The Bad Boy Hockey Collection: A Collection Of Single Daddy Romances

Since she lied to me.

Since she cried, because I made her cry. Which made me feel even more like a dick than confronting her did. I’ve tried to push that self-loathing down over the past few days, reminding myself that she’s the one who had the intention of getting a piece and then running off back to Dallas, but I’ve been having a harder and harder time of believing that as the days pass by. The woman had seemed genuinely upset by my outburst, and I didn’t blame her for that. I had a wicked temper when I wanted to. She’d wanted to explain, to talk it out and salvage some semblance of friendship from this.

She might have lied to me, but I can see now that I overreacted, too.

And did she lie? Hell, I’m not even sure anymore. Maybe there’s more to it, maybe she wanted to tell me before then but couldn’t.

I don’t even know if it matters now. It’s been four days, and Megan hasn’t tried to call or text me. She hasn’t rounded the corner of Main Street and come to see me at the repair shop.

I haven’t done either of those things, either. Every time I think I should make an attempt at fixing this, a small part of my brain warns me that she kept the truth from me.

Just like Ella did.

There’s no way I can stand for that kind of deceit, not after the monumental lies that came about with Ella. I might have never even known I had a son if it hadn’t been her dying goddamn wish to tell me.

I think that’s what wrecks me from the inside out—it took Ella being moments from death to admit the truth to me. Like I wasn’t worth it before that point. I’ve bounced back and forth between my love for that woman and my hatred for her since the day she died. I’ve heard it’s a fine line sometimes between love and hate, now I fucking believe it.

Ella’s betrayal has turned me into a man that doesn’t know who to believe, who to trust. Then, the moment I trust someone, look how that turns out. The fact that Megan kept her plan to leave Cardon Springs from me, all the while letting me think that maybe this thing between us was something it’s not, just solidifies my heart’s choice to give up on trusting people entirely. It’s safer that way.

“Craig?”

The voice is loud and clear, even from where I lay, under the driver’s side of a Honda Civic.

It’s also very familiar.

“Nancy?” I roll the creeper out from under the car, staring up at her from the floor. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in this shop before. There aren’t any appointment times available for—”

“I’m not here about my car, Craig,” she interjects. “I’m here about Meg.”

I sit up slowly, knowing I’m covered in grease and smelling like motor oil. “Meg. Is she okay?”

Nancy tucks her tongue into the side of her mouth. It makes me think she’s ready to chew the damn thing off just so she doesn’t say the words she’s so close to spitting at me. “Depends on how you define okay,” she replies. She glances over at her niece’s car, still parked in the other garage bay. The parts I ordered showed up yesterday but I’ve been up to my eyeballs in other appointments so haven’t done the work on it yet. “You hurt her, Craig.”

A long sigh falls from my lips, and I struggle to my feet. “Nancy, maybe I shouldn’t have reacted quite the way I did, but Megan didn’t—”

“Didn’t go to the job interview,” she says loudly. “She didn’t go to the job interview, didn’t run back to Dallas, and she sure as hell didn’t ask for you to shove her indecisiveness in her face. The girl’s been through enough.”

In all my years of knowing Nancy, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a curse word come from her mouth. Or anything that resembles a confrontation, for that matter. But here she is, standing in the repair shop that I own, giving me shit and treating me like the ten-year-old she obviously still thinks of me as.

But all I can seem to focus on is that Megan didn’t attend the interview in Dallas. “I admit, I shouldn’t have lost my cool the way I did.” She didn’t go back to Dallas. “I didn’t realize Megan stayed in town. I hadn’t seen her, so I thought she’d decided—”

“This town may be small, but it isn’t small enough that a woman can’t avoid a man when she wants to.”

Fair enough. So, she’s purposely been making sure she doesn’t see m

e. That doesn’t help the gnawing sensation of guilt that’s eating away at me. “I thought she’d gone back to Dallas, Nancy.”

She nods her head. “You’ve still got her car, so how exactly do you think that’d work?”

Damn, Nancy is on a roll today. But she’s right, I’ve ignored everything except the hurt I’ve been feeling. “Fuck,” I mutter under my breath. Then, I realize I said it out loud and wince, seeing Nancy’s disapproving glare. “I messed up,” I say finally, letting out another long breath. “She said she wanted to give this thing between her and I a shot, so when I heard her say she planned to leave town, and that she had that interview...”

“Megan did say she wanted to leave Cardon Springs,” Nancy states. “But right after she said that, her next words were At least I think I want to.” She locks her gaze with mine. “You’re the reason she second-guessed her decision, Craig. And I’ve got to say, I don’t think she’s ever second-guessed anything in her life. But her feelings for you made her wonder. Made her think. She just needed time,” she says, her head tilting to one side slightly. “Just like you did.”

I feel my throat move as I swallow down the lump of emotion. “Maybe I need more time.”

“Maybe you need to realize she’s not Ella.”

Nancy’s words hit me like a slap across the face. “I never said she was,” I stammer, suddenly regretting the evenings I’ve sat across from Nancy at her dining room table, tea in hand, wishing for something stronger as I told her everything about Ella and her betrayals.