Silence.
“Tell me I’m wrong, Rosebud.”
God, her internal struggle is painful to watch, and I’m tempted to back off and let her hide for a little longer. Pushing her might backfire. It could cause her to retreat or run back to LA. She could change her number again and disappear for another ten years, or maybe forever this time.
But she could also admit that some part of her missed me enough that she chose the Twin Cities to be close. And that, I fear, is the only way forward.
“Well?”
“Bash,” she whispers, pleading.
I don’t offer her the out she’s asking for.
“Fine,” she says. Her voice wavers, and I tighten my grip on her. “I wanted to be where you were, okay? It was getting to be too much, and when they started publishing stories mentioning me again, all I could think about was how you used to get so pissed on my behalf. I’d see an unflattering photo of myself with some cruel caption, and the voice in my head telling me to ignore the assholes was yours.”
My heart stutters and nearly stalls. I hate that she’s been going through that, but to hear that all these years later, even after she thought I rejected her, that mine was the voice of acceptance she heard?
It gives me a dangerous amount of hope.
“You were the reason I got through all of that the first time, you know? And I knew I probably wouldn’t see you, but even being in the same city as you, I felt like that might give me the strength I needed. It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid, but I?—”
“It’s not stupid,” I say, gripping her chin when she tries to look away from me. “It’s not stupid.”
A thick silence unfurls between us, but I don’t hurry to break it. There’s possibility in this silence. Like the fates are unspooling a new future, and it’s delicate enough that I don’t want to do anything to disturb it.
Indie rewards my patience when she quietly says, “You were always my safe place. And I wanted to feel safe again.”
Light fills my chest. It infuses every single cell in my body, renewing me. Recreating me.
After ten years of missing her, searching for her, and resigning myself to a life without her, Indigo Rose Bloom is here, in my lap, asking me to be her safe place.
“Indie.” I brush my thumb along her jaw, memorizing every micro-expression that flickers across her face. Then I lean in and press my lips to hers in a slow, lingering kiss that leaves us both breathless. “You’ll always be safe with me.”
I’m a goalie. Protecting is what I do.
twenty-one
INDIGO
“So you’ll comeif I can get tickets?” Bash asks, crowding me against the door before I can open it and shoo him out.
It’s still early enough that I may be able to get him out of here before Lola wakes up. But not if he keeps being all sexy and dommy like one of my book heroes. And I don’t want to deal with the level of awkwardness Lola will unleash if she walks in to see this.
“Of course we will.”
He reaches up and twists a strand of my rose-gold hair around his finger, and the smile that blooms across his face is brighter than the late-morning sun. “I want you at every home game for the rest of the postseason. I know Lola made that request jokingly, but I’m completely serious.”
I suck in a breath and choke on my own saliva.
Smooth, Indie.
“Don’t you think we’re getting ahead of ourselves?”
His smile doesn’t waver. “Nope.”
I’m lucky the door is holding me up, because otherwise I’d be melting into a boneless puddle of goo. The postseason can lastthrough the third week of June if a team ends up in the final round of playoffs, and he’s making plans that far in advance? And not only casual plans, but plans to get tickets for me and Lola for some of the most expensive games you can go to.
If I was worried he wasn’t as serious about all of this as I am, that would have squashed it.