Page 66 of On the Line
“Make me.”
He stared her down. “Lexie, now is not the time for one of your games.” He nodded his head in the direction of the house, where his mom was waiting on the columned front porch. “Besides, she already saw us.”
“Fuck,” Lexie whispered, then got out of the vehicle.
“Mrs. Scott,” Lexie said, walking up to hand her the big bouquet of flowers they’d picked up at Trader Joe’s on the way.
“Oh please, call me Georgie,” his mom said. “And in this family, we hug.” She wrapped her arms around Lexie’s middle, and after a moment of stiff surprise, Lexie hugged back, her face softening.
As Mitch anticipated, Lexie and his mother got along perfectly. Lexie asked a million questions about what Mitch was like growing up, laughing her ass off at his terrible haircuts and gangly body when his mom brought out the photo albums.
Mitch’s entire body went stiff when Lexie continued to shuffle through the pictures and came across one featuring a toddler-sized Mitch, his mother, and his father.
“Is that your dad?” Lexie asked.
“Sure is,” he said tightly, hoping she could sense his discomfort and let go of any further questions she might have.
He should’ve known better.
“What happened to him?” She asked quietly.
His mother, unaware that Mitch had told Lexie his father was dead, said, “Oh he’s back in Georgia. I have no idea what he’s up to other than still trying to drink himself to death.”
Lexie looked at Mitch questioningly, hurt and anger flaring in her hazel eyes, but wisely didn’t press the issue. This was a conversation for later.
Instead, she said to him, “You never talk about him.”
“Not surprising,” his mother said. “That man was horrible to Mitch. Horrible to both of us. If I hadn’t used every spare penny I had to make sure Mitch could play hockey, and if he hadn’t been picked up by the U.S. development team…”
She trailed off, her eyes shining in the sun coming through the living room window. “If we hadn’t moved here, I can’t even imagine where we’d both be right now,” she finished.
Lexie reached out and took his mother’s hand. “I’m sorry you went through that,” she said with a squeeze.
His mother pulled free from Lexie’s touch and waved a hand in the air, brushing the conversation and pity off. “Well it’s all over now.” She looked at Mitch and smiled. “We got out, right honey? That’s the important thing.”
Mitch could only nod, his words strangled by admiration and love for his mother, and fear for how he was going to explain this to Lexie and still keep her.
It was such a stupid thing to lie about, and he wasn’t entirely sure why he did it. That date in Dallas was when Lexie had finally started to share her past with him, and he knew how difficult that was for her. He just hadn’t been ready to do the same, and telling her that his father was dead was the most sure-fire way he could think of to nip that conversation in the bud.
But there were a million other ways he could have gone about explaining his father’s absence, ways that didn’t have her glancing at him with that betrayed look all over her face.
He’s not in the picture. They didn’t speak. He’s a raging alcoholic who wasted their money on getting wasted and beat on him and his mother.
Reliving any moment from the first fifteen years of his life always reminded him of how weak and powerless he’d been. How, until the U.S. development team had taken an interest in him, he and his mother had lived their lives treading on thin ice, never knowing when their next step would suck them under. How he hadn’t been able to protect her for so long, and how the guilt ate him alive for years after the move.
It was why he wanted to be a defenseman when he first started playing hockey, to protect people. Grudgingly, he supposed he had his father to thank for that. He and his mother spent so many years under the thumb of a man who was mean and suffering from a horrible disease that seeped into everything around them. All Mitch ever wanted to do was save himself and his mother.
Hockey had allowed him to do that in more ways than one.
After that depressing topic of conversation, the remaining time he and Lexie spent at his mother’s was strained. Thankfully his mother appeared completely oblivious, but every once in a while, Mitch caught Lexie shooting him sidelong death glares.
If looks could kill…
When it came time to leave, he wrapped his mother in a hug, cocooning her smaller frame inside his large one, and whispered, “I love you, Mama.”
“I love you, too, baby. I don’t know what happened here today, but fix things with that girl. She’s a dream and if you screw this up, I’ll never forgive you.”
Mitch pulled away, stunned. All he could do was nod before his mother pulled Lexie into a hug, telling her they would have to get together again soon.
