“Sweets, you okay?” Blaise asked me.
I nodded. “I gotta go.”
“Will you come to the game tonight?”
I cocked my head at him. “You want me to come?”
He nodded. “I’ll have a ticket at will call for you.”
“Um…”
“You don’t have to.”
I thought it was important to him. Plus, if we were pretending to be dating, I knew I should probably show up and be the supportive hockey girlfriend. “Okay, yeah. I’ll call Dinah and sit with her.”
“You sure you don’t want me to drive you to the shop?” he asked.
“I’m good.”
“Sweets, let me drive you.”
I shook my head and leaned up on my tip-toes to kiss him. He wrapped a hand around my waist and held me up to meet him. He was such a big man—I forgot about our height differences when we were horizontal.
I didn’t let him get another word in and practically ran out the door. When I slept with Blaise last summer, I didn’t know my life was going to get this complicated.
Chapter Eleven
BLAISE
I watched Veronica go with a hint of disappointment. She didn’t even stay for coffee. I wondered if taking her to bed last night and asking her to stay over was a bad idea. Was I already in over my head?
“I need a coffee,” I grumbled.
I went over to the coffee pot to pour myself a black coffee. I grabbed a yogurt from the fridge and begrudgingly sat down at the table across from my dad.
He arched an eyebrow at me, the type of look he gave me whenever he was disappointed in me. Which seemed to be all the time. I didn’t know why I could never live up to my dad’s expectations. Wasn’t it bad enough that when Mom died, he mentally checked out on us all? Why did I even care what he thought about me?
“Blaise.”
“What?” I snapped.
“Veronica…” he trailed off, giving me that same look of disapproval.
I gnashed my teeth to keep from saying something I’d really regret. “You think I’m not good enough for her.”
“I never said that.”
“Not like anything I ever do is good enough. I know I’m a disappointment to you.”
“Blaise, that’s not true,” he said, sounding hurt.
“Then why do you act like my accomplishments are nothing? I know my season was shit last year, and I’m lucky the Bulldogs took me on.”
“Because you’re too much like me!” he snapped.
“What?”
He sighed. “I mentally checked out on you kids after your mom died, and it wasn’t fair to any of you.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Because I saw you do the same thing when that girl broke your heart. You wrecked a good thing with Toronto because you checked out on the career you worked for your entire life. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes as me.”
I pushed out of my chair, abandoning my breakfast. “You know what? Forget it. I’m not having this conversation with you. I don’t know why the fuck I moved back in with you.”
I stormed out of the house and sped off to the arena. I was pissed and in the wrong headspace, but hopefully I could get this shit out of my system once I got on the ice. And I was way too early for morning skate, so I turned back around, stopped at Wawa to grab another coffee and call my sister.
My sister and baby brother were twins, but Maja and I were closer than the two of them.
“Why are you calling me this early?” my sister moaned on the other line.
I laughed. “Shut up. I know you’re up this early because you have practice before class.”
“True. What’s up?”
“I got into a blowout fight with Dad.”
“What he say?”
I sighed. “That I’m too much like him, and I shut down after Astrid broke up with me, just like he did when Mom died. And then I got pissed and stormed out like I was sixteen years old again and I was the disappointing son. Like I always fucking am.”
My sister was quiet on the other line for a few seconds, and it stretched out to minutes on my end.
“Maja?”
She cleared her throat. “Um…dude, I hate to break it to you, but Dad’s right. You did exactly what he did after Mom died, only you didn’t have six little kids depending on you. I love you, big bro, but you fucked yourself last year. I was really worried about you. We all were.”
I banged my head on the steering wheel of my car. I didn’t want to become like Dad. I didn’t want to be a shell of a person or an old man who was scared to move on. This fake dating arrangement was a way to convince myself I could move on. Maybe Veronica could help me finally get over Astrid.
“I don’t want to be him,” I admitted.
“Then don’t be.”
“I’m moving on,” I protested, even though it was a huge, fat lie. “I met a girl.”
“I saw. Is Dad pissed because he told Ayden she’s off limits?”
I didn’t know if that was for real or because Dad thought Ayden needed to stop sowing his wild oats. I didn’t let Dad get another word in before I stormed out. Just like I did when I was a teenager. It was like moving back in with him sucked me into a time loop of being that angry teen who missed his mom.
“You really like this woman?” Maja asked.
“Yeah, I do,” I admitted, and it wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the truth my sister was searching for.
Veronica O’Malley was still a mystery to me, but the parts I’d seen of her I liked. Not just the sex stuff, even though that was fantastic. I got why she was so anti-relationship. I felt awful that I discovered her ex had been cheating on her and got another woman pregnant. My heart broke for how upset it made her. But I also wanted to knock that asshat’s teeth in.
“Well…” My sister trailed off. “I’m glad to see you moving on, but I have to ask you something.”
“Okay?”
“Did you get your tattoo fixed?”
I had every intention of getting Astrid’s name removed or covered up. I had seen Veronica’s work, and it was gorgeous. I wanted her to do it, but I had no idea what I wanted to get done. Her suggestion for a maple leaf made sense, but I never felt tied to Mom’s Canadian heritage.
“Not yet,” I admitted.
“Uh-huh.”
“Maja, what?”
She sighed. “I love you, bro. But if you were really over Astrid, you’d have gotten rid of that shit already.”
“I’m going to. I don’t know what to get.”
“You’ve never been indecisive about a tattoo before.”
“V suggested a maple leaf because of Mom.”
“Mom liked hibiscuses.”
Mom had like hibiscuses, and Veronica’s forte was colorful flowers. The idea of getting something for my mom, who I still missed every single day, appealed to me.
“Blaise, I have to go. I have class,” Maja told me.
“Shit, sorry. I just needed to talk.”
“I love you. You know you can call me to talk about this shit, right?”