Page 31 of His for the Holiday

“No.” He stopped too, coming to stand right in front of me on the sidewalk and looking deep into my eyes. “I regret what happened, okay? I was a kid and I made a mistake, but I wasn’t embarrassed of you.”

I snorted, folding my arms over my chest. My heart started smarting all over again. “My dad was right. We should’ve just stayed away from each other.”

As I started to turn away from him, he caught my hip in a gentle grasp and flexed his fingers just hard enough that I knew he wanted me to stop.

“Can I please just say this without you walking away from me?”

“Fine.” I spun back to him, hating how much I liked having his hand on my hip like that. In a way that was almost as possessive as Hailey’s touch had been earlier. “What do you want to say, Hawk?”

“That I’m sorry,” he said, his voice raspy but honest, almost like he was struggling with the words, meaning them but not quite believing he was actually saying them out loud. “All I wanted back then was to keep what we had to myself, but it was never because I was embarrassed of you, Sutt. It was because the only time I could just be myself was when I was with you. I had to be the all-star hockey player with everyone else, but you let me just be me. I wanted to hold on to that.”

He drew in a shuddering breath, but he wasn’t done yet. “I didn’t realize what I was doing to you until it was too late. By the time I figured it out, you were just gone. You didn’t return my calls. You wouldn’t come to the door when I went to your house.”

“I never wanted to see you again,” I admitted, tears stinging the backs of my eyes. “You hurt me, Hawk. Badly.”

“I know,” he said, eyes still drilling into mine. “Your disappearing act was no picnic either. Coming home sure would’ve been a lot easier if you hadn’t been here.”

We stared at each other for a moment, and I knew I wanted him to kiss me but I refused to admit it. The way he was looking at me made me wonder if he felt the same way. As if he was trying not to act on his feelings either.

But we both lost the battle at the same time, crashing into each other like we’d spent the last ten years waiting for the opportunity to do it again.