Caged (Gold Hockey #11) - Elise Faber Page 0,64
love me.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And I can’t make her. Even though I really want to.”
Fanny’s mouth fell open, but he had to give her credit; she recovered quickly. “Ethan, that’s—”
“Don’t.”
“That woman has come alive since you’ve started dating. She likes you. She loves you.” Fanny squeezed his hand. “She may not be ready to say it yet, but have no doubt that her heart beats for yours.”
The pain in him lessoned, the edges of the gaping wound closing slowly. “I still need to find a way for her to forgive me for pushing.”
She snorted. “You’re a man. Men push.”
“That doesn’t make it—” He broke off when her lips twitched. “Hilarious. I should make you do skating drills.”
“I’d kill your puny little skating drills.” She narrowed her eyes, lips twitching again, and more of that painful, caused-by-his-own-hand wound closed. “Dani is a good person. She’s clearly crazy about you. So just be patient but persistent, and”—she leaned in, voice dropping to a whisper—“for the record, she loves Hot Tamales.”
“What if she doesn’t love me?”
Fanny smacked him on the arm. Hard.
The woman was stronger than she appeared, but her tone was even more fierce. “You are a fucking catch, Ethan Korhonen, and if you don’t believe that, look inside yourself and imagine how you’d feel if Dani thought that she wasn’t worthy of your love.”
His jaw clenched as reality struck home.
How could he expect Dani to see herself as he saw her—wonderful, beautiful inside and out, smart, funny, incredibly strong—if he continued to view himself as never quite measuring up?
She nudged him. “Exactly. So put that derision and self-doubt to bed once and for all, woman up, and love her with every bit of your soul.”
Fanny was out of the seat and walking down the aisle before he could summon any words, the reality of her words hitting him hard enough to momentarily freeze his lungs.
Because he finally understood.
Self-deprecating took on a different tact when it was laced with self-loathing, when it was used as a joke, but one with a painful center. He stared down at the tray table, knowing that it had begun long ago when he’d overheard one of his father’s colleagues telling another colleague that Ethan’s parents must be “so disappointed” to not have an “intellectual child.”
Because he’d played hockey.
Because he hadn’t taken to piano or Math Club. He hadn’t had the patience to want to join the debate team.
He loved learning, but only what he found interesting.
Because outside of that, he’d loved even more to move—to be on the ice, to feel the cool air on his face, the joy of a teammate scoring or connecting a sweet pass, the terror when a player was streaking back toward their zone, the dip in his stomach when a goal went in their net, the tightness of his lungs, the burn of his quads when he worked his ass off during a shift.
And he’d never quite realized how much how he’d valued that as less.
It had been masked by humor, by self-decrepitation over the years. Yes, the team called him Big, Juicy Brain, but he’d never felt that way—and how could he? He knew he was nowhere near as smart as his parents, and he’d been okay with that.
Except . . . he hadn’t.
Because beneath all that okay was a thorn pressing against the inside of his ribs, jabbing him every time he threatened to breathe too deeply, to look too closely.
For all the joking and pretending to be confident in his place and unaffected by the bullshit that others brought, deep down Ethan didn’t feel like he was enough. When he peeled back the layers, studied what was beneath that veneer, he didn’t feel like enough. It was a painful fucking truth, because he wanted to be what he appeared to be on the surface, self-assured, comfortable in his space.
He’d found that professionally, felt it like a second skin settling over him by finding his place on the Gold. But as he’d found that, it had masked the rest of the turmoil beneath.
Why his first reaction when Dani hadn’t returned his declaration had been to assume that of course she couldn’t love him back.
Why he’d stayed away, avoided her like hell because he’d known that she was going to cut him loose.
Why he’d been so wrapped up in his own head, his own certainty that he wouldn’t be enough instead of moving forward with patience and understanding, with openness instead of silent misery.
And, most