Page 100 of The Love Dare
But he knows that, too. She told him, beneath the midnight sun in Iceland, their souls bared.I don’t need you to save me anymore, Ty.
I don’t want to save you, he said.I want to fight with you.
He would’ve fought with her. He’s a hockey player, for god’s sake—he spends half his life fighting everyone anyway. He would’ve faced any opponent for her. If she’d told him, he would’ve done anything. He would’ve?—
Stop.
Tyler scrubs his hands over his face, forcing himself to stop, to breathe. He can feel himself on the edge of spiraling, a precipice he’s walked too many times before—every time his mom disappeared into her own demons, every time he saw his teammates crushed in the arms of their proud fathers, every time he spent a holiday surrounded by silence, with no family to fill the void. He’s used to people leaving. Being discarded is his default. It would be all too easy to step off the ledge and fall into that vat of self-pity he so frequently finds himself drowning in. But a realization stalls his foot.
If he wants to fight with her, as he said he did, maybe the first person he has to face is himself.
You won’t run?he remembers asking her, wincing at the desperation in his voice.
I won’t, she said.
You promise?
I promise.
He said he trusted her. Over and over again, he said it, trying to make her see, to make her stay. But maybe all that time, he was really trying to convince himself. Because he isn’t sure, with the life he led and the childhood he survived, if it’s something he even knows how to do. But Winnie isn’t his mom. And he can’t keep living in that same merry-go-round. Always doubting. Always afraid. Always expecting the worst, when she’s done nothing to deserve it.
He won’t.
Love can’t exist without trust. And right here, right now, he has to decide if it’s in him to put that sort of faith in another person. If he can’t, they’re already over anyway.
Tyler turns to Nina.
Without his own bullshit standing in the way, the truth suddenly becomes so clear.
“What did you do?” he asks darkly.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Nina answers carefully—too carefully.
“Where is she?”
“The airport, like I said.”
No, she isn’t. She can’t be. And if Nina won’t tell him the truth, he’ll just have to find her himself.
Tyler takes off down the beach.
“Winnie! Winnie!” he yells, cupping his hands around his mouth as he swivels his head, studying the windows of the oceanfront suites, searching for her face in the glass. “Winnie!”
He probably looks like a madman.
That’s probably the point.
He suddenly has no doubt he’s giving the crew exactly what they were hoping for—a big, dramatic scene they can splash all over the promos to draw new viewers in—but he can’t bringhimself to care. He’ll gladly fall into any trap if it means finding her.
“Winnie!”
He cuts down a pathway, sprinting beneath palm fronds and over black lava rock, shouting her name at the top of his lungs. The cameramen follow, their footsteps pounding behind him. The regular resort guests give him a wide berth, fear and uncertainty in their eyes. He’s not used to receiving those looks anywhere off the ice. In his uniform, he’s an absolute savage. But outside of the game, he’s never liked using his size to intimidate people unless they well and truly deserve it.
“Winnie!”
Someone by the pool recognizes him. Phones come out. Unless Nina is prepared to pay them off, he has no doubt this footage of him acting like a maniac will be plastered all over social media within the next twenty minutes. His agent is going to kill him. His publicist will do her best. And the producers? Well, he isn’t sure if this is good or bad for the show, and he doesn’t really give two shits about it either way. Still, the more ground he covers with no hint of Winnie, the more he realizes this is reckless and just plain stupid.
I need a plan.
