Page 91 of Broken Ice, Mended Hearts

“What about the woman at the bar? When you went out with Blanton.”

His expression melted into something resembling shame, and he raised a shaking hand to his cheek and scratched it. “That night proved I was in love with you, but I still didn’t think about it that way.”

My jaw was too heavy to trawl up a smile, so I glared at him. “That makes no sense.”

“But it does.” He put a hand behind his neck and rubbed it. “At least it did in my fucked-up head. Everything I told you about that night was true. Blanton called me, wanting to talk, which is why I didn’t invite you along. When the woman approached me, habit kicked in, and I thought… well, maybe fucking her would help me figure out my feelings about you.”

“You actually?—”

“But I didn’t want her, either. I wanted to get away from her, because I already knew how I felt about you. I couldn’t get to your place fast enough. Don’t you remember what a mess I was? For the first time, I was facing my feelings for you head-on. I had no choice but to deal with them, and the next morning, I told you how I felt. But I was such a thickheaded idiot, I still didn’t realize I was in love.”

“How is that possible? I knew I loved you. Even if I didn’t want to admit it, I knew what it was called.”

“I told you I’ve never been in love before. I’ve liked certain people a lot, but for a long time, I avoided commitment. Hell, that’s the understatement of the year because I ran away from any kind of entanglement. After Danny in Montreal, I knew I wanted more, but not with him. What he and I did embarrassed me, more than anything. I told myself I only hooked up with him because he was so feminine. It wasn’t long before I met Ella, and she played me like a fiddle. I thought I was head-over-heels in love, that she was my forever person.”

“You married her.”

“I did, and that was all she wanted. She never cared about me, and looking back, I think that’s what upset me so much when it all went to hell. Not the divorce itself, but realizing she’d never loved me at all. Then you came along and changed everything. You showed me what it felt like to be alive, and when I thought I was losing that, I finally realized what it all meant. I’m head-over-heels for you, Sven. Do you believe me?”

It all made sense. I’d known he was having trouble dealing with things—being with a man—but I never put myself in his shoes. Now, hearing his perspective, I understood. “I believe you. Thank you for explaining it.”

“My turn to ask a question, then. Why did you stick with me when I was so flaky? Like I said, I could tell you weren’t sure about things, so why did you keep seeing me?”

I shrugged. “You were irresistible. That day at the beach changed things for me too. I understood how much was at stake, and I didn’t want to lose you. By the time you told me how you felt, I knew I loved you.”

He pursed his lips for a moment. “Another question. I thought you broke up with me the night we argued. The next day, I literally had my finger over the Send button to ask you to talk when you texted me. What were you thinking? Did you want to get back together or just talk about things?”

I dropped my head and groaned. “I didn’t want to break up. Fuck, I don’t knowwhatI was thinking that night. It had been a terrible day, and I was so confused about the things you said.” After a deep sigh, I went on. “I needed you to love me. We were apart so much, and our feelings weren’t settled when the season started. If we had nothing else, and you didn’t love me, I thought maybe we should end it. The next day, I talked to Drew, and then thought about things all afternoon. I wanted to be with you, and I needed to apologize for the jackass way I handled things.”

“You wanted to be with me even though you thought I didn’t love you?”

“I wanted to say that I’d give you time to decide how you felt. Hopefully, you’d fall in love with me, but if it never happened, I’d at least have known I gave us a chance.”

We went back to looking out the window, and after a while, Pip looked at me. “Thank you for not giving up. I’ll do everything I can to make you happy.”

“You already are, and along those lines, can we talk about one more thing?”

He chuckled. “We’re on a roll, so go for it.”

“The way we dealt with everything was bad. We both acted like we didn’t have a brain in our head, and for two people who cared about each other, we didn’t show it that night.”

“You’re right.” He inspected a thumbnail before saying, “We need to do better. We’ll have disagreements, but if we react like that every time, this won’t last long.”

I nodded. “So, we’ll talk things out. If we get angry, we’ll take a break from talking, but we’ll be able to fix things as long as we remember we love each other.”

“When you were still in the hospital, Jack and Eckie told us how much they’d learned from their fight. They hadn’t done much better than we did, but they made up quickly and learned from their idiocy.”

I smiled, knowing we were already over the hump. “We’ve learned, too, and because we want to be better, we will. We’ll value each other and discuss things instead of throwing out ultimatums.”

“It’ll work, too. Look at Drew and Cleevs.”

Not making the connection, I furrowed my brow. “What about them?”

“They missed each other like we did. For them, and for Eckie and Jack, this is the second year of that separation bullshit. But Drew and Cleevs have been married for years, and they were together for three years before that, most of the time on different teams, in different cities. Cleevs has told me how miserable they were then, but the experience taught them things that have helped with this share-the-arena crap. We’d do well to follow their example.”

“You know, this relationship reboot might be good for us in the long run.”

Pip flinched. “Nothing about what happened to you is good.”

---