Page 214 of The Fine Line
She blinks, sobering a little. “What do you want?”
I exhale slowly. “I don’t even know anymore,” I admit. “My greatest dream for as long as I can remember was playing in the NHL. I got that… and I nearly destroyed it before it even began.”
She shifts onto her side, propping her head on her hand. “But you didn’t,” she says simply.
I look at her, dry amusement tugging at the corner of my mouth. “Almost did.”
“But you didn’t,” she repeats, firmer this time. “You figured it out. And now you’re the captain of your team.”
I glance away. “Not off to a fantastic start, though, am I?”
She smiles faintly. “Could be worse.”
Her voice is so steady it calms something restless in my chest.
“You’ll find your stride,” she says. “You always do. And you’ll make it look easy.”
I smile down at the comforter. “And then you’ll have to hate me even more.”
Her eyes narrow—then she giggles. The sound is soft, loose, unguarded.
“What else?” she murmurs after a moment.
My brows knit. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been in the NHL for a decade. That can’t be the only thing you’re worried about. What do you want, Rhett? What’s the thing you’re so scared to mess up?”
I hesitate. She asked for deepest and darkest. So I give it to her.
“I’d like to have a family one day,” I say quietly.
She tilts her head. “What’s so scary about that?”
I run my thumb across my knuckles, voice soft. “Because if I wasn’t wired to be the captain of a hockey team, I’m definitely not wired to be someone’s husband. Or someone’s father. Not a good one anyway.”
She studies me for a long moment, her eyes soft. “You know you get to decide who you want to be, right?” she says. “No one is born anything. You have your whole life to become someone. There’s no cutoff date for it. No deadline.”
Her words are so simple. So true. They hit something inside me.
I stare at her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks softly.
“I just never know what to expect from you,” I admit.
She smiles. “You know what?”
“What, Cub?”
“I think I want to get married too. One day.”
I raise my brows. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she says, her voice thoughtful. “I’ve spent so long focused on my career and proving myself that… I don’t know. It’s almost like I thought I wasn’t allowed to want that too. Like it went against everything I’ve been building.”
“You can have both,” I say softly.
“Maybe,” she whispers.
