He pauses then before slowly lifting my chin to look at him. “Is that what you think has happened?”

Tears escape from my eyes as I slowly nod. “I saw it in your eyes. You were completely disappointed in me, and I don’t blame you. I failed you. I knew the end goal, I knew what I was supposed to do, and I didn’t perform.”

He shakes his head and sucks in a breath before letting it out his nose. “I’m hard on you, I know that. I mean, I’m your biggest critic. But Bay, I’m your biggest fan too.”

“I know that, Dad, but you have every right to be disappointed in me.”

Looking me deep in the eyes, he shakes his head. “Baylor, never in the twenty-one years of your life have I been disappointed. You never cease to amaze me. You blow me away just by breathing, my sweet girl,” he says, and my lip starts to wobble. My dad isn’t very sensitive, but sometimes he does say the kind of things a girl needs to hear from her dad, and that was one of them. “You are so damn hard on yourself. You beat yourself up more than I could even think to. It drives me insane.”

“I just want to make you proud,” I repeat and I swear, I sound like a broken record, but I have to remind myself what I am doing. Who this is for.

“Baby, I am proud. I mean, come on, I don’t know what you saw, but I was just worried about you. I’ve never seen you puke like that.”

Shrugging, I look away. “I thought you were mad ’cause I couldn’t finish.”

He scoffs. “Bay, we both know you’d have kept going if I hadn’t told you that you were done. You’re just so damn hardheaded.”

I nod, wiping my face. “I just wanted it so bad.”

“I know, baby, but you have to agree with me—Sinclair deserved it.”

I nod again because I know it’s true. “The team has been his since the start.”

“I know, and no matter how much I wanted to give it to you, I knew he deserved it. The kid is a natural-born leader.”

“Yeah,” I agree, and then I close my eyes. “I just hate losing.”

“It’s a good life lesson for you. Can’t be the best at everything.”

“Yes, I can,” I challenge back, and he laughs.

“So damn stubborn,” he says with a shake of his head.

“I’m my daddy’s daughter,” I say back, and he grins as he nods.

“You are,” he says before cupping my face and looking deep into my eyes. “Fine, you want to be the best, follow Sinclair’s lead. I’m telling you. That kid is special, and you can learn so much from him. Now that you two aren’t fighting for the same position, maybe you can be a team, friends even. He’s a good guy.”

Looking away, I bite into my lip. I know that more than he does. He only knows Sinclair, but I know Jayden. And I like both of those guys. A lot. More than I want to admit, and because of that, I’m alone. I have no one here but my dad. I’ve made it my life’s mission to push everyone away because I don’t want to trust anyone, but he keeps coming at me. Seth didn’t even want me like he does. I think I always knew that Seth wanted me for what my dad could do for him, but with Jayden, it’s completely different. He liked me before he knew my dad.

Maybe I am going about this all wrong?

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Am I a horrible person?”

His brow comes up. “I don’t think so. I think you’re lovely, and anyone who doesn’t think so is an asshole,” he says simply before laughing, and I smile.

“But why do I push people away, then? The guys keep trying to make friends with me and I just won’t. I’m too obsessed with getting to my end goal. But Sinclair told me the other day that when I get there I’m gonna be alone because I won’t let anyone in.”

He holds my gaze for a long time, and soon I don’t even think he’s gonna answer me, but then he says, “He’s right.”

I was worried he was going to say that. Looking away, I nod. “I know, but I don’t know why I am like this.”

“Why do you think you are?”

I shrug since I don’t want to admit why. “I don’t know why.”

He gives me a knowing look before shaking his head. “I think between your mom leaving us, crappy-ass people you’ve made friends with, and then the shit that went down with Seth, you have a hard time trusting people.”

I knew all this. I was hoping for something more.

“And you need to stop, Bay. You need to try to let people in or you’re gonna end up like your old man. Scared shitless because your baby is gonna leave you one day, and then you’ll have no one to talk to.”

His hazel eyes look deep into mine, and I never realized how alone my dad is. He’s never dated because all we do is hockey. Hockey is our life.

“I’m never gonna leave you, Daddy.”

He grins as he shakes his head. “Maybe, but yeah, start making friends. If you want to try to do the whole boyfriend thing, pray Jesus you don’t, then make sure it’s with some idiot that deserves you but also knows you have an agenda. Don’t let anything derail you from your final goal, Bay. You’ve worked too hard, and we can’t have another setback like Seth.”

No, we can’t. I can’t let what happened with Seth happen again. I was a mess, I felt used and thrown to the side. I don’t ever want to feel like that again, but somewhere inside my chest, I know that Jayden wouldn’t let that happen to me. He’d hurt himself before he hurt me. So what’s holding me back?

The unknown.

Because while he would never do anything to hurt me, the fact that it couldn’t work between us would not just hurt me, it would devastate me.

“You don’t sound like the guy who just got what he wanted,” my mom says, and I shrug as I throw things in my bag. After a big, celebratory dinner for Jace and me, Mom has been fussing over us and getting all our laundry done so that we can leave. It’s bittersweet, really. While I’m excited to move back into the Bullies house with my boys and Baylor, I don’t want to leave my mom. When I’m home, I know she’s taken care of. But when I’m not, I have to trust other people to keep an eye out. With Jace coming with me, that leaves Lucy, and she is too consumed with her own issues and her daughter to worry about her mother. Not that I fault her in that, I just don’t want to leave my mom.