Page 107 of The Breaking Point

I couldn’t tell Mac everything about my past. I knew it made me a coward, but I couldn’t. Not right now.

“I told Grace I needed some time to myself,” I admitted.

Mac groaned. “Dude, seriously? Do you want her to freak out?”

“Hey, she didn’t freak out. She said she loved me and has given me space.”

“She’s a good person. And she’s nice. You’re lucky. I’m not sure Elodie would be that nice. She’d track me down and give me a piece of her mind, and then probably drag my ass back home.”

Did I want Grace to freak out? A ridiculous part of me did. Grace seemed too calm about all of this. As if me potentially breaking things off with her wasn’t a big deal.

What the hell do you want her to do? Burn your house down?

“It doesn’t matter.” I sighed. “I mean, it does. I don’t fucking know. I’m a mess.”

“We all already knew that one, my dude.”

I glared at Mac.

“Look,” said Mac, “I can’t tell you what to do. But I do know that it comes down to this. Which is more important to you, your career or Grace?”

“Grace,” I said without hesitation.

“Well, there you go.”

Saying the words out loud was freeing. I’d been so concerned about Coach that I hadn’t realized that, at the end of the day, who gave a shit about hockey?

Grace was who mattered. Grace was the person I loved. Hockey was important to me, of course, and I didn’t want to be traded to the shittiest team ever.

But if I had to live in Saskatchewan, well, at least I’d have Grace. And maybe we’d like it there. At least it’d be an adventure.

“Enough about my pathetic life,” I said, shaking my head, “tell me what’s new with you and Elodie.”

As I listened to Mac gush over his fiancée, I couldn’t stop the wave of jealousy crashing over me. Mac didn’t have anything to hide—not anymore. And he could be with the woman he loved. Nobody was trying to split them up or convince Mac that he wasn’t good enough for Elodie.

“Elodie wants to get married a year from now,” Mac said, “but I don’t want to wait that long. She wants a huge wedding and says there’s no way we can plan one in a few months.”

“Are we seriously talking about weddings now?” I joked.

Mac rolled his eyes. “How the mighty have fallen. But seriously, why can’t we just go down to the courthouse? I don’t get it.”

I held up my hands. “Dude, that’s between you and Elodie.”

“Are weddings really that complicated that you need an entire year to plan them?”

Right then, I heard their front door open and close. “I’m hoooome!” Elodie yelled. When she came into the living room, she stopped in her tracks when she saw me. “Oh, Brady. I didn’t know you were coming over.”

I shot a look at Mac. “Uh, I don’t want to intrude.”

“No, no, sorry. I was just surprised.” Elodie cocked an eyebrow at her fiancé. “I had other plans for this evening.”

Mac looked chagrined. “Sorry, baby. But Brady needed to vent.”

“Vent? Now I’m intrigued.”

I sighed, but I also knew that Elodie wasn’t going to let me be vague. I gave her a rundown of what Coach had said to me.

“Yeah, those photos were something else.” Elodie’s lips twitched. “You two really weren’t thinking ahead, were you?”

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