He nods at her with a smile and heads over to the couch to sit down. I walk Sutton to the door and when I open it, I lean in to murmur, "I'm sorry. He literally showed up like a minute before you did. I have no clue why he's here. He should be in rehab."

She gives me a sympathetic look and pats my chest. Sutton is a savvy girl and she knows just from what little I told her about my dad that he most likely doesn't know about our relationship. Given what she knows about how he's deterred me in the past from having any type of relationship, she's playing it close to the vest and not giving us away.

"No worries. Call me later when you can."

I nod at her and then watch her walk down the stairs. I don't close the door until she's out of sight, but then I do with a sigh and turn to face my father.

"Friend of yours?" my dad asks genially.

"Yeah," I answer but don't provide anything more.

"Seems like more than just a friend."

"You heard her...we were going over some business together."

"On Christmas Eve?"

Shrugging my shoulders, I say, "Sure, why not?"

"Why are you lying to me, boy?" my dad asks in censure.

"Because if I don't, you'll make a big deal about me having a girlfriend," I say in exasperation.

"Girlfriend?" He actually wrinkles his nose in distaste.

"Yes! Girlfriend. And it's none of your business. I'm an adult and allowed to date."

My dad holds his hands up in surrender, but he's not fooling me. I can see it in his eyes. Yet it is with seeming nonchalance he says, "Your life, not mine. Got any coffee for your old man?"

I lock eyes with him, dying to know what he really wants to say but dreading it all the same. Instead, I just nod and head into my kitchen to make a pot of coffee, making a mental note to call Cameron later to let him know I've found our wayward father.

As I busy myself pulling out the coffee and filters, I try to take stock of my feelings. I'm mostly pissed that my night with Sutton got canceled. Even though I had been having some dark thoughts earlier, there's no doubt that my spirit was rejuvenated the minute I opened the door and saw her. She just does good things for my soul.

I am, however, oddly relieved that my dad is here, because I can gauge that he looks to be okay. In fact, I can't remember him ever looking healthier.

The sickest part, though, the thing that means I should be checking myself into a mental hospital just for having the thought, is the fact that there is a part of me that is wanting to get my dad's advice about my game. It's still been sucking donkey ass and while I'm scoring again, I'm certainly not playing to the potential of the first line. I simply haven't been able to regain complete convergence on my game, and it seems that my thoughts are all jumbled among Sutton, my dad, my brother and hockey. I know, without a doubt, that my dad has been following my progress and I'm sure the minute I ask, he'll have a ton of advice to give.

Yes, I know it will be destructive and negative. Yes, I know I shouldn't listen to a damn word he says.

But God help me, I can only think that this man made me into the great player that I was up until a few weeks ago.

Up until he went into rehab and went off my radar.

Up until he stopped dispensing said advice.

I want to knee myself in the nuts for even thinking that perhaps the reason for my crappy play is because I haven't had my dad riding me these last several weeks, but to hell with it...I'm going there. I need to know what he would say.

After pouring a cup of coffee for my dad, I grab a bottled water for myself from the fridge and head back into the living room. He's sitting on the couch, his chin resting in his hand, and he's staring pensively into the fire I started earlier as a romantic gesture for Sutton. Now all it seems to do is make my apartment feel sweltering.

"Here you go," I tell my dad as I hand the cup to him. He looks up at me with a smile as he accepts it.

I head toward my loveseat that sits perpendicular to the couch, mainly for distance and so I can easily face him as we talk. "So, you don't think you need rehab anymore?"

"Not really," he says. "I need to get into AA as soon as possible, but I'm not sure what more I can learn there."

"Why are you here?" I ask bluntly, because my dad and I are long past the point in our relationship where we have to tiptoe around each other.

After taking a sip of coffee, Dad sets the cup down on my end table and looks back to me. His eyes are limpid and soft, and he's giving me a look such as I've never seen before. It's almost caringatenderaand it makes my belly tighten because it is awkward.

"I, um...I needed to come see you. Face-to-face. I needed to apologize to youa"

I cut my dad off by holding a hand up. "No, you don't," I say quickly, because hearing my dad sound so considerate is sort of freaking me out. It's evoking emotion inside of me that I had been conditioned by this very man to ignore, and I feel like this could be a trap. Maybe he's doing this to see if I will prove to be the weak and delicate man he always accused me of being.

"Yes, I do," my dad says firmly and with a tone that tells me not to interrupt again. "This is hard on me...to admit this to you, but it needs to be done. I was wrong in many things I did to you growing up. I'm an alcoholic, and my drinking led me to do things that I am so very ashamed of."

"Dada" I try to interrupt.

But he talks right over me. "I'm even more ashamed that some of the things I did to you...I'd probably still have done even without the alcohol lowering my inhibitions...so desperate was I to make you into a star. That is probably my greatest shame."

I stand up abruptly from the loveseat and start pacing. This conversation is extremely uncomfortable and I want to flee.

Straight to Sutton, so she can tell me how to handle this.

My dad looks at me, his eyes slightly shining with moisture. "Alex...I need to make amends. I need you to forgive me."

"Why?" I ask, somewhat demandingly.

"Because I don't know if I'll stay sober or not. It's going to be a hard battle...so they tell me. But if I don't...if I can't and something happens to me, I need my conscience clean."

My dad doesn't wear vulnerable well, but he's talking straight from the heart, I can tell. Part of me wants to punch him but part of me wants to hug himafor what would be the first time in my life.

Neither one seems right to me, so I say the words he wants to hear. "I forgive you, Dad."

My dad and I eventually struggled through an awkward hug. We talked about him leaving rehab before completing, and the concerns I had. While he understood them, he wasn't willing to go back. He felt he was equipped to handle his addiction, and had grand plans to join AA as soon as he got back home. Didn't stop me, though, from hiding the alcohol when he went to take a shower.

His plans are to leave in the morning for home, because I'm leaving for my game road trip. So we have tonight to start to forge some type of new relationship before we head our separate ways.

I slapped a frozen pizza in the oven and I'm cutting it now as he walks into the kitchen, his hair still damp. He doesn't waste any time, cutting through to the other elephant in the room.

"So what's going on with your game?" he asks as he sits down at the kitchen table.

His apology, while heartfelt and accepted, does nothing to erase the years he dictated to me how I should model my behavior, so my hackles rise up. "What? You mean you're not going to tell me what my problem is? Not going to tell me how to correct it?"

My dad swallows hard. "I'll give you advice if you want it. If you want to tell me what you think the problem is."

I put a couple of slices of pizza on two plates and bring them to the table, setting his down in front of him. After I take my chair, I look at him while picking at a pepperoni. "I'm not focused," I admit.

"Can't focus your brain on something, maybe it's focused somewhere else," he offers, and I know this is a direct slap at Sutton.

"You mean my girlfriend," I accuse.

"What else is there?" he counters.

"Well, let's see," I say sarcastically. "Maybe because my dad is a drunk and is killing himself. Maybe because my dad has been in rehab and I'm dealing with all that shit."

At least my dad has the grace to blush at my words, but his tone is censuring, "You can't blame me for all the wrongs in your life."

"Can't I?" I throw at him.

Pushing his plate away, my dad rests his hands on the table. "Look, Alex...I know you're angry at me and you have every right to be. I did wrong by you. But I also did right. You are a superstar. You have an amazing career and more money than you know what to do with. There are a few things that you could thank me for, perhaps."

It's surreal how his words have a sting of truth, even though his methods were for the most part completely barbaric.

Before I can respond, my dad continues. "Look...I'm sure that girl...Sutton is perfectly nice. But you're twenty-six. You have, at most, another four to five years of top-level play in that body before you'll start to get overtaken by the next hot young player out there. That's not a long time, and you shouldn't waste it on things that don't lead toward an intense focus on the game. It's professional suicide."

His words penetrate deep, and for once, I can say that my dad is absolutely one hundred percent correct in his evaluation of the situation. Hockey careers are fleeting, particularly because it's such a violent sport. I have only a few more years to stockpile my way to an early retirement.

While every cell in my body wants to buck against what he's saying, I can't say the idea hadn't crossed my mind. That perhaps my focus is too fractured, between my newfound love for the game, a new girlfriend who is in love with me but whom I've yet to truly figure out my feelings for, and my alcoholic father, who could die.

Maybe I need to lighten the burden. Cut something out.

Cutting the game out wasn't possible, because after all, that is the one thing I can pretty much say is my best chance at success.

And I can't cut out my father. Not now...not after he's trying to get sober and trying to make amends.

So, that leaves Sutton, and just giving credence to this idea makes my gut churn with bitter acid. But unfortunately, she's the newest thing in my life. She's the great unknown and by far the biggest risk.

She makes me feel too much sometimes. It's a kaleidoscope of feeling with patterns that play out across my heart, some round and soothing yet others sharp and angled, causing a small bite of pain.

Some would say feeling is good. Others, like my dadaand clearly this resonates with my way of thinkingamight say it could be distracting. Perhaps it's better to stay ice-cold, like the surface upon which I play my game.

This is something I need to think about.

This is something I need to take action on.

Chapter 28.

Sutton

It's been fifteen days, six hours and twenty-seven minutes since I last saw Alex.

It's been fifteen days, six hours and twenty-seven minutes since he broke my heart.

And while my heart is on the mend, it still hurts badly on most days and just twinges annoyingly on the others. My anger has at least subsided, and while I don't accept his reasoning for breaking things off, I do understand it. Just because I understand it doesn't mean it isn't painful.

Because God...it's so painful.

I wish I didn't understand why he did it, because it would be easier to mire myself in hate and bitterness, which I'm sure would stop the pain that emanates from the center of my chest. But I do understand him, in ways that most others never would.

Just fifteen days and some change ago, my day had started off wonderfully.

I had an amazing counseling session with Mara. She looked healthy, although not quite happy. However, she had told me the words that I had longed to hear, that was she was staying strong to fight her desire to use meth again. More important, her parents had agreed to come in and talk to me the next week. I didn't have high hopes they'd make it in, because I knew how easy it was to make those promises yet so very hard to keep them. Still, I was feeling more confident that Mara was taking the right steps so she didn't stray down the same destructive path as her parents.

My day got even better from there.

Cosmo called me.

Which in and of itself isn't all that strange. He's called me over the years for a variety of reasons.

But that day?

That day he called from the lobby of Crested Pine, which is an excellent local rehab facility just one county over. He was getting ready to go in, hoping five times was a charm when it came to getting clean. He called me, knowing that there would be no means to communicate for the next thirty days, but he felt it important that I know he was taking the step.

He told me that he was doing this for himself, but more than anything, he hoped that I would be the one who truly benefited from it in the long run.

They were the perfect words and something in the tone of his voice made me think he could do it this time around.

But that is where the sun set and dark clouds rolled in on me. Dramatic, I know, but that's exactly how it felt.

Alex flew back into town from his game road trip, which followed on the heels of his father showing up at his apartment unexpectedly. I never did get to see Alex on Christmas Eve, but he called to tell me what was going on, and that his dad had left rehab early. He sounded stressed and I did my best to reassure him that there was a chance his dad would be okay. In my mind I knew chances were that he'd relapse, since he had not finished the program, but I didn't want to worry Alex further.

So I wished him a merry Christmas, told him I loved him, and wished him good luck on his upcoming games. He thanked me quietly for the well wishes, ignoring the words of love I gave him.

I remember giving myself a once-over in the bathroom mirror before he arrived that night, snickering to myself. My eyes were bright and dancing with eagerness to see Alex, and I almost could imagine what a junkie must feel like right before he gets his next hit.

My doorbell rang and I almost squealed in delight, but I didn't, because I was a mature professional woman. However, that didn't stop the mile-wide grin that was on my face as I practically ran down the hall and into the living room.

Skidding to a halt at the door, I took a deep breath and opened it up.

And yes, he was just as breathtaking as ever. More so, if you took into account I hadn't seen him in four daysaunless you count hungrily watching him on TV. We had talked on the phone, not often because he'd said he was so busy between travel, games and practices, but enough to keep me primed and ready. If he seemed a little distracted or distant, I chalked that up to the incredible stress he was under. Between not playing up to par and his dad leaving rehab early, I knew he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Stepping forward, I wrapped my arms around his waist and rested my head on his massive chest. "I missed you."

He gave me a light squeeze and then released me, stepping past me into the house. In my line of work, perception is key, and I immediately sensed a tense energy surrounding Alex. I quietly closed the door and turned to face him.