He should probably shut up, because Rowan hadn’t signed up for this, but now that he’d started, he couldn’t seem to stop. “And it’s shit, because it’s just been change after change for her over the past few months, with Janice leaving and then you moving in and then me going back to work and thenyougoing back to work. And now the temporary nannies are at least going to settle down into one permanent nanny, but I’m going to be gone and so are you—”
“Hey. Hey!” Rowan put his hand on Jordy’s wrist. “Take a breath.”
Jordy swallowed, then followed the direction. Unconsciously, he found himself mimicking Rowan’s breathing—long, steady inhales and exhales.
Then Rowan cleared his throat, patted his hand, and stood up. “Look, this is—call it extenuating circumstances. I know things with us have been, um, different. But I’m not going to leave Kaira in the lurch, okay? I can stick around a couple extraweeks until she can join you in Vancouver. You’re planning to bring her out at winter holidays, yeah?”
Thank God for this man. But Jordy had taken advantage of him enough. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“Good thing I’m offering, then,” Rowan said firmly. Then his cheeks pinkened a bit. “Besides, I already promised Kaira. Don’t make me a liar.”
Incredibly, Jordy laughed—just a short one, but he’d felt like he might never find anything funny again. “All right,” he said. “All right, but I’m going to keep paying you until then. You’ve got rent now.”
“Deal. I promise I’ll buy myself something really posh with the extra.”
“Espresso maker?” Jordy suggested.
“Oooh. I was thinking massage chair, but an espresso maker…. Where would I put it, though. It’s not like my new place has a butler.” He nudged Jordy with his elbow. “You going to be okay?”
Jordy managed another smile, bittersweet though it was. “Yeah. I just have… a lot of decisions to make on top of learning a whole new hockey system and abandoning my child. It’s a lot.”
“Hmm.” Rowan contemplated him. “I’m going to pretend ‘learning a hockey system’ is a phrase that has no meaning. We’ve dealt with the abandonment as much as we can. So what’s the rest of it?”
“The housing situation—here and in Vancouver. The nanny situation. Figuring out where to send Kaira to school. Somehow having the time to find a place to live while learning said new hockey system”—Rowan rolled his eyes theatrically—“and being gone half the time.” Another thing occurred to him. “Getting Kaira settled in Vancouver and not having her hate me at Christmas.”
Rowan winced. “That last one.”
Jordy huffed. “Yeah.”
Tapping his fingers on the countertop, Rowan said, “Let me ask you something. Best-case scenario, what does the solution look like? Don’t think about logistics, don’t think about how. Dream scenario—go.”
“Okay. Well, selling the house is quick and painless.” The extra liquidity would give him a lot more options. “I find a place I like in Vancouver and it’s close to the arena and a good school for Kaira.” He closed his eyes and envisioned it. Maybe they could even be close enough he could walk her to school in the mornings sometimes. They could take trips to the park on the weekends and look out over the water trying to spot orcas. “I find some way to make it up to her about the move, and the perfect nanny….” Someone who’d pick Kaira up from school and drop her off, dress her up in a banana-yellow rain coat and galoshes when the weather was bad and hold a bright pink umbrella over their heads while Kaira stomped in every puddle.
But Jordy didn’t want a big house this time. He would feel closer to her in a cozy house. Three bedrooms, maybe. One for Kaira, one for guests, and one for Jordy and—
“Come with me,” he blurted.
He opened his eyes just in time to see Rowan recoil, clearly dumbfounded. “What?”
“Come with me,” he repeated, feeling dumb and desperate. He knew Rowan didn’t want him, knew it was stupid to ask after everything, but Jordy couldn’tnot. He couldn’t move across the country wishing Rowan was with him for every awful moment of it and not try one last time to get Rowan to want him—to want this life with him—back. If nothing else, he needed to hear a definitive no. “I know it’s not—you don’t want—but I have, have to….” He had to ask because he was stupidly in love and just as stupidly hopeful. “You make things… easy.” Which was apathetically simple way of saying that all of Jordy’s life felt more manageable when Rowan was around.
“No.”
Jordy flinched.
“That’s—no. You don’t get to do this. To fucking change the game—” Rowan took a deep breath. “We already talked about this.”
Right. Asked and answered.
Jordy was saved from having to say anything else by the sound of the doorbell.
“I’ll get the food,” Rowan said and left Jordy alone. He didn’t have time to patch together his broken heart, but he could at least pull himself together enough to get through the night.
JORDY LEFTthe following afternoon amidst a flood of tears and tantrums. Kaira had spent the day alternating between clinging to Jordy and yelling at him, which Rowan found painful to watch. He loved Kaira and couldn’t stand to see her in such turmoil, especially since he could do so little to stop it. Not to mention that whenever Jordy didn’t look like he wanted to break down and cry with her, he had clearly decided the best way to deal with all his emotions was not to feel them.
During the time it took for Rowan to collect their dinner and gather his own emotional fortitude, Jordy had apparently gathered up all his anxious overwhelmed feelings and stuffed them into a box. Rowan returned to find Jordy setting the table for three people, all of the nervous, untamed energy of earlier gone. And he stayed deliberate and bland when dealing with the practicalities of the move with Rowan, and only unbent for Kaira.
Who screamed and cried at Jordy before he left, and then at Rowan for pretty much the rest of the day, until she passed out a good hour before her usual bedtime.
