Page 105 of Need You to Choose Me

But the dim remains in her eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Olive

Seeing a half-nakedAlex lounging in nothing but a pair of boxers in his bed is a sight I never thought I’d see outside of my wildest fantasies. But here he is, laying on top of his made bed with…a crossword puzzle in his hand?

“I didn’t know you liked those,” I say as he scrawls the pen across the little boxes.

He sets it down on his chest. “They’re my mom’s favorite. I got used to doing them with her. You should see her in action. I get stumped by half of these things, but not her. Her doctor says brain teasers are good for her.”

I peel the comforter back and crawl in, fidgeting with the hem of the top sheet. “Are you planning on visiting her soon?”

I’m not sure if I’m overstepping any lines by asking about her, but it seems logical. They talked on the phone yesterday, but the call seemed short. He wasn’t in the best mood after he hung up.

He closes the pen into the book and puts it on his nightstand. “I’m going to see her next week. Pam, her head nurse, has been trying to get me to go to therapy with her.”

A small smile meets my face. “I think that’s a good idea.”

“My father is one of her biggest triggers,” Alex murmurs, sighing. He rubs his closed eyelids tiredly. “His death messed her up. I’ve learned to avoid talking about him, so she doesn’t go down a dark place. Now she’s finally listening to her counselor at Logan’s and thinks it’s a good idea to talk about him again.”

“Embrace his memory,” I note.

His chin dips down. “Exactly. If it helps her, I’m willing to try. She can’t live at Logan’s forever, so she needs to adjust to hard conversations. I need to learn how to help her do that since I’m all she has.”

It makes me sad that her family hasn’t tried harder to be there for them. “It’s good that she has you. It sounds like your relationship is important to her, especially since she showed up here to check on you.”

He harrumphs. “She shouldn’t have done that” is how he responds. Wetting his lips, he drops his guard. “But it felt kind of nice that she did. She felt like my mother.”

I smile. “That’s good, right?”

“Yeah. It is.”

We fall silent, my eyes focused on the sheets that I’m fidgeting with while his burn holes in the profile of my face. “What are you thinking?” he asks.

Wetting my lips, I lean back on the pillows stacked behind us. “Nothing about your mom,” I reassure. “I’m sorry that I upset Moskins today and made a scene. Sometimes I forget that people’s egos are a big part of them in this industry.”

“He needed to be knocked down a peg or two. You don’t need to apologize for that.”

“He was pretty mad.”

“Trust me, that’s his default,” he says easily. “Notice how none of the guys were shocked by it? We’re used to him lashing out. But it’s usually when he doesn’t get his way on the ice. He’s not used to women telling him he’s not the god he thinks he is.”

His teammates kept the conversation lighthearted after the tension with Moskins. Jess and Alex went back and forth about Alex’s return next week, and the training regimen that they would do together to get back into shape for the season officially starting. Moskins didn’t say anything else to me the rest of the night, and I’d felt bad for bantering with him. Sebastian used tosay I’d come off a little too snobby when I joked around, and nobody here knows me well enough to tell the difference.

Whoops.

“They seemed nice. Quieter than I expected. Probably because I’m related to the enemy.”

Alex snickers. “Clarkson’s stepsister is a big Pats fan, as you know. If football and hockey played the same time of year, she’d ditch her Penguin’s all-access season pass to see New England’s team in a heartbeat. Even over Clarkson.”

“But they like Belle,” I point out, biting down on the inside of my cheek.

“They don’t know you yet,” he points out, his hand reaching out to take mine. “There’s a difference. Once they do…”

It’s sweet what he’s trying to do, but I’m a realist. “I understand where Moskins is coming from. He’s protective of his team. That’s admirable.”

Alex frowns. “He was being a dickhead.”

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