Chapter 27

Marek

My teammates are loud and boisterous as we enter the locker room following our victory.

Not me, though.

I am in a deep, dark mood. I viciously slam my stick into the vertical cubby that holds my personal gear, trying to ignore the backslapping and congratulations going on around me. I shrug my gloves off, and after sitting on the bench, I unlace my skates as I mull over what a fantastically shitty day I’ve had.

It’s started off great before nose-diving into an abyss from which I can’t seem to escape.

I took Lilly ice-skating with the idea that she would learn a little bit about what her father does for a living. I sure as fuck didn’t expect her to end up in the emergency room with a split lip and a loose tooth. I almost had a heart attack as some hellion-type kid chasing another hellion-type kid around the ice clipped Lilly’s legs. I had been letting her hold on to my fingers as I skated behind her, and it happened so fast and so forcefully that she was ripped away from me.

I’ve seen blood pouring onto the ice a million times from various injuries and cuts while playing, but it’s a completely different matter when it’s your daughter’s blood. I may have lost my shit and yelled at the two kids whose parents came over and were duly apologetic. I wanted to kill those little fuckers.

I realize kids get hurt. I realize Lilly is going to get hurt again. But I wonder if I have the fortitude to survive that stuff, because having to take her to the hospital had knocked about ten years off my life. The day got only shittier when Gracen blamed me for everything.

What sucks the most is that she’s probably right. I should’ve asked her if it was okay and we should’ve talked about it. I was skating at Lilly’s age, but it doesn’t mean she was ready, and when it boils right down to it, I don’t know much about my daughter. How can I make such a judgment call about her abilities when I’ve known her for a month and a half?

The craptacular way I played during the game tonight is just icing on the cake.

I knew Gracen wasn’t in the stands watching me and was in fact probably packing her bags to leave. My head just wasn’t in the game, because all I could do was keep replaying our last conversation.

The vicious cycle we keep repeating. It’s formulaic.

Cause and effect.

Never ending.

She gets mad. I get mad. I throw it in her face that she’s deceitful for keeping Lilly a secret. She throws it right back in my face that she had no choice because of the way I dumped her. These are weapons in our arsenals and we have no hesitation in using them against each other. It’s fucked up and unnecessary.

What I don’t understand is why I can’t let it go. Why she can’t let it go. We’re together again. We’re a family.

The only thing I can conclude is that perhaps we don’t belong together. If we were really forgiving of each other, then we’d be able to truly let these things go. The fact that we can’t perhaps is an indication that we’re all wrong for each other.

That thought makes my stomach flip, and it’s Gracen I’m thinking about, not Lilly, in this moment. I know Lilly will always be mine. I know no such thing about Gracen.

A hand slams down onto my shoulder with enough force that I feel it through my padding. I look up and see Reed grinning down at me. “For someone that just won an important game tonight, you look awful pissy.”

I glare at Reed and mutter, “That win didn’t happen because of me.”

I missed passes, checks, and screen attempts. My legs seemed to be filled with lead, and I felt about two seconds behind on everything. It was probably one of the shittiest games I’ve ever played in my life.

“Dude,” Reed says with concern in his voice as he sits down beside me on the bench. “What’s wrong?”

I glance at him with a sharp look. “Didn’t she tell you?”

“Didn’t who tell me what?”

“Lilly fell when I took her ice-staking this morning. I had to bring her into the emergency room and Josie treated her.”

His look of concern intensifies. “She wouldn’t have told me anything because of doctor-patient privilege. Is Lilly okay?”

I blow out a frustrated breath and my head hangs low. “She cut her lip and had to have a few stitches.”

“That’s why you played like shit tonight. You were worried about Lilly.”

I sit up straight and turn to look at my friend. The one man who was always on Gracen’s side from the get-go and worked hard to make sure I got my head out of my ass. I’m actually grateful for it in hindsight, so I don’t have any problems with being truthful to him. “Gracen and I got into a huge fight this afternoon about me taking Lilly ice-skating. She blamed me for her injury, we said a lot of nasty shit to each other, and just before I left for the arena, she told me she wants to go back home to New York with Lilly.”

Reed shakes his head as if in denial. “No way. She wouldn’t do that.”

I give a snort of skepticism. “You weren’t there, man. She was beyond pissed, and we said some really shitty things to each other. We can’t seem to fucking help ourselves. Can’t seem to let the past go.”

“Did you mean the shitty things you said to her?” he asks me curiously.

I give him an exasperated look. “Of course not. We all say stupid stuff when we’re mad.”

“Then I would suggest she probably didn’t mean that about leaving either. I think you two need to talk this out.”

“We’re not the best communicators,” I grumble.

Reed gives me a slight punch to my upper arm. “Then I would also suggest you learn to be a communicator. You stand to lose your daughter, so I can’t think of a better reason to get your shit together.”

I stand to lose Gracen as well, and that scares the shit out of me as much as losing Lilly does. My head drops and I stare down at my unlaced skates.

“Do you love her?” Reed asks, and that question makes me jerk. My head snaps to the right to look at him.

He repeats. “Do you love Gracen? The way you used to?”

I think I love her more. The knowledge slams into me like a wrecking ball punching through concrete.

This isn’t the same young woman that I loved all those years ago. This is a woman who almost died to have my child. Who was an amazing mom to my child when I wasn’t there. She suffered so much all on her own to give Lilly life and security.

Yeah…I love her differently.

More.

Infinitely more.

Reed watches me as I work this out in my head, and while I don’t admit any of this to him, he can see on my face that I’ve reached a conclusion about my feelings. He slaps me on the back and grins. “I’m confident you’ll figure this out.”

Maybe. I need to figure out how to make this right. How do I ensure this doesn’t happen again?

And I know where I need to go to get my answer.

---

I knock on my parents’ front door, and within moments, my dad opens up. He doesn’t seem surprised to find me here. He was at the game and saw how horribly I played. He was at the hospital and saw my worry over Lilly. He felt the terrible tension between Gracen and me, and he also knew we had a serious talk at the house.

“Rough game,” he says as I step over the threshold.

“Yeah,” I admit as I shut the door behind me.

“Want a beer?”

“Yeah.”

I head into the living room while my dad goes into the kitchen. My mom is reading a book on the couch and she looks at me with sympathy as I cross over to her.

Bending over, I give her a kiss on the cheek. She pats the side of my face softly and doesn’t need to say a thing in return. She knows I’m here to talk to my dad, because he’s always been my sounding board for advice.

She stands from the couch, turns, and points to it for me to sit. “I’m going to head to bed now.”

I nod and flop down. Dad returns holding two opened bottles of Molson. My mom pats him on the stomach as she brushes past him and then she disappears.

Dad hands me a bottle and then sinks back into his recliner. He doesn’t cock it back but sits on the edge, leaning toward me attentively. He waits patiently for me to talk.

I take a sip of the beer, and when I lower my bottle, I lock my eyes with my dad’s. I’ve never held back from him. While my mom loves me as unconditionally as my dad, he’s always been the one I’ve sought when I’ve needed to bare my soul.

“Gracen wants to go back to New York,” I say, deciding to jump right to the issue.

“Why?” he asks simply before taking a sip of his beer.

“We got into a fight before I left for the game.” My dad nods in understanding. I’m sure he knew the conversation wasn’t going to be pleasant when we all got home from the hospital and Gracen asked to talk to me privately. “She blamed me for Lilly’s injury. We then dredged up all the old shit between us.”

My dad chooses his words carefully, knowing that this is difficult for me. “That seems awfully drastic for Gracen to decide to return to New York. I thought things were going great between you two.”

“I thought so too,” I tell him glumly. “I mean…we were getting closer. It felt good being together again.”

She told you she loved you, Marek, and you never bothered to tell her back.

“Gotta solve the problem, buddy.” My dad looks at me expectantly. For me to figure this shit out on my own.

I blow out a breath and sit up straighter on the couch. It’s time to talk frankly.

“When Gracen first came to North Carolina, I wasn’t nice to her. I really had a hard time getting past the fact she’d kept Lilly secret.”

“Understandable.”

“And I kept throwing it in her face. I’d get pissed and just beat her up with it. She took it for a while because she felt guilty as hell. But then one day, she was just done with it. Said that she was done apologizing for it and for me to get over it.”

“She was right,” my dad murmurs.

“I know,” I say with a nod. “So I decided to let it go. I decided to focus on Lilly, and well…I focused on Gracen too. She was the one, Dad, that I should never have let get away.”

My dad shakes his head and holds up a hand. “Don’t regret your actions, Marek. You were young when you left, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting things she couldn’t give you at the time.”

I’ll never accept that. Not when I know I missed very crucial time with Gracen. When I missed the pregnancy and raising Lilly after she was born.

“At any rate,” I continue. “Gracen said she was done with being made to feel bad about it. And when we fought tonight, the first thing I did was throw that shit in her face. After I’d told her I’d forgiven her for it. And I had. I swear it. I really thought I had forgiven her, but maybe deep down I didn’t. Otherwise, why would I have so casually tossed that at her with the idea in mind of hurting her?”

I focus on my dad’s eyes, which are appraising and thoughtful all at once. He’s a kind man with a tough disposition at times. It’s a good balance, and he’s always been able to see all the puzzle pieces and how they fit together. I wait for his advice so I can roll with it.

“You’re not going to like what I have to say,” he forewarns me.

I figured it might be tough, so I just nod.

“Okay…well, people just say hurtful shit. It’s human nature.”

I blink at him as my mind twirls, trying to pick apart this deep mystery he’s unraveling for me. But I can’t quite comprehend. “Human nature?”

“Human nature,” he affirms. “If you and Gracen work through this, I guarantee one or both of you will dredge this up again. When we’re hurt, we lash out. You’re going to reach for the thing that’s going to hurt the other the most.”

“That’s not the answer,” I say stubbornly. It can’t be.

“It is the answer,” my dad presses on. “You just have to work hard at it. Relationships are a work in progress. Your mom and I have been married for thirty-nine years, and we still say hurtful shit to each other when we argue. Maybe not to the degree that you and Gracen are going through, but there was a time when we were younger that we did. You just have to accept that as humans, we’re dumb as shit sometimes. We’re rash and act without thinking.”

“Try explaining that to Gracen,” I mutter as I sink back onto the couch. “She said she was done. She’s serious, Dad.”

“Do you regret it?” he asks.

“Yes, I regret it,” I exclaim as I pop back up. “I don’t want to hurt her. I love her.”

My dad smiles at me, almost as if he’s proud to have dragged that admission from me. He sticks the knife in and turns it slightly. “Have you told her?”

I wince, thinking back to that beautiful moment when I was deep inside of Gracen’s body and she told me she loved me.

How I couldn’t say the words back to her and haven’t brought myself to say them since.

I shake my head, lowering it in shame. Silently admitting my cowardice to my father.

“You didn’t want to get hurt again by her,” he concludes, and yeah, that sentiment feels right.

I drag my gaze back up at him. “No one will ever know how hard it was for me to break up with Gracen. I wanted her and I wanted my freedom. I loved her so much, and when I left her, there wasn’t a day went by that I didn’t think of her to some extent. Wondering if the freedom I’d gained had been worth losing her.”

“You grew up in that time,” my dad says with a wave of his hand. “There’s nothing wrong with that. And there’s something to be said about second chances.”

“I guess,” I say hesitantly as I look down at my beer bottle.

“Listen,” my dad says, and my head pops back up. “Here’s my real advice. Bottom line…you love her. You regret the fight. Go apologize and tell her the truth of how you feel. Don’t hold back. Lay it all out, Marek.”

“Lay it all out,” I repeat as if testing the weight of the consequences of what that all means.

“If you do, you can never have regrets later,” he adds. “If this is what you want, a family and a life with Gracen, then put it all out there and ask her for it.”

“Do I deserve that second chance?” I ask him, my voice hoarse with the emotion.

“Of course you do. You deserve to have it all.”