion. It became my life.

I don’t do anything else.