“My tutoring may have been good, but in the end, you were the one who had to learn it all and put the work in to do it. I’m really proud of you.”
“Thanks, babe. I’m pretty stoked. I don’t know if it means anything going forward, like with school or whatever, but it’s nice knowing I can do it.”
“So now what?” she asked. “Are you going to go back to school?”
“I think so,” I said slowly. “But I don’t have the timing worked out yet.”
“You’ve decided to retire, haven’t you?” she asked softly.
There was no point in lying. “Yeah. I have.”
“And you’re going to go work for Chains?”
“I don’t know. I’m exploring other opportunities. I’ve been looking into police and military options as well.”
“I’m trying so hard to understand,” she whispered. “I love you, Dax, but I don’t understand what you’re trying to do or where you’re going with this. Can you explain what’s happening in your heart with the need to do this?”
She loved me.
She didn’t understand the most important thing going on in my life, but she loved me? If we loved each other, how were we back to this same conversation?
“I can’t explain it,” I said in a gruff voice. “I just know I need to do it.”
“But you don’t know what you need to do, so how do you know you need to do it?”
“Isla, honey, I love you too, but if this is going to work between us, you have to trust me to follow my gut. I can’t articulate what I’m feeling or the need to do something beyond hockey, I just know that I need to. Can you just go with the flow and let me do what I need to do?”
“I can’t uproot my life if you’re just going to bounce from thing to thing until you figure out whatever it is you need to sort out. I can’t, Dax. I want to, but I can’t.”
Fuck.
Well, I’d known this might be coming, but I hadn’t expected it to feel like a dagger right in my gut.
“Dax?” Her voice was so soft it almost hid the fact that she was crying.
“I’m here.” I cleared my throat, trying to come up with something to say. We’d just used the L-word for the first time and then essentially broken up.
“I’m…sorry.” She was crying a little harder now, sniffling. “It’s all my fault. I’ve been selfish.”
“With?”
“Us. You.”
“In what way?” If we were truly ending things, I wasn’t going to be a jerk, but I wasn’t going to make it easy on her either.
“I think, maybe, everything happened too quickly and I didn’t take the time to think it through.”
“What do you mean? What happened too fast?”
“Everything. Lying to get my grandfather off my back, asking Ian to get you involved, us sleeping together right away… Everything went so fast and I was caught up in the romance of it all because I’d been in love with you for so long. Then I saw how wonderful we were together. And how good the sex was. And how much fun we have together.”
“Gee, sounds like two people who had a summer fling and found out that it could be so much more,” I said dryly.
“That’s the problem,” she said, sniffling again. “It was summer. A summer fling, romance, whatever you want to call it. We both knew it probably wasn’t going anywhere, but we wanted it—and each other—so much we overlooked the real-life complications of my work and your…current situation.”
I had a dozen comebacks, but we were past the point of me convincing her how good we were together. She’d already made up her mind and I had the choice of being a gentleman about it so I could continue my friendship with Ian without hard feelings, or saying all the nasty things that were brewing in the back of my mind.
The problem was that I couldn’t be anything but a gentleman with Isla. I loved her. It was as simple as that.
“I don’t even know what you’re trying to say at this point,” I mumbled.
“That I’m sorry. That I didn’t intend to use you. That I genuinely love being with you and if you lived in Edinburgh or I lived there, I don’t think anything could keep me away from you, but…”
“But the five thousand miles between us is too many.”
“I think so. Yes.”
I didn’t have anything left to entice her with, so I didn’t say anything at all. There was nothing left to say except goodbye, and that was going to suck.
“Dax?” She was crying in earnest now.
And that gutted me just as much as our breaking up did.
“It’s okay,” I said finally. “Don’t cry. I’m a big boy. I knew what I was getting into. I also know how much your work means to you. I knew this going in, so you don’t need to feel bad. You didn’t use me. My eyes were wide open and I was willing to take the chance.”
“I wish we could make this work, but I don’t see how and it’s so—”
“Isla, honey, I get it, and I’m not mad,” I said, gently but firmly interrupting her. “But it’s late and I need to go. I have a busy day tomorrow and, honestly, I think we’ve said all there is to say.”
“You’re probably right.” Her voice was still a soft whisper, but I heard the tears she was trying to keep at bay.
“Don’t cry, beautiful. We had a great summer. I’ll think of it fondly. Take care of yourself, okay?” I disconnected before I did something embarrassing. I wasn’t much of a crier but I might have if we’d stayed on the phone much longer.
27
Isla
I’d known a breakup was a possibility, and maybe even inevitable, but the reality was jarring. The thought of never seeing him again, never making love with him again, never hearing his voice beyond a casual greeting through Ian, was more than I could stand. I called in
