“Tell me about what you’re making right now.”
He blinked at me, and I could see all the questions he had building up inside, but maybe I gave off vibes that I needed to think about something else. Finally, he gestured at the bench.
“I’m working on a commission for my brother. Callum, I mean,” he said and took a step to the side so I could see better. “It’s a Christmas gift for Brooke, with the shell, and some semi-precious stones. He wanted it for when your sister has the baby.”
I examined the tiny collection of small, pale-rose crystals. “Are those diamonds?”
“It wouldn’t have made sense to spend the entire budget on diamonds, so we compromised,” he murmured.
I had a lot of diamonds I could have given him—tiny ones—in a safe at my bank set into my Stanley Cup ring, which had tiny gems forming the image of a twenty-nine, my jersey number. Maybe I should get the diamonds taken out and give them to Bailey to make them into something new—maybe an item for every member of my family.
“This is actually rose quartz,” he murmured, and used tweezers to hold one up to the light. “It’s worth more to him and Brooke than diamonds. It’s the stone of universal love, and these ones are clear. You can see.”
I stared at the small gem so hard my eyes crossed, and I didn’t imagine for one minute I saw the same thing in the stone as Bailey did. “Pretty.”
He smiled, and I could see the enthusiasm in his expression. “Callum came up with the idea—showed me a fifty-thousand-dollar Bulgari necklace from their Christmas collection and asked if I could use it to inspire the color scheme on a lower budget.”
“Wait, your brother went into an actual jewelry store?”
Bailey shook his head, and the faint hint of a smile curved his lips. “No, he found it online, so I looked at what he showed me and drew some designs.” He pointed to a sketch book, and I saw a watercolor of the design and of my sister cradling a tiny baby.
“That’s stunning.” I knew Bailey drew designs for his jewelry, but this small painting was on another level.
“Thanks.” He dipped his head.
“Is that part of the gift?” I gently picked up the painting, tilting it and catching the soft smile on my sister’s lips.
“No, that’s just for me.”
“If you sell it, I would love to have it.”
“It’s not for sale, it’s for my wall.” He took the painting from me and frowned, and yet again, I felt as if I’d said something wrong.
“It’s very pink.” I indicated the design.
“Pink is Brooke’s favorite color.”
“Bet you can’t guess what my favorite color is,” I blurted, because I had zero conversational skills around Bailey. Half of me wanted him to know that my favorite color was red, the other half was scared he didn’t know at all.
He wrinkled his nose and then checked me out head to toe.
“Harriers’ blue,” he said. “Obviously, because it’s all you wear, and I don’t just mean the team jerseys, because even your non-Harriers clothes are blue.”
“Harriers’ blue doesn’t define me. Not now.”
He sighed heavily. “I have to work; you really need to go.”
Well, that deteriorated fast, and I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay in his workshop and talk some more.
“I need to apologize—”
“You already did.”
“I didn’t mean to walk away.” I sounded so desperate, and I still wanted to kiss him. The need for it was right at the front of my thoughts, and I even moved closer. “You understand I wasn’t in a good place and—”
“Yeah, I get that; I do understand.”
“It’s been the worst year, and the best now that I’ve decided to quit,” I said, a little desperately, and reached for him, my fingers closing around his biceps and sliding up to his shoulder.
“You have to go. I need to work.” He was agitated now, eyes wide. He shifted back and away from me, heading to the door, and yanking it open, letting in a blast of icy air and not a small amount of snow, which drifted lazily into the space.
“Bailey, I have all these feelings for you, and if you still feel the same way that you wrote in the wish…” I stopped talking because fuck, what did I just say?
“What?”
Shit. Shit. Shit. “The wish when you were fifteen that you put on the tree.”
He went so pale I thought he was going to keel over, I even reached for him, but he evaded me. “How do you know what I wrote?”
“I went back—”
“And what? Took my wish down?” He was scarlet again, but this wasn’t embarrassment.
“It was on the ground. I went back with my dollar for the honesty jar, and I recognized the ribbon, and I saw it there and—”
“What? You read it?”
“I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to keep it safe. Please, Bailey.”
“How could you even do that!”
I shook my head and stepped closer, cradling his face, the tips of my fingers brushing his curls. He’d been so dear to me for so long without me even realizing it. He was so beautiful, so much in my heart, but I didn’t know how to explain all of that to him when I’d made him so angry through my own stupidity.
His eyes were wide as he stared at me, and I could’ve leaned forward and kissed him.
“Please don’t hate me.”
He shook me off, couldn’t meet my gaze, and it seemed as if I was losing him. I backed away, but on impulse I took out my wallet, and pulled out a familiar card—the one with his wish, and placed it on the counter, patting it. “I carry it with me everywhere, to every game, it’s my lucky charm, it grounds me.”
Bailey pressed his hands over his ears. “Oh my god!”
“When you’re ready, I really want to talk to you, about the wish, about the silk, about last summer, about the dreams that made me… no… about everything,” I wanted to cry at seeing Bailey’s eyes glittering with emotion. I didn’t want to leave this space where Bailey had smiled at me and showed me his work. “I think we should see if maybe you can forgive me for fucking everything up. Maybe we could even get a kiss that means something.”
His mouth fell open, and he tensed his hands in fists at his side. “No.”
I left then, knowing I’d fucked up again. In what universe was it the best thing to admit I’d read the wish, or hell, kept the wish? When the door shut at my back, I stared up at the falling snow for the longest time. Maybe I should stay there until I was covered, and then kids could come up and decorate me, put a sign up—idiot retired hockey player with regrets, who has no fucking idea what he’s doing. What had happened to going in, explaining in the most rational fashion that over the last few years I’d been falling for him, one family event at a time? That wasn’t what had happened. Instead, I’d had verbal diarrhea where nothing had made sense.
“Can we get your autograph?”
I snapped out of my funk, pulling my coat closed and peering down at a couple of teenagers with hopeful expressions.
“Of course.” They stared up at me, and this was where I signed a picture, or something like that. “Uhm, do you have a pen or paper or something?”