And how did I explain just how much I needed to fix after I’d fucked up everything? I’d gone home five months ago, in the heat of the Summer for a short visit, fresh from yet another operation on my wrist, on medication, and five, or eight, or whatever beers later, everything had gone to shit. Nearly ten years to the day that Bailey Haynes said he loved me under the oak tree, I’d gone home, gotten drunk, and been an asshole to my family, and to him. Torn between hockey and the rest of my life and desperately searching for answers, I’d taken everything out on the only people who I could be myself with. Family and friends.
Bailey.
You need to breathe, Kai.
Bailey’s soft words as he hugged me to calm me down, were imprinted in every single thought I’d had since then, grounding me.
He’d followed me to the front yard after my epic meltdown, the one where I told my dad that he was wrong to date again, before arguing with my sister. I didn’t remember much of what happened after, but I do remember Bailey being there, telling me to breathe, and I remember wanting to cry as he held me and told me that I needed to go back to the table and fix things with my dad and sister.
I’d wanted to hold him forever, never quite able to vocalize my feeling for him that had followed me after the wish and never left my head. I’d fallen for him slowly, but surely, and the urge to lose control and kiss him hit me like it did every time I saw him. I couldn’t be the man he needed; I couldn’t give him one hundred percent of myself when hockey stole so much of me. I was wrong for him, and I’d panicked and shoved him away, telling him that he couldn’t make me do a damn thing, and all I can recall now was his devastated expression.
I remember how the rest of that shitty day had played out, no one knowing what to say to me, and shame and embarrassment chased me back to Albany.
I shouldn’t have hurt my family; I shouldn’t have shoved Bailey away and denied how I felt.
But I’d done both. Bailey, and my affection for him, had grown into something altogether more dangerous and out of control—attraction, lust, need and so much love it took my breath away. But I’d scared him in the summer—hell, I’d scared myself. In the dreams I had now, it was the hottest day all over again and there were no arguments, just the unending love of family. And in the same dreams I spoke to Bailey about tight silk, and I always kissed him gently—a soft brush of our lips that was everything my dreams told me I needed.
“Earth to Kai,” Tony pulled me back to the here and now.
“Sorry, I was thinking, what was the question again?”
He didn’t call me on my inattention. “I asked, why retire now?”
“I’m thirty-one, it’s been a good run.” It was a rehearsed answer, but it seemed to be what he needed to hear.
“What will you do next?”
“I’ve not thought much past Christmas.” I lied. I knew what I wanted to do—go home to Wishing Tree, to Bailey. I wanted my family and friends to forgive me for what I’d done, then to make a new life for myself, buy a house, be the best uncle to my nieces and nephews, and most of all, finally tell Bailey Haynes, Angel, that I loved him.
The Harriers had wanted me to stay, offered me another year once my fitness levels were back to what they’d been before my wrist surgery, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I told them no, much to my agent’s surprise and the shock of the entire team. They believed I’d stay, that hockey was what made me who I was, but for the longest time it had been anything but the thing I needed. With the best kind of grace and dignity, I’d thanked them for the years I’d played and decided that now was the time to follow my dreams.
Hockey wasn’t everything—I was broken and tired of the thing that took me away from home, and most importantly away from love.
Bailey Haynes. Angel.
I was going home to learn how to breathe again, to get my flirting game to the point where Bailey realized what I was doing—maybe even tell him I loved him the moment I saw him, so he knew how I really felt? Only, how did I explain that to the reporter who was looking for click-bait hockey soundbites? I had options to do something different, and I prayed it wasn’t too late for a chance at the most important from a hundred different futures, and maybe if I was lucky, it would be with Bailey in my life.
“Kai is taking time to decide between many options for his future,” my confused agent leaped in to fill the silence while I lost myself in thoughts of Wishing Tree and Bailey.
I snapped back to the interview. “Maybe there will be a role for me in hockey again, but not right now.”
“Was it medical issues that forced your hand? Did the Harriers ask you to leave?”
I blinked at Tony, and for a second, I wrestled with the enormity of the answer. It was the growing emptiness in my heart, and a dream of a wish under an oak tree that forced my hand, not the team I played for. I’d watched so many teammates find love, been the best man at three of the weddings, and in all that time, I’d been hiding myself, and thinking about one man and what he meant to me.
I need home. I need Bailey. I need to make things right.
Before I’m too late.
“No, this is all on me,” I murmured.
“I think that’s all for the questions, Tony.” Archie stepped in front of me, and I’d never been more grateful for six feet of Brooklyn stubbornness standing between me and anything else I didn’t want to answer. “This is a copy of Kai’s full statement, thanking the team, and the fans, with all the usual reassurances about his health and so on. It will appear on the Harriers’ social media Sunday morning at seven a.m. EST.”
“My interview will go live the same time,” Tony said, then stood and held out a hand to me. “It’s been a pleasure to annoy you after games,” he said with a smirk. “I hope you find your happy place now.”
“I will, I’m sure.” Back home.
I saw Tony to my front door, shook his hand again, then closed it on him, leaning there for a moment.
“What now?” Archie asked, clutching his precious notebook to his chest. He was old-school like that, everything written down in longhand, but then he was close to retiring at sixty-two, and kept telling me the old ways were the best. Maybe he was right—in an age of texting emojis, there was an intimacy in writing. He had to come to terms with one of his clients deciding to retire all on his own account, but he’d never tried to stop me.
“I’m going home for good now.”
“To Oak Tree?”
“Wishing Tree,” I corrected him, and smiled at the fond memories conjured up by hearing the name of the town where I’d grown up.
It was time to go home and face up to all the things I’d messed up with my family, apologize to my dad and sister, offer a ton of babysitting, have beers with old friends, and maybe get my head on straight. Find out if I could work hard and make my dreams a reality. I’d spent so many years flirting with Bailey, and then pulling back, scared of hurting him, terrified of having nothing to offer him, and I couldn’t do this anymore. I needed to be honest with him, and to say I loved him and that he was my everything.
Archie and I stared at each other for the longest time, and I could see my agent’s brain spinning, until finally, he folded his arms across his chest and smiled.