Page 167 of Goaltender Interference

“I’m sorry.” She looked miserable. “I didn’t—I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Hey, I know,” he said, nudging her shoulder. Maybe at one point during the ugliest parts of the divorce she had, but not right now.

“The closer we got to the wedding, the more scared I got. I could see my plans to be a lawyer slipping away. You wanted me to be friends with your teammates’ wives and they were—they were women like your mom, you know? They were willing to make those sacrifices. To move wherever their partner got traded, to set aside their own ambitions. And I know there are exceptions. There are couples who do their best to balance everything and somehow make it work. But then—then I found out we were pregnant with Nolan.”

“Oh shit,” Connor whispered.

“And what was I going to do? Not marry you? That would have been even worse. I’d have been pregnantandalone. And you were saying all the right things, that you wanted me to go back to law school when I could and …”

“But I didn’t do enough to support you, did I?” he asked.

“No.” She looked down, crumpling the remains of the shredded tissue in her fist. “Not, not because you were trying to be a jerk either but … but because all you’d ever seen was your mom being the perfect hockey wife and mother. I’m not knocking her or your father. I loved Declan too. I loved your whole family. But you were all so … so different from me. Your lives were so different than the one I wanted us to have. And I spent all of my time feeling like an outsider and wanting things to be different but then we had Nolan and Evie and …”

Though Maura had been wanted and loved, her pregnancy had been unplanned. Connor and Viv’s youngest daughter had been conceived when they briefly reunited between rough patches.

“I really could have been a lot better about birth control,” he admitted and Viv let out a wet laugh.

“Yeah, you’d think we’d have learned eventually, right?”

“You’d think so, yeah.” He sighed, stretching out his legs and tilting his head back.

“I’m sorry I let my parents get in my head so much during our divorce. They were—they were very smug about being right.”

“Ugh. I bet.”

“They kept reminding me this wouldn’t have happened if I’d married someone within the Orthodox church.”

“It certainly wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t married me.”

“No. That’s not true. It might have happened anyway. I’ve never been Orthodox enough for people within the church. Yet I’m too Orthodox for the rest of the world.” There was a trace of bitterness in her tone.

“That sounds hard.” He’d never really considered what a struggle that must have been for her.

“When our marriage got bad, I tried to turn more to the church. I needed support and I felt ashamed to tell your family how badly I was struggling.”

“They would have tried to understand.”

“I know. But they were intimidating. I felt like I could never live up to their standards.”

“I don’t think anyone ever tried to?—”

“No. I know. I built it all up in my own head. But when we split, I turned back toward the church and community there and when you told me you were attracted to men I thought it was my fault. I thought I’d done something terribly wrong. I thought it was my punishment for not being a good wife.”

She whispered the last part and Connor’s heart ached because he’d had no idea. All he’d seen was the homophobia. And it was a part of it, but it was a lot more complicated.

“My sexuality was never about that,” he assured her. “Never aboutyou.”

“I know that now. It’s a part of who you are.”

“Yes. And who our son is.”

She let out a shuddering breath. “Yes.”

They fell silent, watching students walk by.

Connor saw a couple of young guys do a double take when they saw him and he wondered if they’d recognized him. He wondered if someone would snap a picture of him and Viv and start online speculation they were getting back together.

He almost laughed. Nothing could be further from the truth, though he honestly did feel closer to Viv than he had in years.

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