And of course, the self-loathing is like an old enemy—unabashed, relentless, and unforgiving.

  “He coded. He—”

  “He what?” I bellow. How the fuck do I get out of here?

  I can’t breathe.

  “He coded and the ambulance came and . . .” The vibrato in her voice, the pure fear, hits me harder than any punch I’ve ever taken. “They revived him. He’s at the hospital.”

  “Why? What happened?” I need to get out of here.

  “Another bacterial infection in his lungs. His body, Hunter . . . it’s broken and can’t take much more. The doctors say his immune system is always on the defense and they were lucky to bring him back this time.” She emits a sound I never want to hear again.

  It’s raw and abraded and sounds like her heart has been ripped from her chest.

  “Mom. But he’s okay now, right? He’s resting and—”

  “Yes. He is. He’s under observation and will come home tomorrow most likely.”

  “Okay. Okay.” I repeat the words over and over, almost as much for me as for her. Almost as if I need to talk myself into believing that everything is going to be okay when I know at some point it’s not.

  “Your father’s heart,” she murmurs almost in the same fashion as I just said okay.

  Two people lost in the miserable grief and confusion we know is coming but want to deny.

  “Yes, I know. His heart is okay?”

  The same heart that went into cardiac arrest the night he found out about Jonah’s accident. The heart that never fully recovered, but that only sparked to life when he pulled me onto the ice so he could somehow do something—boss someone else around and drive them into the ground, make them be what he thought Jonah was going to be—to save himself.

  And I let him. Night after night. Day after day. Hour after hour. I let him break me down on the ice to punish me for what I’d done—for ignoring Jonah’s request, for being the reason Jonah got behind the wheel drunk, for killing the innocent driver he hit. I cried and burned and prayed . . . with no idea if my brother would die that next day. My other half was gone. I was alone. In agony, I begged and bled and sucked it up because coaching me was the only thing keeping him going. Punishing me was the only way he knew how to manage the dreams he had for Jonah. Dreams he’d never had for me.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she whispers. “What am I going to do?”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I find the exit just as I end the call and shove through the doors so they slam back with force.

  I welcome the cool night air as it fills my lungs. As it burns my lungs and assaults my skin with its temperature and its indiscrimination. Taking huge gulps, I try to catch my breath from the thoughts that rob it.

  Jonah’s time is running out.

  I felt it tonight. I felt him tonight.

  That’s why my game was off.

  The other half to my whole was coding.

  Struggling to breathe.

  And I can’t fix him.

  I can’t fix anyone.

  DEKKER

  DEKKER

  THE KNOCK ON MY FRONT door startles me. The papers on my lap from when I fell asleep on the couch flutter to the floor with the jolt of my body.

  I’m in that just-woken-up, confused and freaked-out phase where I wonder who in the hell is knocking on my door at one in the morning.

  Who the hell did the doorman let in on my list that would come at this time of night?

  Chad? My sisters?

  Oh my God. Something is wrong with my dad.

  My pulse pounds wildly as I run to the door, every horrible scenario playing out in my mind in those thirty feet. It’s when I look in the peephole though that every part of me stops and freezes.

  Hunter.

  I almost want to laugh at the sight of him. I put him on my approved visitors list three years ago with the hope that one night he might make his way to my place. To fight for me.

  I never took him off.

  When I open the door and come face to face with him, my smile falls.

  His shoulders are slumped, his face pale and hollow, and his eyes troubled.

  “Hunter? Is everything okay? What are you—?”

  He steps into me and holds on for dear life. His arms go around me, his face is buried into the crook of my neck, and his body shudders with an emotion I can physically feel.

  “Hey. What happened?” I ask. His actions have taken me by surprise—especially from him, his need so palpable that I immediately slide my arms around him, hands running up and down his back, and my lips pressing a kiss to the side of his head.

  We stay like this as he holds me, and I feel helpless.

  “I just needed you.” Those four words said in his broken rasp as the heat of his breath hits my shoulder, are all I need to hear for my heart to constrict. There is much more between us than just sex. So much more shared than a physical act meant to bring two people together.

  “I’m here,” I murmur to him. “I’m here.”

  My mind races over scenarios—he was cut from the team, something happened to his family . . . over and over—as we stand there in this silent desperation.

  “Christ, Dekk.” He runs a hand through his hair as he walks to the windows and then back to me. His shoulders sag. He stares at me with total defeat.

  “Are you okay?” It’s one of a million questions on my mind and the safest of them all. He’ll talk when he wants to.

  “Yeah. I think.” Tears well in his eyes and the sight of them—of a man completely vulnerable when I’ve never seen him that way before—undoes me in ways I can’t quite fathom.

  They say he trusts me.

  They say he needs me.

  It’s a poignant thought that gets thrown to the wayside to be thought about later when he’s gone and I’m alone . . . but right now, he needs me.

  “I was going to go home . . . but . . . it’s just. I didn’t know where else to go.” His voice is barely audible, his admission mixed with the confusion in his eyes, enough in itself to tell me what he needs. To remind me out of the blue of something my mom used to say to us when we were at a loss for words. “I needed you.”

  Those three words slide around my heart and embed themselves in my soul.

  He came to me.

  He needs me.

  “Come with me.” I reach a hand out to him and even though he stares at it with question in his eyes, he takes it.

  I lead him down the hallway of my apartment toward my bedroom. If I’d told anyone I was taking Hunter Maddox to my bedroom with no intention of taking my clothes off, they’d think I was mad.

  But I am.

  And he’s so lost in his own head, in the heartache overwhelming him, that he doesn’t think twice when I turn the covers of my bed down, climb in, and pull his hand for him to join me. With his eyes on mine, trying to relay a story his lips won’t yet speak, he toes off his shoes and climbs in with me.

  His arms go around my abdomen, he lays his head on my chest so I can rest my chin on it, and he holds on.

  We lie like this without saying a thing, just me providing comfort and him taking whatever it is he needs, until his breathing evens out, and eventually he falls asleep.

  With my hand running up and down the length of his back and the realization of how damn good it feels to be needed, I slowly drift off to sleep too.

  DEKKER

  I WAKE WITH A START.

  The sun is streaming through the blinds I never closed last night and the bed beside me is still warm, but I remember everything about what happened.

  There’s a thump in my living room and I slide out of bed, groggy, still sleepy, and still concerned for Hunter.

  “Hunter?” When he doesn’t answer, I head down the hallway just in time to see him walking toward my front door. He looks back over his shoulder and our eyes meet. “What are you doing?”

  He still looks like hell—eyes red, brow furrowed, like he hasn’t slept in years, when I know for a fact he just got a solid seven hours.

  “I—uh—I’ve got shit to do.”

  “Hey,” I say when he turns his back on me again. He was going to skip out without saying a thing. Hurt flickers through me that I try to justify and rationalize, and then give up all hope on. “What’s going on?”

  “It was a moment of weakness.”

  “What was?” I ask, but I already know the answer.

  “Me coming here.”

  “Weakness?” I laugh, the irony not lost on me that his weakness is akin to my mistake. My temper fires on a dime as I study him. He’s obviously still upset, but his choice to skip out is his way of using me . . . what feels like again. “You want to know what weakness is?” I take a step closer to him. “It’s me baring my soul to you. It’s me standing in a parking lot in front of an arena somewhere telling you exactly how I feel. That I’m willing to put my professional aspirations—ones dictated by my father and to benefit my family—aside, because of and for you. It’s me standing there telling you that it’s you. It’s always been you. The one I walked away from three years ago because I was too afraid of how I felt for you, and the one I walked into this time still afraid but with a job to do. It’s you, you asshole, and once again, I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re going to take the chickenshit way out and sneak away instead of face me and talk to me.”

  I suck in a ragged breath, because my body is trembling and my temper is wired as I stare at him and wait for a reaction—anything other than the pained look. He’s going to do the same thing as last time and let me go.

  “You don’t get it,” he says with a shake of his head.

  “Then make me get it,” I shout, closing the distance between us. After how he made me feel last night—suddenly afraid of losing him but knowing if he lets me push him away again, he wasn’t good enough for me in the first place—I’m fed up. “You don’t get to walk in here like you did last night and need me and then leave without saying a word.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or it will never happen again.” My voice is a low, threatening warning.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He laughs the question out.

  “It means I’m not yours to use, Hunter. I’m the shiny toy in the store you can’t have. You visit every once in a while so you can take me down and play with me so long as you put me back on the shelf when you’re done.”

  “Fuck this, Dekk.” He gives a shake of his head as he moves toward the door. “You wouldn’t understand. You wouldn’t want to understand.”

  “Then make me,” I scream, as I stalk after him. “Make me understand. Talk to me and tell me what I need to know, because I’m here, real and bleeding emotion while you’re standing there acting like it’s not a big fucking deal when it’s everything to me. When I’m realizing you’re more to me than I want to admit.”

  “Dekker.” He stops with his hand on the door and hangs his head, my name an apology I don’t want to hear.

  Tears well in my eyes. Just as I realize what I want—as I realize I want to see where things can go with us and, fuck yes, it’s scary and the end isn’t known and hurt is probably preordained . . . but I want to take a chance and figure that out.

  Hurt reigns.

  Embarrassment surges.

  Anger wins.

  “Then go. Get out. If you can’t face me, I don’t want to see you again either.” Emotion drives my words as my heart jumps in my throat, and what’s at stake hits me full force.

  He turns and looks at me. His big body framed in the small entryway, and I swear to God if the tumultuous emotions in his eyes could be expressed, I’d be drowning in them. Every single one.

  “You don’t mean that.” His eyes hold mine, the lines etched in his face so full of sadness that I look away when I speak my next words, my temper faltering despite my self-worth holding strong.

  “I’m done being used. Just done.” I turn my back on him and walk to my bedroom.

  Let him leave.

  Let him walk out.

  Each time I repeat the words my heart hurts. Each time I say them in my head, I’m reminded how damn gullible I am. First to fall back in bed with him, then to let Brexton’s words take hold and grow and evolve over the past two weeks. I began to believe that a true connection—a future—could be possible. The revelations last night with him in my arms making me think he realized there was more to us too.

  And now this.

  I brush my teeth with a vigor that might make a dentist cringe, but it’s easier to focus on my hygiene than to chase after him in the hallway to the elevator like a lovesick woman with zero self-worth.

  It’s only when I dry my face off, when it’s buried in the hand towel that I let the tears that have worked themselves up slip over. It’s only when I let the disappointment hit me, and the hope I had worked up in my own mind to dissipate.

  I stand there with my eyes closed and try to suck it up.

  “Do you know what it’s like to feel like you don’t deserve anything?” Hunter’s voice shocks my eyes open, and a gasp falls from my lips. He didn’t leave? “Do you know what it’s like to live a life where your every step, your every thought, your every action is driven by how you can make amends for the wrongs you created?”

  I take a step toward him, shaking my head as I try to follow him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how do I deserve this life? How do I deserve someone like you when for as long as I can remember, I was told I don’t? I made myself think I didn’t.” His voice breaks and the pain, God, the pain, is so palpable I can feel it ricocheting in the space between us. “How do I let you walk into and be a part of my life when everything I’ve done up until this point, every person I’ve pushed away, everything I’ve walked away from, is another way to punish myself for what I did to Jonah and my parents.”

  My body jolts at his admission and so does his. I watch him physically reject the words he just said, almost as if it’s the first time he’s ever heard them.

  And just as quickly as I see it, Hunter pulls away physically by turning on his heels and jogging toward the door.

  “No. Hunter,” I call after him, and luckily, he’s distracted by the emotions or else I never would be able to catch up to him and stand in front of the door like I do.

  “Get out of the way, Dekker.” His face is a mask of fury and shame, and it breaks my heart to see such distress in his every muscle.

  “No. I’m not letting you walk out this door. I’m not letting you believe for another goddamn second that you don’t deserve the success you have, the accolades you’ve achieved, or the love and affection you deserve.” I’m breathless when I finally finish speaking, but I feel like I’m on borrowed time to keep him here and make him believe what I’ve said.

  “No, I don’t.” He shakes his head and looks at me like a little boy wanting to believe but not trusting that he should.

  “Yes, you do,” I say and take a step forward.

  “You don’t know what happened. You don’t understand—”

  “Then make me understand. Sit down and tell me everything and get the weight you’re carrying off your shoulders.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” he says in a whisper.

  I don’t care that he feels a million miles away from me, I take another step toward him and place his face in my hands. He tries to pull away, but I don’t let him. “I know you’re a good person, Hunter Maddox. I know you bust your ass day in and day out chasing a ghost no one can see, and I know it has to be a merciless burden that you carry.” I wipe the lone tear that escapes his eye and slides down his cheek. It’s devastating to see. But it’s also a sign that maybe I’ll be able to get through to him. Maybe I can help him. “Please, talk to me.”

  HUNTER

  I STARE AT DEKKER, AND my body and mind revolt.

  I’m terrified that if she sees what I did, she’ll walk away for good and never come back.

  Her eyes tell me to trust her and her words tell me to believe her, but fucking hell if that’s not hard when all I know is regret. When all I feel is guilt.

  I took away their star, their life, their hope.

  “Hunter? Come on, talk to me. You can trust me.”

  My pulse pounds in my ears and my chest feels like it’s on fire, like the space around my lungs is constricting and squeezing the breath out of me.

  Betrayal comes with telling someone. A betrayal to my misery, to myself, to the way I’ve lived my life, and fuck, it’s a hard thing to let go.

  I open my mouth and shut it, the words so very hard to utter, that day so godawful to relive, but I know I need to.

  I know that if anyone can help me, it’s Dekk. She walked away from me before, knowing I would hurt her if she told me how she felt. I knew it. She knew it. It was so much easier to pretend like her leaving was no big deal.

  But now? Shit, she’s the only one who thought I was worth pursuing. Being my fucking punching bag. She’s the only one who cared enough to dig beneath the surface despite my shitty attitude. Not Sanderson, who has a stake in my well-being, but Dekker.

  She made me admit that I’ve burned out.

  She forced me to acknowledge that I care.

  She made me believe in the possibility of more.

  I start rejecting the thought, and then try to push that ingrained response away.

  I nod. It’s slight, but it’s there.

  “It was supposed to have been me that day,” I finally say.

  Her breath hitches. She gently takes my hand and leads me to the couch. Her papers are still where she left them last night, her laptop still open and no doubt the battery dead, but she sits me down in silence. She waits until our knees are touching and our eyes hold before she asks the one question that can break and free me. “Who was supposed to have been you that day?”

  I stare at her for as long as I can before looking down to where I’m winding my thumbs around each other . . . and I tell her my story.