37. Harper

37 /

harper

After Caleb left, Luca led me down a hallway. My chest tightened as we stepped into a small, sterile room. A hospital bed dominated the space, and beside it sat a rolling nightstand holding a plastic water pitcher and cup. A TV hung on the wall opposite the bed, and apart from some built-in drawers, a straight-backed chair was the only other piece of furniture. The common room, with its comfortable upholstery, entertainment equipment, and game tables, had almost made me forget we were in a hospital, but there was no mistaking it now.

"Why don't you shut the door?" I asked, my voice strained. "We have some things to talk about."

He winced. "Closed doors aren't allowed, but I think we'll be okay. They usually only come in to take vitals or give me my meds, and they always knock first."

I nodded, wishing I could change the reality of all that had happened.

He crossed the room and placed his hands on my chest. "I can't believe you're really here. It feels like a dream."

The excitement of seeing each other had made us both emotional. We'd apologized and shown we still cared about each other, and—for a moment—I'd imagined we could leave this place and take up where we'd left off. But in this tiny room, I couldn't escape what I'd done to him. His familiar smell and the warmth of his touch were comforting links to the relationship we'd built, but he wasn't the same. His haunted eyes and pale skin left no doubt about the terrible time he'd been through. I'd caused it, and the weight of that realization pressed down on me. Somehow, I needed to make it up to him, to do whatever was necessary to set things right. But how could I ever undo the damage? After what I'd done, could he ever truly forgive me?

I looked into his eyes, glimmering with hope, and the hint of a smile on his lips gave me the courage to try. "If it's a dream, we're both having it. I'm sorry, Luca. I can't believe how badly I treated you."

He shook his head. "Don't try to take all the responsibility. If I'd thought everything through that night, none of this would've happened."

"I didn't even let you explain."

"Not right away, but you were hurt. You eventually listened to me."

" Eventually wasn't good enough." Shame filled my heart, mixed with disbelief that I'd been so stubborn. "I judged you and ran away."

"Because you were hurt," he repeated softly.

"By something that wasn't real."

He played with a button on my shirt. "That's on me. I should have come back to you that night. Anyone would've been shocked to see what you did first thing in the morning. I'd have probably reacted the same way if the situation had been reversed." He dropped his hands and nodded at the bed. "Let's sit down."

I nearly yelled that I didn't want to sit. Right then, I wanted to run away so I could never hurt him like this again.

"Come on." He perched on the edge of the bed and patted the place beside him. After I sat, he touched my cheek. "I've been doing a lot of thinking, babe. We both played a role in what happened, but not exactly how you're seeing it. I'm not sure pulling apart every word we said will help anything."

I was so shocked I raised my voice. "What the hell? We can't brush over what happened like it was nothing. If we don't talk about what we did, we'll never get past it."

"We'll talk about it, but I don't think nitpicking everything we?—"

"It's not nitpicking. It's learning from what we did so it will never happen again."

"Fuck this! Is it that important to rehash the details of what hurt us so much? We should…" He buried his face in his hands, and he was frowning when he looked at me again. "Maybe you're right, but there are more important things to talk about than every little thing that went down."

My insides clenched until it felt like there was a knife in my stomach. "More important than me treating you like shit?" I was still too loud, but he wasn't hearing me. "I assumed you'd cheated on me, left town without letting you explain, and barely talked to you for a week. I'd gotten so angry I couldn't see I was pushing away the best thing in my life." My voice broke, and I held up a hand until I got my bearings. "After I finally listened to you, I said I needed more time to think, then left again."

"Because I was trying to hide from what happened. I didn't want to talk about it."

"Apparently, you still don't."

"Bullshit. I'm trying to talk." His face had turned red, and he'd clenched his fists by his side. "How can you act like I don't even fucking care? I've done nothing but hurt since the morning you walked out on me. Just because I've processed things differently than you have doesn't mean I don't want to talk."

Arguing with him was no good, so I dug deep, hoping to find enough self-control to be reasonable. "I know you've been hurt worse than I can probably understand, but don't think I haven't suffered, too. I went through hell that first day alone. You'll never know how much I wished I could simply forget what I saw and act like nothing had happened."

"Is that why you listened so well when you sneaked home in the middle of the night to pack?"

It was hard to ignore the snarky tone in his voice. "I hurt like hell the entire time I was in D.C., and I haven't been the same since. At camp, I hardly slept a wink, and on the ice, it was anybody's guess which Harper they'd get—the player they'd traded for, or the disaster who could barely stay upright on his skates."

Luca huffed and looked away. When he turned back, the flush in his cheeks had faded. "We both acted like assholes. I made you think I didn't care about what happened. You left, which made me think you didn't care about my feelings."

"What feelings? All you wanted to do was forget it ever happened." The harshness in my voice shocked me.

"I had feelings, but you wouldn't listen long enough to find out what they were. No wonder you didn't care."

"I fucking cared! How can you possibly think I didn't?"

We were breathing so hard we were snorting. He looked away again, and I had a sinking feeling we wouldn't be able to fix things at all. We regretted what had happened, and we cared about each other, but we were so angry we might not be able to let it go.

When I was starting to wonder if I should leave, he spoke so softly I could barely hear him. "You left because I made you feel like second-best."

He turned back to face me, and my insides hollowed out. I wasn't sure which was worse—the knife in my gut, or the emptiness of remembering what it felt like to think Luca had chosen Caleb over me. A shudder rumbled through me, and it was my turn to avert my eyes. I didn't want Luca to see how much the memory hurt.

He tapped my knee. "Look at me, babe. This is exactly what we need to talk about, the way our old wounds control us. Misunderstandings will always happen, but it wasn't the misunderstanding that caused all these weeks of misery. What hurt us so badly was how we reacted to the misunderstanding, and if we can figure out how to fix that, we'll get past this."

My insides were at war. I'd thought the same thing while at training camp, and it was scary as fuck. The logic of what he'd said was undeniable, but so was my fear that we could never solve the problem. I raised my head and said, "Deep wounds can be impossible to heal, Luca. I want to be with you, but are you ready to deal with someone who's constantly afraid he won't measure up? You know what's happened to me—Manny cheating, Simon saying I wasn't good enough. When I thought you'd been with Caleb, I assumed it was happening again, that as soon as he appeared on the scene, you realized I wasn't the man for you after all." My throat closed, and it was a moment before I could finish. "I felt like you threw me away."

"That isn't what happened."

"I thought you cheated on me with Caleb. Even after you explained what happened and I believed you, I still felt like you'd cheated. Not with sex, but emotionally, by putting him first."

"And that's why you left." He grazed my chin with a knuckle. "Caleb was never in first place. I tried to be a friend to him, and then I made a stupid mistake by not going back to your apartment. I didn't want Caleb sexually. We didn't do anything."

"I believe you, but?—"

He silenced me by holding up a hand. "Caleb wasn't in first place, but I see how you got that idea. I won't make that kind of mistake again. I don't want you ever having to wonder who's most important in my life. You were all I wanted that night, and you're all I ever want. You, Harper Blanton, are more than good enough."

Tears filled my eyes yet again, and I exhaled a slow breath. "Thank you."

"It's true, but I have a question."

I nodded.

"You said you still thought I'd cheated on you even though Caleb and I didn't have sex. Had I done something to make you distrust me that much?"

And there it was, the core of what I'd been agonizing over during the weeks at camp. "No. But before I ever knew you, Manny did, and later, Simon did. They hurt me terribly, and I never dealt with it the right way. So, I judged you because of their actions and assumed history was repeating itself. I've thought about this, and I need to see someone to help me work it out."

"You should. I'll be seeing a therapist to help me deal with my shit, too, and we can support each other."

"I'd like that."

Silence settled between us while people talked in the hallway and phones rang in the distance. Luca eventually said, "I want to be with you, too, Harp, but I have another question. Your answer won't scare me away, but I need to know. I'm sorry if it sounds bad."

What now? Frustration gripped me as I understood how Luca must have felt when I wouldn't say things were okay. "What is it?"

"I understand why you reacted the way you did to start with, and I think I get why you went to D.C. But if you really cared about my feelings, why wouldn't you talk to me while you were at training camp? I know you were busy, but if my feelings mattered, why didn't you share what you were thinking? If you had questions about what I did, you should have asked."

I hesitated, hoping the answer would make sense. "I wasn't deciding whether I wanted you when I was at camp. I wanted us to be together, but I was trying to decide if I was good enough for you. I was so caught up in my fears that I didn't think enough about your feelings. I'll try to learn from that mistake, too."

He reached for my hand and gave me a little smile. "Fair enough. Sounds like we both have a lot to work on."

He was right that some hard work lay ahead, but it might be easier if he knew how I felt about him. My heart pounded as I gathered my courage. Uncertainty about his reaction was mixed with excitement, and I raised his hand to my lips for a kiss. "I love you, Luca. If you'll give me another chance, I promise to do everything in my power to never hurt you like this again."

He didn't move, and when he spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper. "Please say that again. Just the very first part."

I nodded and squeezed his hand. "I love you."

His eyes widened, and a whoosh of air left him as he looked toward the ceiling. When he lowered his head, his eyes were brimming with tears. He let out a relieved sigh, and a grin spread across his face. "That's the best thing I ever heard. I love you too, Harp."

My heart rattled. "We can fix this, then? Go back to being us?"

"You bet your hockey butt we can. If we work together, there's nothing we can't do."

The relief was overwhelming. Our eyes locked, and I took the first good breath I'd had in weeks. Luca moved closer, and when our lips met, a shiver ran through me. We'd kissed earlier, but this was different. Now, we were determined to make things work because we were in love, and our desire to be together was stronger than what had driven us apart.

I opened for him, and we wrapped our arms around each other as our tongues met. When he pulled me closer and deepened the kiss, we moaned with relief. He moved a hand to my lap and squeezed my cock, and I dropped one of my hands to squeeze him, too.

With a start, he broke the kiss and backed away. "Not here, babe. We need to stop before we get carried away, but I want you so much."

"Fuck." Already breathless, I whispered, "Want you, too."

After a moment, he smiled. "I'll make it up to you as soon as I get out of here."

"We'll have to wait for it this time."

He nodded. "It'll be good for us. We never did that before." After a short pause, he broke into a conspiratorial grin. "I have an idea to make it even better."

"I'm all ears."

"We both hate condoms, so let's get tested. I'm sure they can do it while I'm here, and it shouldn't be any trouble for you to find a place. Then we could…"

The suggestion did nothing to make my dick go down, and I smiled while I completed his sentence. "Make love without anything between us. I'll go tomorrow."

He bounced his eyebrows. "I'll ask a nurse. When I get out of here, we'll have an incredible homecoming."

A glance at his lap revealed he was as excited about the idea as I was, so I leaned in and took another quick kiss. "We should think about something else for now. Do they have any games we could play?"

"Board games and a Nintendo. There's an old Wii, too. Let's go see what we can find."

I nodded, and he kissed me again. I couldn't stop smiling while we held each other because we were going to be okay. Luca was right—if we worked together, there was nothing we couldn't do.