Page 26 of Find Me Again

What was he even doing, agreeing to Neil's invitation?

His mom straightened in her chair and pinned him to his seat with a look alone, just like she'd done when he was a kid.

"Listen, everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has done something that hurt somebody else. It sucks, but that's how it is. You don't have to run away from it for the rest of your life."

Fuck, that hurt. She went straight for the jugular and it hurt.

But could a simple apology ever be enough if Ryan had deserved so much better from him back then? Neil had walked away from everything they'd been building, after all, and chased his own ambitions. While his younger self might have wanted two things above all—to play professional hockey and to be with Ryan—in the end only one of them wasn't solely a dream, but an ambition as well.

And he'd taken that ambition and ran with it, all the way to the NHL and multiple Stanley Cup victories. He was still running with it, and he wasn't ready to stop.

Not yet.

So was his apology even worth anything?

The screeching of the chair brought him out of his head, and he lifted his head to see his mom coming closer.

"Love you," she murmured before pulling him in for a hug.

That was his mom in a nutshell—she might be fed up with him, but she still made sure to remind him what really mattered in the end.

He dropped a kiss onto the top of her head. "Love you, too."

"I meant what I said." She stepped back and headed towards the door. "Bring him here."

With a sigh, Neil rubbed a hand over his chin, the stubble prickling his skin after he skipped the shave this morning.

It seemed like he had the place handled, so now he needed to get through everything else.

No pressure, or anything.

* * *

Parking in front of the Dawson family house was a truly surreal throwback moment. He'd done the exact same thing so many times back in high school, parking in the exact same spot and looking towards the house until he saw Ryan running out, always in a hurry to get to him.

Neil hesitated briefly now, then honked twice in quick succession, using their signal from back in the day.

Sure enough, the door opened about a minute later and Ryan appeared.

He wasn't in any hurry now, though. He wasn't stalling or anything, he simply wasn't running towards Neil.

Which was understandable. They were two grown men with a complicated history, and Neil hadn't been expecting it. It simply… jarred with his vision of the present recreating the past, that was all.

As he watched Ryan approach, Neil suddenly felt a visceral longing like he hadn't since those first weeks after the break-up. After being so used to seeing, and touching, and even simply existing with Ryan always by his side back then, it had been a shock to suddenly lose it—a shock he hadn't anticipated.

And he certainly hadn't anticipated feeling that loss again now. How could he? Neil didn't know this man in front of him, hadn't seenhisRyan change and grow into this one, right here.

Which was perhaps the point.

Neil had missed all that happened between then and now, all the important and unimportant things that make up a person, and he could never erase that. He'd lost that chance. All he could do was connect to the parts of Ryan he remembered and, if he was lucky, slowly learn about the new ones.

"Hey again," he greeted Ryan when he got into the car.

"Hey." Ryan shifted in his seat—the exact same, familiarmove Neil had seen many, many times. "So, where are we going?"

"To my parents' house. They won't be home until late in the evening, and it's both warm and without an audience, so there should be no distractions."

There was a slight frown on Ryan's face, here and gone, and Neil would've probably never noticed it if he wasn't watching him so closely. He had seen it, though, and he was about to scratch the whole idea and drive them onto the hill, after all, but then Ryan nodded.

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