“Don’t you give up on me now. You’re just frustrated.” A tear rolled over Clover’s cheek, but she wiped it away with a rough hand. “It’s been a long day.”
One of many.
“It’s been a long year.” I forced my gaze from her, loathing myself as a second tear threatened to fall. “And I can’t pretend anymore. You know I would do anything to make you smile, to hear your laugh, to take away your pain—”
“You do. You always have.”
And that was the biggest lie of all.
“That’s why I’m ending it. Before this all crashes down, and I can’t be the man you depend on anymore.” And that future terrified me more than anything. “I want to be the one who makes your dreams come true, but I refuse to be the man who prevents you from getting the only future you want.”
Clover had a temper on her, but she rarely got angry with me.
Now, she turned hellcat. Furious. She aimed the profanity right between my eyes.
“You’re a stupid son of a bitch, you know that?” Clover slapped at my chest. “Jesus Christ, Adrian. For once in your life, stop being so fucking noble and listen to me.”
I couldn’t.
Because the instant she talked me down was the moment I’d surrender to her forever. I had to be strong enough to know when to back away.
“It’s done.” The words cut but I didn’t bleed. Heart had broken too long ago to do me any good. “We’re done.”
“We’re nowhere near finished. We never even started.”
Clover’s breath shook, but she stuffed every bit of emotion deep down. Mine was the only shoulder she’d ever cried on, but she’d be damned before she let me see any more of her tears.
“You don’t get it,” she said. “It was my fault we never started anything. My fault that we never realized how we truly felt. Even when I knew what you wanted, I didn’t act in time. Maybe you forgot, but I couldn’t.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you remember what you said to me in the hospital after your surgery?”
What did she expect from me? I remembered nothing except excruciating, humiliating pain.
“I don’t have a fucking clue,” I said.
And this only made it worse. Clover stared at me; her eyes so bright with tears it almost disguised her sorrow.
“You asked me to marry you,” she whispered.
Blindsided, and I wasn’t even on the ice.
I staggered back. “I what?”
“For the past four months, you’ve been asking me why I’ve suddenly wanted a baby. The truth is…it wasn’t my idea. It was yours, Adrian.”
My stomach knotted, but I had some dignity remaining to not heave it over the parking lot.
“I don’t understand.”
She spoke quickly, as if she could outrun the regret. “I came to the recovery room after your surgery. You were groggy from the anesthesia. Confused, but not about this. Not about what you wanted. You took me by the hand and asked me to marry you. And when I freaked, you told me that while you were on the ice, a split second passed when you thought about your life. And it scared you. Not because you were alone. Not because of the hit.”
The words rose from the depths of my subconscious—a desire I had so long denied it felt more like a hazy dream.
“I remember the panic,” I said. The memory fizzled in the haze of my mind—a soul-crushing fear. “The instant after the hit, when the pain was so bad I thought my heart would stop on the ice…I thought about my life. Realized I had nothing except you.”
The words hung in the air.
But the confession poisoned us both.
“You said you wanted to make a life outside of the game,” she said. “If the injury was too severe and ended your career, at least you could be happy starting a family with me.”
“Don’t.”
Clover swallowed to hide the pain and failed. “You asked me for the baby, Adrian. You asked me to start a family. You asked me to be in your life forever.”
“And you agreed.” That memory returned only to punish me. “You agreed, Clover.”
“And you forgot. You fell asleep and forgot it all.”
Silence.
I looked away. “But you didn’t forget.”
“How could I? I had no idea you felt that way. And it scared me.”
“You think I wasn’t scared?”
“But the next morning, everything went back to normal. I thought…maybe it was the painkillers or the anesthesia. And so I pretended it didn’t happen. Except…”
I hated to hear it, but her confession was all that kept me standing.
“I never knew how much I wanted those things too.” Her sweet voice cracked with timid honesty. “I didn’t know how much I loved you until I let myself love you. And I do, Adrian. I always have. And I think you’ve always loved me.”
I wouldn’t admit it aloud.
Not where something so sweet could cause such heartache.
“It doesn’t make this right,” I said.
“Of course it does. It’s the only thing in this world that makes any sense now.”
No.
That made it an injustice. A tragedy.
A worthless cause that would destroy us both.
“We agreed to have a baby,” I said. “A baby is what you wanted.”
“Now I want you too.”
I had taken greater hits than this, and I’d endured a pain just as severe.
But she hadn’t. And I’d do all I could to protect her from it.
“I can’t make a baby.” My whisper frosted us in a remorseful chill. “And I don’t want you resenting me for the rest of your life because we couldn’t start a family.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“And I don’t want you thinking that you can’t start a life with someone else. Someone who can give you that future.”
“I don’t want anyone else.” Clover took my hand and placed it over her heart. “I know that now.”
“Exactly. You know it now.” I pulled away from her. The hardest two steps I ever had to take. “But what about in the future? We can fool around all we want, but sooner or later you’ll want that family more than a roll in the sheets. If we keep living in that denial, it won’t just ruin our friendship—it’ll ruin us.”
I turned from her, but Clover didn’t let me leave. She raced to the driver’s door of my SUV and blocked me from getting inside.
Defiant till the end. It was why I loved her.
“Tell me what you feel for me, Adrian Alaric. Because I know you want me as badly as I want you.”
My car keys cut into my hand. I fed off the pain. “Of course I do. But one of us has to make the right decision.”
“What are you really afraid of?” she asked. “It’s not the baby. I know that. And it’s not how you feel about me. So, what is it?”
Anger, shame, and bitter disappointment tangled into a festering pit in my chest. It hardened me from the inside, plastering misery and bile into the cracks between my ribs and down into my gut.
The pain was a comfort.
Maybe it’d help me take a harder hit. Teach me to push passed my limits in the weight room. Because after this, nothing could hurt more than what I had to do to free Clover.