Page 58 of Score Her Heart

After our game of beer pong, I watched Dinah come over to the couch, where she and Noah looked so disgustingly cute. He pulled the tiny woman into his lap and whispered sweetly to her. I had never seen the kid look happier. I wanted what they had, but I wasn’t sure if Fi would ever feel like that about me. I went into the kitchen to find her alone and nursing a glass of water, which I guessed was good. She side-eyed me from behind the glass and put it down on the counter.

“You were right,” she stated.

“Yeah? What was I right about this time?”

Her eyes slanted into slits of annoyance at my cockiness. “That I would get along with Dinah. I’m not good at friendships.”

My heart softened at that, and I grabbed her hand. “We’re friends.”

“True, but I’m not good at keeping friends,” she explained with a sigh, and she squeezed my hand. I smelled the alcohol on her breath, so I wondered if these were melancholy drunk thoughts. “I guess that’s why it really hurt when Eric didn’t show up. It was yet another person who left.”

I cupped her face in my hands and looked into her eyes. “You know I’m not going to abandon you, right?”

She shook her head. “You already did.”

“When I left for the NHL?” I asked.

She nodded. “Everyone always abandons me. So what’s the point in getting close to anyone?”

My heart broke for the woman standing in front of me. I couldn’t believe she thought that I would ghost her out of my life. I didn’t realize it bothered her that we weren’t as close as when I left for the NHL and she left for college. She had wormed her way inside my heart when we were seventeen. Probably even way before that. She wasn’t just always on my mind; she practically lived inside my brain. It now made a lot of sense why she was so hesitant about this marriage between us. She was convinced that I was going to leave her. I didn’t know how to explain to her that was never going to happen.

“Hey,” I said to her softly. “I’m sorry you felt like I abandoned you. I’m sorry we haven’t been as close.”

She shook her head at me and looked down at the floor.

“Fi, that’s not going to happen again, okay?”

She refused to look at me and pulled away to sip her water almost coldly. Maybe keeping her at a distance had been a bad idea. She shook her head suddenly and looked up at me with a worried look. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

She shrugged.

I glanced at my watch and noticed it wasn’t too late, but I could see the party starting to peter out. “Do you want to head home?” I asked.

Her eyes got shiny then. “Do you mean to your home?”

“Fi, we talked about this. It’s our home. I want it to be our home, okay?”

She nodded. “Okay, yeah. I think vodka was a bad idea; it put me in a bad mood.”

I smiled and raised my eyebrows but didn’t say anything. We headed home in silence, Fiona thinking about whatever was rolling around in her brain, and me silent because I didn’t even know what to say. What did you say to your wife, who didn’t even want to give your marriage a shot because she was afraid she was going to lose you in the end? I never meant for her to feel like I abandoned her when I got drafted into the NHL. I knew we weren’t as close as we used to be, but part of that had been because her ex hated me and never wanted me around.

Upon our return to the condo, she got ready for bed while I cracked a beer in the kitchen. She sauntered back into the kitchen in shorts and a tank top that did nothing to hide her figure and grabbed another glass of water.

“I think I drank too much; I’m still a little drunk,” she mused.

I raised one eyebrow in response. “You want to go to bed?”

She yawned. “Yeah. I kind of have the spins.”

I abandoned my beer and led her into the bedroom. “Let’s go to bed.”

She climbed into bed while I got undressed. I slipped into the bed beside her, and I smiled when she crawled over to rest her head on my chest.

“Baby?” she whispered.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”