Back Check Part 14

"That'll get your a.s.s spanked."

She laughed softly, and he loved that she was confident enough in his own confidence to tease him about his s.e.xual prowess.

"Am I crus.h.i.+ng you?" He had most of his weight on his elbows, but still, he was big.

"Yes. I'm fine, though. I don't need to breathe."

He shook his head, lifting it to look her in the eyes and smile. Affection swelled inside him for this woman.

Then she asked, "What did we just do, Tanner?"

"Uh...thought it was obvious."

She smacked at his shoulder and closed her eyes. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah." He sighed. "Okay, hang on. I'd rather just go to sleep for a while," he grumbled as he slid out of her body. "Can't I just go to sleep?"

Her lips twitched and her eyes opened. "What about that stamina?"

"I have stamina for s.e.x. Not so much for talking." He was only half-joking. "Be right back."

He found her bathroom. The apartment was small and basic, but nice enough. He got rid of the condom and washed up, then returned to find her sitting on the couch, wearing his s.h.i.+rt.

Oh h.e.l.l yeah, that was a good look on her. Only a couple of b.u.t.tons done up, her legs bare, hands planted on the couch, at her hips. Her long dark hair was all over the place, and she looked up at him with a cautious expression. Okay, that he didn't like. A protective feeling surged inside him.

"Let's pull out this bed," he said quietly.

She peered at him, her eye makeup smudgy and s.e.xy. "Are you staying?"

"You're gonna make me walk home in a snowstorm?"

One corner of her mouth lifted. "I can loan you cab fare if you're hard up."

He snorted and lifted her off the couch. "I'm staying." He kissed her nose, then reached for the cus.h.i.+ons to pull them off. He easily slid out the bed and opened it. Katelyn moved to a storage unit behind the small table and chairs and pulled out pillows and a comforter, and he helped her spread it over the sheets already there.

In the bed, surprisingly comfortable for a pull-out, he leaned against the back of the couch and tugged her into his arms. She moved against him like she always had, fitting herself to him perfectly, arm over his waist, her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair back from her face.

"Okay," he said. "Let's talk. This isn't so bad, is it?"

"I don't know."

"If you're worried about what people will think of you professionally, I don't really believe that matters."

"I'm not so sure of that."

"I'm not your client. I'm just a friend of your clients."

"Yes." She paused. "That's only part of it. I wanted us to be friends so we wouldn't affect the wedding. But now...this might make things even more awkward."

He smoothed his hand down her bare arm. "I don't want things to be awkward between us."

"I don't either."

He paused. He wasn't always good at talking about stuff. His family had never been one to do that. With a revolving door of step-parents and step-siblings that disappeared just when he started to get to know them and care about them, they'd never discussed deeper things. He and Katelyn had talked about a lot of stuff...he'd told her more than he'd told anyone else. But at the end, when they'd really needed to talk, he'd been too afraid of what he was going to hear...so he'd left. "I'm sorry."

"For what? For what just happened?"

"No! h.e.l.l no. I'm sorry for leaving you...back then."

She lifted her head and peered up at him, her forehead creased. "You had no choice, Tanner. You had an NHL contract. Of course you had to leave."

"I'm sorry I didn't stay long enough to talk to you about it. I..." He paused. This was the part he didn't like about talking s.h.i.+t out...sharing his feelings. "I was p.i.s.sed that you wouldn't come with me. I should have stayed...at least to try to work things out."

She went very still against him. He could sense how hard she was thinking.

"Thank you," she whispered. "I was hurt that you didn't do that. And..." She sucked in a big breath. "I'm sorry too. That I couldn't go with you. I'm sorry if I hurt you."

He closed his eyes on a wave of remembered pain.

"I'll tell you...now...more about it," she said in a low voice.

"I know you wanted to stay in your hometown. With your dad, because he was the only family you had, and all your friends."

"You thought I was afraid to leave."

He didn't answer that. Yeah, he'd thought that might be the reason. Lots of people grew up in a town or city and stayed there for their whole lives.

"I wasn't afraid to leave," she continued. "I just couldn't." She rolled away from him and flopped onto her back. "I couldn't say anything...to anyone...back then."

"What?" He moved to his side to watch her, sliding lower in the bed, bending an elbow to rest his head on his hand.

She stared up at the ceiling. "My dad had Alzheimer's."

He frowned. "I'm sorry."

She turned to him, and the sadness in her eyes made his heart contract. "You may not know much about it."

"People lose their memory."

"Right. But it's more than that. He lost...himself." She swallowed and returned to talking to the ceiling. "He'd had it for a while when you met him. He was young to get it, and it progressed pretty fast."

Tanner remembered Mr. Medford. Professor Medford. He'd taught math at Michigan State, obviously a highly intelligent man, in his fifties, who loved his daughter a lot. Professor Medford hadn't been thrilled when Tanner had started dating Katelyn...Tanner was a jock with a reputation for rough play, fighting, and hooking up with lots of girls. But Katelyn's dad had at least given him a chance, got to know him a bit, and had slowly accepted that Tanner was an okay guy. Tanner remembered little things now, though, that at the time he'd chalked up to her father being the stereotypical absentminded professor. Losing things, forgetting things, sometimes stopping in the middle of a conversation.

"He hated it," she continued quietly. "He hated that he couldn't remember stuff. He knew it was happening, at first, and it scared the c.r.a.p out of him. He was such a smart man, and proud. He was good at faking a lot of stuff...most people would never notice. He told me about it one day...after he'd been to the doctor...he broke down and cried." Katelyn's voice cracked.

f.u.c.k. Tanner reached out and laid his hand flat on her stomach.

"He told me how scared he was of losing his mind, of losing control of his life. Losing his job. He was terrified about what would happen to him. I started covering for him when I could. Little things like reminding him who someone was when he didn't remember them...finding things for him. It got harder, though."

Now he understood why she and her dad were so close, why she'd looked after him and their home so much. He'd a.s.sumed she just took responsibility after her mother died, and that was probably true, but she'd needed to do so much more than a teenager should have to.

"Right around the time you signed your contract, I started helping him with his cla.s.ses. He was struggling to teach. He was relying on his TA a lot, and I was marking papers and keeping him organized. He needed to hang on to his job until he could retire when he was fifty-five, to get his pension. Otherwise, he would have had nothing, other than some small retirement savings he'd put aside." She turned agonized eyes toward him again. "I couldn't leave him, Tanner."

His chest burned at the misery in her expression and his gut knotted. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"He didn't want people to know. He wanted to hide it so he wouldn't lose his job. He didn't want anyone feeling sorry for him. G.o.d, Tanner, he was a professor...he was so smart, and he was proud of being that smart and it was humiliating to him. I couldn't tell anyone."

"I could've helped. Christ." Now he rolled to his back. "I was making good money, Katie. We could've got help for him."

"There was no help. There's no cure. They tried some medications that supposedly slow the progression of the disease, and they may have helped...but not really."

"I mean, I could've helped look after him, if he couldn't work anymore."

"I couldn't ask you to do that!"

He pressed his lips together and closed his eyes.

"We hung on until he was fifty-five," she continued. "He retired and everyone thought it was a happy day for him, that he'd start a new life, taking it easy and relaxing. But it wasn't a happy day, other than we were relieved. After that, it was like things went downhill a lot quicker. I was still going to school, in my senior year at that point, but it was getting harder and harder to look after him. He had no volition...he didn't know he was supposed to get dressed in the morning. He didn't know he was supposed to clean up something he spilled, so the house was always a disaster...I was trying to stay on top of that. He didn't know he was supposed to eat. He lost so much weight, and I felt guilty because I tried to be there as much as I could, but I was going to cla.s.s and studying."

"Christ." His entire body was rigid with tension now, thinking about his Katie going through that...alone.

"When I graduated, I took the job at the country club so I could stay in East Lansing. I was thrilled when they offered me a position there as events coordinator, because it was more money and more challenging for me, but working full time was even harder, and my hours weren't really regular, depending on what events were going on. Eventually I had to get home care for Dad, someone to come in and be there when I couldn't. That helped, but it cost money. He'd have moments...where he was lucid. He'd tell me to go, to use my business degree and follow my dreams and not stay there stuck with him. That was why he'd wanted to get his pension, so he'd be looked after. But I couldn't leave him." She paused. "You know the rest. He pa.s.sed away a few years ago. It was awful near the end. He didn't know me. He was afraid of me." She sobbed.

Tanner rolled back to her, scooping her into his arms, pulling her tight to him and holding her-G.o.d, so tight, holding her like he should have all those years ago. His chest ached with an intense pressure inside him-anger and frustration and...something else.

She cried on his chest. "His p-personality changed and he was angry and paranoid. I didn't even know him, but he was my dad. I was exhausted from dealing with him, looking after him. Then he couldn't even talk anymore. There'd be times where I could sit with him and hold his hand, and he seemed to like it...Other times, he'd push me away and act like he was terrified and I was trying to hurt him."

"It's an awful disease."

"It is. Oh G.o.d, it is."

"f.u.c.k, I'm sorry you had to go through that."

She gave a short nod.

"So after he pa.s.sed away, you moved here."

"Yes. Rachel's here, so I figured it was a good place to move. I wanted to get lost in a big city and start over."

"Why didn't you call me? After he pa.s.sed away. When you could leave."

She lifted her head and her eyes glistened with tears. "I thought you were married."

h.e.l.l. He remembered asking her this before. "Right. You didn't know I was divorced."

"No. I heard you got married...I saw the pictures. She's a model, isn't she?"

"Yeah."

"She's beautiful." She closed her eyes and a tear slid from one corner down her cheek. "After that, I didn't want to know anything more. I avoided anything to do with you-or hockey-on social media, or in the news. I never watched hockey, I never talked about hockey, I didn't want to...to..."

He stroked her hair again. "I get it." He sucked in a long breath. "I wish you'd known. I wish you'd come to me. I wish you'd told me."

"There were lots of things I wished were different too," she said on a sigh. "G.o.d, I wasted so much time crying about how I wished things were different. I felt sorry for myself at times, but I couldn't give in to that because I knew it would take over my life. So I kept a sense of humor and tried to stay optimistic and not think about all the things I wished were different. There's no point in crying away your life, wis.h.i.+ng for things we can't change."

"True. So f.u.c.king true. I wish I'd never married Presley."

"Why did you? Did you love her?"

"Nah. I was in love with the idea of her. I was living in New York, living high, dating a gorgeous model...Everywhere we went, people were taking pictures of us. I got caught up in it all...maybe because I was trying to forget what I left behind."

She made a choked little sound.

"She wanted to get married...but it was the big diamond ring, the fancy wedding at the Plaza Hotel, all the paparazzi there...that was what she wanted. When I got tired of that s.h.i.+t, we argued. I stopped going out with her. But she kept going out...and then she stopped coming home."

"s.h.i.+t. I'm so sorry."

He hitched a shoulder. "I'm over it. It was pretty much what I expected anyway. So that ended."

They fell silent, Katelyn's breathing still shaky. She rubbed her nose and he spied a box of tissues on a table, reached over, and snagged a couple. He handed them to her.

"Thank you." She wiped her eyes.

"So you asked earlier what we're doing."

"Yes."

"Look at me."

She gave her nose another swipe with tissues and met his eyes.

"Maybe what we're doing is...trying again."

Chapter 12.

Katelyn stared at Tanner, her heart knocking against her breastbone. She sat up, tugging his s.h.i.+rt around her. He lay next to her, bare-chested, watching her. They'd just had amazing hot s.e.x, she'd told him about her dad and cried on his shoulder. Was he actually suggesting they could have a relations.h.i.+p? Again?

"We had something once," he added in a low voice. "Something good."

"Yes."