Page 192 of Off Limits: The Firsts

I’ll never fill his shoes.

I’ll never be as good as he would have been.

But I’m me. Fucking me. A man who rose to the challenge and have lived my every moment so that Jonah knows I’m sorry. That I’m so goddamn sorry for what I did that night. For how I lied. For not being responsible. For not being the one who took the keys.

The guilt is why I’ve always deleted those two words.

The guilt is why I’ve never thought I deserved anything—the praise, the accolades, the love.

The guilt is why I punish myself.

But hell if walking away from Dekker yesterday didn’t shoot that all to shit.

Fuck if looking up in the owner’s box and not seeing her there—as I have the past three weeks—wasn’t a blow to my concentration. I thought of the ten other things I should have said to her instead of the one sentence I did.

The hurt in her eyes when I didn’t acknowledge a fucking thing she said.

“You good, Mad Dog?” Callum asks as he walks by. I lean back against my locker, dropping my phone in my lap.

“Yeah. Just . . . that was a brutal fucking game.” I glance at the bag of ice Saran-wrapped to my knee and shake my head.

“It always is. The Bandoliers are fucking thugs.”

“Not going to argue.”

“You were an animal out there.”

I nod and replay the game in my head in the flash of time. All I can see are the shots I missed, the times I was stripped, the bullshit fouls called.

“Meh. I beg to differ, but it’s not worth the argument.”

He checks the bottom of his skates and busies himself before turning to look at me, eyes intense. “She leave?”

He doesn’t have to say who she is, and I’ll save him the bullshit of pretending I don’t know who he’s talking about. I have more respect for him than that.

“Not sure. I don’t keep tabs on her.” But I was looking. I was wondering.

“Huh.”

“You got something to say, Withers?” I ask.

“Nothing you’re going to listen to,” he says. “Shit. We finally get to go home tonight. My bed is calling me.”

“I’m listening,” I say, ignoring his color commentary.

He pauses, stuffing his gear into his bag and stares at me. “She’s obviously under your skin.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, I’ve never seen you give a fuck about anything other than hockey and your family . . . but you give a fuck about her.”

I blink and try to hear him—really hear him—and then like always, play it off. “I think that punch you took to the head tonight was harder than we all thought.” I chuckle to sell the lie.

“You’re indifferent with women. They’re a dime a dozen to you because they’re everywhere you go—”

“Whatever.”

“But Dekker challenges you.” He hefts the bag over his shoulder and walks a few feet toward me.