Page 229 of Call the Shots
June squeezed my hand. "Do you remember your mom during things like this?"
Silence lapsed. I kept my eyes on the stars.
"Sorry," she whispered. "I don’t want to?—"
"No, it’s fine," I said quietly. "It’s okay."
"I don’t want to push."
"It’s cool, June." I raked a hand through my hair. "Uh, no. Because I don’t really remember my mom.”
“Oh.”
“Seven years old, I should remember, right?” I struggled to explain. “My uncle was part of a beer league, he gave me my first skates. My mom saw how much I loved the ice and signed me up for a kid’s team. When she was in the hospital full-time, the season was starting again, and I can tell youallof the games we lost."
June gazed at me, quiet.
I listed them off from memory, games from more than ten years ago. "I was obsessed. Like, if we could get our scores up then—” I rubbed the back of my neck. “But then she died. The paperwork for my custody change took—I don’t know—eight months or something, I played hockey during it. I can remember those games like they happened yesterday. It was all I could think about and everything else just slipped away. I was so angry, I forgot the person who meant the most to me."
It was silent.
"Bear, I’m…I don’t know what to say.” June hugged me tight. “I’m really sorry."
“I’m angry right now,” I admitted. “I’m angry at Xavier—and I fucked up going after him in front of everybody—I’m fucking furious at Montoya and Elijah. But I don’t want to be that guy who’s so fucking angry all the time. I’m trying, June. I’m trying really hard because I don’t want to be like that anymore.”
June touched my face. “I know you are.”
“I’ve thought about it. I want you to be with somebody who can think through shit,” I admitted, my voice low. “Somebody calm and good for you, a nice guy. I’m not that person by a long shot. But I’m trying, June. I promise I’m trying.”
“You are good for me,” she whispered, and my heart skipped a beat. “I know you’re trying. I see it. The effort you put in, how much you pour into your team. How much you pour into everything?—”
I dipped down and pressed my lips to hers, letting my hands seek her, slipping under her hoodie to touch her back, just to feel how warm she was, to feelher.I took every kiss I could, drinking her in, unable to stop. “I love you.”
“I—I love you too,” she said between sharp breaths.
“Let me rent the house.”
“Bear…”
“I’ll sign the lease tomorrow, just stay, don’t leave?—”
June broke away, taking deep breaths, her eyes on the horizon. Fuck, I pushed too far. Since the party, we’d carefully stepped around it, but I knew I wasn’t the only one who’d been thinking about her move.
“It means a lot to me that you’d do that for me, but the house isn’t mine anymore,” she said softly. “It doesn’t have any meaning for me. It’d just be going back to what’s comfortable instead of what I need.”
“I’ll have my own dorm, no roommates. Move in with me.”
“I don’t want to be your patient. I don’t want you to take care of me, Bear. That’s not your job.”
“We take care of each other. That’s what we do. We’re so good at it, we…know each other." I hesitated. "I trust you in this way that I don’t know how to explain to anybody else.”
“Me too.” She intertwined her fingers with mine again. “I’ve never felt this way before.”
I glanced down at her. “Really?”
For long seconds, June gazed at me, and something crossed her face. Her features pinched, she opened her mouth to say something and stopped. “Bear?”
“Yeah?”
