Page 94 of Crossed Sticks

“Come on.” He perched on the edge of the bed and patted the place beside him. After I sat, he touched my cheek. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, babe. We both played a role in what happened, but not exactly how you’re seeing it. I’m not sure pulling apart every word we said will help anything.”

I was so shocked I raised my voice. “What the hell? We can’t brush over what happened like it was nothing. If we don’t talk about what we did, we’ll never get past it.”

“We’ll talk about it, but I don’t think nitpicking everything we?—”

“It’s not nitpicking. It’s learning from what we did so it will never happen again.”

“Fuck this! Is it that important to rehash the details of what hurt us so much? We should…” He buried his face in his hands, and he was frowning when he looked at me again. “Maybe you’re right, but there are more important things to talk about than every little thing that went down.”

My insides clenched until it felt like there was a knife in my stomach. “More important than me treating you like shit?” I was still too loud, but he wasn’t hearing me. “I assumed you’d cheated on me, left town without letting you explain, and barely talked to you for a week. I’d gotten so angry I couldn’t see I was pushing away the best thing in my life.” My voice broke, and I held up a hand until I got my bearings. “After I finally listened to you, I said I needed more time to think, then left again.”

“Because I was trying to hide from what happened. I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Apparently, you still don’t.”

“Bullshit. I’m trying to talk.” His face had turned red, and he’d clenched his fists by his side. “How can you act like I don’t even fucking care? I’ve done nothing but hurt since the morning you walked out on me. Just because I’ve processed things differently than you have doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk.”

Arguing with him was no good, so I dug deep, hoping to find enough self-control to be reasonable. “I know you’ve been hurt worse than I can probably understand, but don’t think I haven’t suffered, too. I went through hell that first day alone. You’ll never know how much I wished I could simply forget what I saw and act like nothing had happened.”

“Is that why you listened so well when you sneaked home in the middle of the night to pack?”

It was hard to ignore the snarky tone in his voice. “I hurt like hell the entire time I was in D.C., and I haven’t been the same since. At camp, I hardly slept a wink, and on the ice, it was anybody’s guess which Harper they’d get—the player they’d traded for, or the disaster who could barely stay upright on his skates.”

Luca huffed and looked away. When he turned back, the flush in his cheeks had faded. “We both acted like assholes. I made you think I didn’t care about what happened. You left, which made me think you didn’t care about my feelings.”

“What feelings? All you wanted to do was forget it ever happened.” The harshness in my voice shocked me.

“I had feelings, but you wouldn’t listen long enough to find out what they were. No wonder you didn’t care.”

“I fucking cared! How can you possibly think I didn’t?”

We were breathing so hard we were snorting. He looked away again, and I had a sinking feeling we wouldn’t be able to fix things at all. We regretted what had happened, and we cared about each other, but we were so angry we might not be able to let it go.

When I was starting to wonder if I should leave, he spoke so softly I could barely hear him. “You left because I made you feel like second-best.”

He turned back to face me, and my insides hollowed out. I wasn’t sure which was worse—the knife in my gut, or theemptiness of remembering what it felt like to think Luca had chosen Caleb over me. A shudder rumbled through me, and it was my turn to avert my eyes. I didn’t want Luca to see how much the memory hurt.

He tapped my knee. “Look at me, babe. This is exactly what we need to talk about, the way our old wounds control us. Misunderstandings will always happen, but it wasn’t the misunderstanding that caused all these weeks of misery. What hurt us so badly washowwe reacted to the misunderstanding, and if we can figure out how to fix that, we’ll get past this.”

My insides were at war. I’d thought the same thing while at training camp, and it was scary as fuck. The logic of what he’d said was undeniable, but so was my fear that we could never solve the problem. I raised my head and said, “Deep wounds can be impossible to heal, Luca. I want to be with you, but are you ready to deal with someone who’s constantly afraid he won’t measure up? You know what’s happened to me—Manny cheating, Simon saying I wasn’t good enough. When I thought you’d been with Caleb, I assumed it was happening again, that as soon as he appeared on the scene, you realized I wasn’t the man for you after all.” My throat closed, and it was a moment before I could finish. “I felt like you threw me away.”

“That isn’t what happened.”

“I thought you cheated on me with Caleb. Even after you explained what happened and I believed you, Istillfelt like you’d cheated. Not with sex, but emotionally, by putting him first.”

“And that’s why you left.” He grazed my chin with a knuckle. “Caleb was never in first place. I tried to be a friend to him, and then I made a stupid mistake by not going back to your apartment. I didn’t want Caleb sexually. We didn’t do anything.”

“I believe you, but?—”

He silenced me by holding up a hand. “Caleb wasn’t in first place, but I see how you got that idea. I won’t make that kindof mistake again. I don’t want you ever having to wonder who’s most important in my life. You were all I wanted that night, and you’re all I ever want. You, Harper Blanton, are more than good enough.”

Tears filled my eyes yet again, and I exhaled a slow breath. “Thank you.”

“It’s true, but I have a question.”

I nodded.

“You said you still thought I’d cheated on you even though Caleb and I didn’t have sex. Had I done something to make you distrust me that much?”

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