Page 57 of Offside Secrets
“But…what?”
“It’s about the woman I mentioned to you the other day.” I toss my hands in the air. “I don’t know what to call her. My ‘complicated situation’.”
“Kinda figured when I overheard Sawyer talking to you,” Dad says as he nods slowly.
“I thought you were asleep?"
He winks. “That’s what parents do.”
“So you heard most of it?”
“Enough to know that you’re worried about this ‘complicated situation’.”
“I am,” I affirm. “But, it’s gotten more complicated.”
Dad waves a hand in the air, as if he was showing off his hospital room machines to me. “Well, I’m obviously not going anywhere if you want to talk about it.”
I keep replaying Sutton in that parking lot, her hands fisted in my hoodie, the way she looked at me like I was something precious. Then come the gossip blog photos, the silence, the way she’s been avoiding me like I’m contagious.
“She’s my boss,” I say finally. “And there are people who see that as a problem.”
“Ah,” he responds, mulling over my words. “So, people around you believe it’s an issue—but what about you?”
I don’t hesitate. I’ve spent the last few days turning it over in my mind, losing sleep over it, trying to make sense of it. “I think I’m falling for her, and she’s scared of what that means for both of us.”
Dad’s quiet for a moment, processing. “You know what I learned when your mother and I were first together?”
“What?”
“Sometimes the best things in life are the scariest. Your mom was way out of my league—college educated, came from money, could have had anyone she wanted. I spent sixmonths convinced she was going to wake up one day and realize she was slumming it with a construction worker.”
I can’t imagine my parents as anything other than solid—steady as bedrock, the kind of couple that argues about who forgot to buy milk and then holds hands on the way to the store.
“What changed?” I ask, half-expecting some story about fate or timing.
Dad gives a small laugh, though it catches halfway and turns into a wince. “She told me I was being an idiot.”
That sounds about right. Mom always had a way of cutting through his nonsense with surgical precision.
He shifts, settling back against the pillow. “Said if I was going to spend all my time worrying about why she shouldn’t be with me, I wasn’t giving her much reason to stay.”
I stare at him, trying to picture that version of my dad—the one full of doubt, questioning whether he was good enough for her. The guy who taught me how to throw a puck and fix a leaky faucet has never struck me as insecure.
“So you stopped worrying?” I ask.
“I started focusing on being worth staying for instead of assuming I wasn’t.” His tone softens, the words landing like he’s handing me something valuable he almost lost once.
They hit harder than I expect—right in the ribs, where I keep all the things I don’t say out loud.
Have I been doing that with Sutton? Spending all my time waiting for her to come to her senses, to realize she could have someone easier, less complicated—someone who doesn’t come with a locker room full of opinions and a PR team on speed dial?
Maybe the problem isn’t that she’ll leave. Maybe it’s that I’ve already decided she should.
A nurse comes in to check Dad’s vitals, and by the time she leaves, she reports that he’s cleared to go. His bloodworklooks good, his oxygen’s steady, and he can go home—as long as he takes his meds and rests for a few days.
It’s a relief, even if the lines of exhaustion around his eyes tell a different story.
“You going to be okay?” Dad asks as I gather our things.
