“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” she heard herself ask.
He lifted a shoulder. “You didn’t get pregnant by yourself. We both had our share of the blame. We both made mistakes.”
Did they? It didn’t feel that way and she really, really wished it did. All these years she’d blamed him for walking out on her when she needed him most, for not being a better father to Bree. All these years she’d hidden behind her own anger and resentment, blaming him for feeling the same way.
The truth of it made her queasy. Made her ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Despite the warm night, her face and cheeks were cold. Numb. “I’m so sorry, Neil.”
“Looking for redemption?”
She hadn’t been. Had only been hoping to put some much-needed distance between them. “I’m not sure.” It was as honest an answer as she could give him. “Maybe. Or maybe I’m hoping that reminding us both of our past, of those mistakes we made, will stop us from repeating them.”
He studied her, all hard-eyed and tempting. “Or maybe,” he said, his husky voice rubbing against her sensitized flesh like sandpaper, “we’ll learn how to finally overcome that past. To forgive those mistakes.”
She couldn’t. It was too risky. Because if she forgave him, if she let her guard down around him, she would be right back where she was twelve years ago. Needy. Pathetic. Letting her feelings for him take over her life. Not going to happen.
Not when losing Neil meant she’d ended up finding herself.
* * *
“OW,” BREE MUTTERED.
Crouched in front of her, Neil paused in the act of tying the laces of her right skate. “Too tight?”
She sighed and stared over his head. “It’s fine.”
He raised his eyebrows. It didn’t sound fine. It sounded as if she was dying.
Preteen girls should come with some sort of instruction booklet. Maybe then he’d know what the hell was going on with his daughter. When he’d picked her up from soccer practice, she’d slouched in the car while he’d signed autographs for her teammates and a few of their parents. On the way to lunch, she’d given grunts and one-word responses to his questions about how practice had gone. At the restaurant, when he suggested that the grilled chicken salad might be a better choice than the cheeseburger she’d chosen, she’d changed her order then spent the rest of the hour poking at her food rather than eating it.
Finished lacing her left skate, he gave her toes a tap. “How do they feel?”
She shrugged.
“Does that mean they’re okay?”
With another of her heavy sighs she stood. “I guess.”
“Good. Come on. We only have the ice for an hour.”
He’d thought it would be good for them to be here together. A way for them to connect and do something they both enjoyed.
Plus, it would help keep his mind off Maddie. Keep him from reliving what had happened between them the other night, how the taste of her had drugged him. How the feel of her skin under his hands, under his mouth, had turned him inside out. How close he’d come to being pulled back under her spell.
How hard it had been to let her walk away from him.
Maddie had always had the ability to tie him into knots. That hadn’t changed. But he was older now. Smarter. It’d just been sex. He shouldn’t be getting caught by emotions that couldn’t go anywhere, by feelings that were too big for him. That he didn’t want.
He swung open the waist-high wooden door and held it for Bree as he stepped onto the ice. She took a hesitant step, her knees wobbling, her arms out for balance. Suspicion, the same one that’d been nothing but a niggling when she’d told him she didn’t have her own skates, the one that had grown when she’d been unable to lace the pair Walt had brought out for her, took root. Bloomed when Bree carefully stepped onto the ice. She wobbled, her arms windmilling as her feet shuffled.
Then she fell on her ass.
“You okay?” he asked, offering her his hand.
“Fine,” she said somewhat breathlessly as she scrambled onto her hands and knees.
His mouth tight, he lowered his hand, curled his fingers as she used the wall to pull herself up. Only to have her skates slide out from under her again.
He caught her. “You don’t know how to skate.” He shut his eyes. That had sounded harsh. Accusing. He moved to the side so he could see her face, gentled his tone. “Why