Chasing Charli - Kat Mizera Page 0,51

you’re going away this summer…”

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” he said, lifting her chin so he could look into her eyes. “If you have to work all summer, then I’ll only go home when you’re free. I can bring my parents here if they want to spend more time together, or maybe better when the season starts so they can see me play.”

“I don’t want to change all your plans,” she protested weakly.

He leaned down and softly kissed her. “Isn’t that what love is? To make sacrifices so our lives are better? Together?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “No one’s ever sacrificed anything for me.”

“They aren’t me,” he said firmly. “I promise you, Char-lot… I’ll never hurt you. I want to be with you, make you happy.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled him closer.

“I want to live here with you,” he said. “I told Logan today that maybe he needs to find a new roommate.”

“You want to live here?” she asked in a shocked whisper.

“Don’t you want me here with you?”

“Yes. Absolutely… But it’s such an old house, and it needs so much work…”

“So we fix and update. In a couple of years, if I’m not traded somewhere else, we sell and buy something new.”

“You think you’ll get traded?” she asked in surprise.

He shrugged. “It’s part of life with a hockey player. Is this a problem for you, that I may get traded? This year, next year, maybe many times until I retire. No way to know.”

She slowly shook her head. “If we were married and I was going with you, no. That’s not a problem. The only reason I moved here is because my grandfather left me the house.”

“Yes, of course we would be married,” he said. “But this was a big problem for Jaana. She didn’t want to come to the U.S., and she said someday, when we have children, she didn’t want to move them. So I want to make sure.”

Charli froze, realizing they needed to talk about the fact that she didn’t want to have children. “Miikka… I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but I’m not sure I want children.”

He looked down at her in surprise. “No children? Why?”

She sighed heavily, looking away. “It’s a long story.”

“This is about your high school boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Did you get pregnant?” he asked, his eyes never leaving hers.

She nodded.

“Tell me.”

She took a shaky breath. “We were together three years and he was a year older. We met when we were fourteen and fifteen. When he graduated, he joined the military because he didn’t have the grades or the money for college. He left for basic training in August.” She looked away. “I found out I was pregnant a month later.”

She pulled away from Miikka and wrapped her arms around herself protectively, not meeting his eyes. She walked back into the bedroom and sat on the bed. Miikka sat beside her and reached for her hand.

“You can tell me anything,” he said quietly.

“I don’t really talk about it,” she said, her voice a little hoarse.

He threaded their fingers together. “I’m right here. It’s okay, no matter what it is.”

“He called me about halfway through basic training. He’d earned a few hours of free time. I was scared, because I knew my parents were going to freak out. He said everything was going to be okay, that he’d come get me as soon as he got a few days leave after basic. But he never came back. I never heard from him again. I was almost five months pregnant by the time I realized he wasn’t coming and I had to tell my parents.” She closed her eyes, oblivious to the tears dripping down her cheeks.

“They were angry,” he said gently.

“Oh, god. So angry. They called me terrible names, said I was a disgrace to the family, to God, to myself…” She shuddered even though it wasn’t cold.

“Oh, sweetheart.” He’d never called her an endearment in English before and she leaned against his side wearily.

“They kicked me out of the house right before Christmas. They called the school to tell them I was a pregnant whore and that I shouldn’t be allowed to come back after the holidays and—”

“Wait, they did what?”

21

Miikka had been getting more and more upset as he listened to her story, but that last line nearly made his head explode. What kind of people were her parents? He wanted to cry for her as she continued.

“I come from a really small, conservative town. My