Page 50 of Branded
Then had flayed himself open and accepted my vulnerability with the same amount of openness he’d given me.
Add a dash of patience, plenty of wicked, and how he looked at me and saw me and liked me, and somehow only found himself lacking. Him. Not me.
It was unfathomable.
But it was a truth I was finally understanding.
One that meant I could keep moving forward.
Inching toward the person I wanted to be while accepting that the person I was right at that moment was just as good.
I had the strength to keep moving, to keep swimming, to keep making progress—even crawling if I had to.
But I was finally out of that rigid prison.
Worthy and good and…not a disappointment.
There was laughter in Hazel’s eyes. Not disappointment.
And when I looked deep into myself, for the first time ever, I didn’t find disappointment either.
Fifteen
Smitty
A whistle.
The crowd quieting.
Hockey.
Fuck yeah.
A real game. No more of this preseason with half the roster of rookies bullshit. This was the real game. The first real game of the season.
And the crowd in our home arena was lit.
Sold out.
A sea of blue and black and white.
None of our opponents’ colors—or at least none that could be spotted with the naked eye. And I wasn’t really looking at the crowd, anyway. My focus was on the team box overhead, and the silhouettes I could deduce down from ice level, the occasional shots of the people inside on the Jumbotron.
Okay, I wasn’t looking at people.
I was looking at Kailey.
We’d talked on the phone the night before—unfortunately, sans baking show, and unfortunately a fairly short conversation because she’d been working.
Which I hadn’t liked at first.
She worked hard and deserved downtime.
But she’d answered the phone with distraction in her tone, and I couldn’t miss the way she’d perked up when she realized it was me, how excited she’d gotten when she’d given a simple explanation about what she was doing, and I’d shown interest.
Had asked her a few simple questions, and she’d acted like it was the first time a man had shown genuine interest in her work.
Which begged the question of what kind of assholes she’d been dating.
