Page 38 of Say It Isn't Snow
“I—”
He grasps my chin to make me look at him. His eyes glimmer with a rawness that makes my breath catch. Desire swoops in my stomach. His arm is locked around my waist, not allowing me to escape his searching stare full of longing.
“Tell me the truth. You walked away from us. I’ve been wondering about it all this time, Holly.”
My teeth scrape my lip. He pulls it free and soothes it with his thumb.
“I overheard you on the phone with your coach,” I explain. “He was giving you a talk about where your focus needed to be if you wanted to go pro, and you downplayed that we were dating, saying you weren’t seeing anyone. All while I was naked in your bed. It broke my heart, so I took it as my sign to get out before I was in too deep with you.”
My chest tightens because it was too late, my heart already belonged to him.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “My coach had that talk with everyone to weed out the players who aren’t serious. It was—you were never supposed to hear that. Is that why you didn’t answer any of my messages when I went back to campus?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t mean what I said to him. I was serious about both—you and hockey.”
I draw a shaking breath, trying to line up what he’s saying with how I remember it.
“You didn’t chase after me. Not for long, anyway. So I figured I was right that what we had was only a summer fling.”
He grabs my shoulders. “I thought you hated me because every time I tried to text or call you, you ignored it.”
My gaze falls. “I told myself I did. I was afraid if I answered I would break down from missing you because I…I felt too much for you. But I had my own goals to work on, and you had yours.”
A laugh of disbelief puffs out of him. “Do you know how long I’ve been in—?” He hangs his head. “I’ve kept my old text conversation with you pinned to the top of my messages.”
My stomach bottoms out. “You have?”
“Yeah. I read through it all the time. Sometimes I tell you about my day before deleting it.” He swipes a hand over his jaw. “But the things I’ve really wanted to tell you…those I keep in a note on my phone. It’s full of years’ worth of messages I’ve never sent you but desperately wished I could’ve.”
I swallow hard, my heart fluttering uncontrollably. He’s really been yearning for me the entire time we’ve been apart?
“I’m such an idiot for ever letting you go,” he says. “I’ve regretted it every damn day.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Every chance I could, I kept up with what you were up to online. I’d hang on everything Layla said about you. There were so many times I talked myself in and out of showing up at your doorstep, even if you slammed the door in my face because you didn’t want to see me again.”
I’m shocked. He’s a star hockey player who could have any woman he wanted. Yet he’s been hung up on me.
As much as I’ve been stuck on him.
My lips slide together and I offer a confession of my own. “No one’s ever measured up to you. I’ve secretly compared everyone I went on dates with to the guy I couldn’t erase from my mind no matter how hard I tried to forget about you. There’s hardly a day that passes where I don’t think of you.”
A hoarse noise escapes him. The air around us thickens with an all-consuming tension.
His arms tighten around me, one palm gliding down to knead my waist while the other slowly winds the tie of my bikini around his finger. My palms glide up his chest to rest on his shoulders. I wet my lips. His gaze tracks the darting of my tongue.
“What do the unsent messages on your phone say?” I whisper.
“I’ll let you read them all later,” he promises.
The steam coming off the water swirls around us, creating the hypnotic sense of time slowing. It feels like we’re the only two people in the world.
Our drinks sit forgotten at the edge of the hot tub. The scant inches between us disappear with each hazy breath.
Caleb stares into my eyes and tugs on my bikini ties. A gasp escapes me as the material loosens enough to partially expose my breasts.
