I needed to talk. If Connor had spoken to my father, then perhaps what we’d shared was real and worth saving to him.
Which is what had me knocking on Chloe’s hallway office door. The same office I knew connected to the locker room. I could’ve simply used the adjoining door in Pepper’s office, but that would be another betrayal of trust I wasn’t prepared to do.
“Ivy?” Chloe tilted her head when she opened her door.
“I need to see him.”
“They’re on ice in twenty—”
“I’ll be fast. Please?” The plea in my voice sent her deep into the locker room.
Seconds later, my heart climbed up my throat as Connor, in full game gear, came hulking to the entryway.
“Connor,” I said.
His painful glare cut me to the bone. “I don’t have time—”
“Two minutes,” I cut him off, and something in the plea of my voice softened those hard-edged eyes.
He crossed his massive arms over his chest. “Two minutes.”
I licked my lips, my mouth suddenly dry. For ten days I’d pictured what I’d say to him if I ran into him, but no amount of picturing helped me now.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He narrowed his gaze, his eyes widening when they took in the jersey I wore. “You said that before—”
“I know. And the last thing I want to do is fuck with your game, but I needed to say it again. I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t make up for everything that happened, but I truly am sorry. Yes, I wrote a crazy-girl piece when I was angry and drunk. It was months ago with Pepper. I wrote about how you were perfect but yet hated me and…” I sighed. “It was about me. My pain over not having your admiration. About knowing you were so far out of my reach it was stupid for me to ever think about you, fantasize about you, fall for you.”
Connor swallowed hard but made no attempt to speak.
I raised my brows, fighting back tears. “I miss you.”
He huffed. “I miss who I thought you were.”
I flinched, his words like a knife. “I’m the same person. Those words weren’t mine. Surely, you know that. You know me. Better than even Pepper.”
“I don’t.” His words were ice, but his eyes glittered. “And I have to go. I have a game to win.”
“Connor,” I said, my heart lurching as he turned his back on me and disappeared into the locker room.
He left me standing alone in the hallway, tears streaking down my cheeks, and without any combination of words that could make everything right again.
Chapter 20
Connor
“You. Are. An. Ass.”
I spun at Pepper’s voice. “Damn. I thought I was alone in here. You sure know how to scare a guy, Pepper.”
The game was won, the reporters long gone, and I was just collecting my thoughts before I headed home to Hannah, where Faith had taken her.
Because I had shut Ivy out harder than Eric had Boston tonight.
“Don’t be funny. You’re an ass.”
“I’m sorry?” I asked, grabbing my bag. We’d have to leave the day after tomorrow to head back to Boston for game seven.
“She apologized. She came here for you. Wearing your jersey. You wouldn’t even listen to her!” Pepper crossed her arms in front of her chest and stepped in front of the exit.
It was either stand here and listen to her, or run over my buddy’s wife, because chances were, if I went for the back entrance, she’d just hunt me down there, too.
I dropped my bag and sighed. “What the hell is there to say, Pepper? She almost cost Hannah her home. How do I just get over that?”
“You just do! Look. She wrote that article when we were drinking and she was mad, and honestly, I think she was mad at herself because she wanted you so badly and didn’t think you’d give her the time of day after Crosby.”
A little understanding twinged in my heart, but I ignored it. I was stronger than that. I’d seen Ivy’s true colors and there was no going back. “So that makes it okay? The internet lasts forever. Those pictures will be out there when Hannah is fifteen, and forty, and seventy. All because of Ivy.”
“Because of Zach! He’s the one who took those pictures, who stole the article off her hard drive. Who edited it like that. Don’t make her pay for his sins.”
“There’s no paying for these sins, Pepper. I’m not…” I shook my head, looking for words. “I’m not even mad at her. She did what she had to in order to keep her dream job. If I didn’t have Hannah. If my spot was up for grabs on the Sharks, maybe I would have done the same, but I never would have done it to her.”
“She didn’t tell you?” Pepper tried to glare up at me, but her brow was all wrinkled in confusion.
“Tell me what? That’s she’s sorry that she almost cost Hannah a home and got her shoved into foster care?”
“No...she didn’t tell you that she lost her job?”
My head snapped back to her. “I’m sorry?”
“Stubborn, stupid girl,” Pepper muttered.
“A little louder, Pepper,” I prodded.
“Ugh. She’s the one that forced the retraction. Yeah, Langley made all the right calls, but it was Ivy who forced them to print the retraction and get the online version down. It cost her that job.”
Her dream job.
“Why would she do that?” I asked myself more than Pepper.
“Because she loves you, even if you are an asshole and an idiot. She never would have done anything to jeopardize you, let alone Hannah. She got Zach fired. She made amends in every way she knew how, and you...you wouldn’t even listen!” She stomped her foot.
Holy shit, for twins, their tempers matched, but they were completely different in the way they displayed it.
“Pepper,” I said softly, needing her to understand. “Could you trust someone who did that to you? Whether intentionally or not? Would you risk your child?”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “It’s not Hannah you’d be risking, because you know that she didn’t do it on purpose. Jesus, you’re just as stubborn as she is. You’re afraid to risk your heart, and that makes you a coward.”
I blanched.
“That’s right. I said it. Coward. Because Ivy put it all out there, even after she screwed up. She trusted you to accept her apology. She trusted you to protect her heart, and you didn’t. So you. Are. An. Asshole.”
A throat cleared behind me and I turned to see Eric come around the corner, from the hallway that led to the showers.
“Honey, maybe we should take a different line here. Insults aren’t the way to go with Connor.”
“What the hell, man? Were you hiding back there the whole time?”
He nodded sheepishly. “In case you went for the back door.”
“This is fucking great, but I’m done.” I picked up my bag.
“You love her,” Eric said, halting me in my tracks.
“You don’t know that,” I spat back.
“Yeah, I do, because I know you. And it doesn’t make you a coward,” he shot a look at his wife, and she mockingly lifted her lip at him, “for not taking her back. Not after what you’ve been through in your life. My loving wife here doesn’t know the half of it,” he said poignantly toward Pepper.
“We agreed!” she hissed.
“You were losing. I’m just calling a line change, baby.”
“Ugh.”
“Pay attention, Connor,” Eric chided. “You got the raw end of the deal, man. Never had a dad, your mom walked out, you were more responsible than your older sister, in and out of foster care, and finally becoming a parent when you weren’t ready. I get that. The first time you let a woman in, all the way in, it looks like she fucked you over. I’m not arguing that. You have a right to protect yourself because I know what it took to get yourself here.”
“Thank you.” I moved toward the door, and Lukas walked in the door, blocking the exit. “Jesus Christ.” I rolled my eyes.
“It’s an invention!”
he declared.
“It’s intervention, and this might be the world’s worst.”
“Point is that you love her, man,” Eric continued. “And that’s something that’s taken you almost thirty years to find.”
“Twenty-eight,” I snapped back.
“Whatever. That shit is once in a lifetime. Are you really willing to live without it because you’re not willing to forgive her venting on a day you’d been an ass?”
Shit. When he put it that way…
“What if she had to read every comment you’ve ever said about her? Because you weren’t always her biggest fan, either,” Eric went on.
“How am I supposed to trust her again?” I asked.
“Yeah, so there’s a secret to that,” Bentley added in as he came from the back of the locker room, Chloe trailing behind him with their bulldog.
“Holy shit. How many of there are you in here? And where the fuck were you hiding?” I snapped.
“We’re it,” Chloe promised.
“Oh, and don’t forget Porter in the hallway in case he managed to escape,” Bentley answered.
“Right, almost forgot about him. And we were in my office,” Chloe told me, “Until we realized that we couldn’t hear anything.”
“So you all staged an intervention? Really?” How the hell was this happening? Was Dr. Phil hiding somewhere, recording this shit?
“I liked my idea better,” Lukas said, folding his arms.
“Which was?”
“Taking your clothes and locking you two in the sauna,” he admitted. “In my country that—”
“Is still not how you solve arguments,” Porter shoved his way in. “Look, at the end of the day, if you love her and she loves you, then it’s even better that you know each other’s shit. That’s real.”
“You’re in on this?” I balked.
“My man, you are a whiny, sad, mopey baby without that woman, and that’s because you love her, and you gave up before it was over. Every person in this room can see that it’s not over. Hell half the arena could.”