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“I’ve been better.” Might as well be honest since lying is what got us here in the first place.
“I could have handled things with more grace the other night,” he says as we take the elevator back to street level.
“You could have,” I agree. “But I’m also aware it was a shock.”
His expression is sad. “I just want to understand why you felt you had to lie.” The elevator doors open, and I follow him back into the warm spring afternoon.
“So many reasons.” I look up to the sky. “I was breaking the only rule you ever really enforced. And not with just any player, but with your best friend.”
His jaw tics, and darkness clouds his expression. “He should have come to me. It would have been the right thing to do.”
“But he didn’t. Because I asked him to wait.” And it took us months to even get on the same page. When we finally did, he put my wishes ahead of his own, because I told him that’s what I wanted. But all it took was my dad’s anger for Hollis to change his mind about me, about us.
He holds the diner door open for me. Our preferred table in the back corner is open, so we grab menus and slide into the booth.
“Just the two of you today?” Rainbow asks as she drops off coffee and waters.
I force a smile. “Just the two of us.” We’re back to how it used to be.
We order the usual, and she hustles off.
“But why did you ask him to wait?” Dad asks.
I hear the hurt. The still-present anger.
“Because I was afraid. I still am,” I admit.
“Of what? Why hide this from me for all these months?”
The bucket tips and the truth spills out. “What if you left me? What if I was too much? What if you hated me? What if all the sacrifices weren’t worth it and you should have left me with Mom?” I’m terrified that this could be the thing to break us. That everything I’ve tried to do to make his life easier will be erased with this one betrayal. “What if you resent me for taking your best friend away from you along with everything else?”
His expression shifts, anger fading into something like horror and then sadness. “Sweetheart, I could never resent you, or hate you. You are my entire world and you have never been too much to handle.” His eyes slide closed for a moment and when they open, I see his pain. He reaches across the table, and I set my hand in his. “Loving you, getting to be your dad, to have this relationship with you, to be in your life like I am? That was not a sacrifice for me, it was a sacrifice for Zara. It was the hardest thing she has ever done, and I am so fucking proud of her for it, because I know how deeply she loves you. And she would do anything for you, even if it meant having to love you from a distance.”
“I never wanted to be a burden for you,” I admit softly. “I thought if I could be the perfect daughter?—”
“I don’t expect you to be perfect, honey. That’s an impossible ask of anyone. You are a gift. You will always be my first priority. Our bond is special. We’re a team, you and me.”
“I know.” I line my silverware up on my napkin, relief over hearing this from him giving me the courage to say the things I need to. “But then I started working with Hemi. And I stopped being a student, and I started being a professional. I stopped seeing Hollis as your best friend, and he stopped seeing me as his best friend’s daughter.”
“Then that’s when he should have come to me.”
I swallow down the fears. “I was trying to protect you, Dad. And myself. I thought I could manage it all, have it all.” I roll my lip between my teeth. “And when I tried to bring it up, you weren’t particularly receptive.”
Dad arches a brow. “If Hollis was doing to you what Tristan does to Rix, I would have a hard time not putting him six feet under.”
For half a second, I consider defending Tristan, but decide against it. “Okay. Fair. But can you at least see why your reaction scared me from saying something?”
“But it was months of hiding.”
“All you have is me—and hockey and your teammates and Hollis, Dad. You’re so focused on me that you don’t leave room for anyone else. I was so focused on proving myself, to the team, to you, to me. And I was terrified of your reaction, and what the fallout would be.”
His expression grows pained. “There is nothing you could do that would make me stop loving you.”
More tears leak out of my eyes, and my dad moves from his side of the booth to mine and wraps his arms around me.
“I hate that I disappointed you,” I murmur.
“You haven’t, honey.” He kisses the top of my head. “I wish I’d left room for you to be honest. And it doesn’t help that he’s only six years younger than me.”
