Page 121 of Making the Save

The dog came over to sniff at my feet. He barked a few times, but then settled down over my flip flops when I gave him a stern down command.

“Predator?” I asked, looking down at the dog.

“Don’t judge me, I’m sad.”

“You are?” I asked, looking up at her. I knew I wasn’t hiding the hope in my face. It was all I could do not to touch her.

“Of course I’m sad,” she said.

“Well, I’m pissed,” I said, my hands on my hips.

“Of course you are,” she said. “All your emotions come out as anger first.”

I wanted to argue with her, but it was true. That seemed…shitty. Like I was making my feelings her problem.

“Is that why you came to New York? To tell me how mad you are?” she asked.

“No,” I said, softening my anger because it wasn’t going to do me any good. This wasn’t my brother, I couldn’t bully her into talking to me. “Are you writing? How is the new album coming?”

She laughed. “It’s actually going really well. Relationship drama really gets the creative juices flowing.”

“Do I come off as a jerk in all these songs?”

“Only half,” she said, smiling her evil fairy smile. God, I’d missed that expression. “How is hockey?”

Just the word made my ankle and shoulder ache.

“Good,” I said. “I had a meeting with the GM and preseason starts next week.”

“Wow,” she said. “Time flies, huh?”

“It did this summer, yeah.” We were making small talk like pros. Saying nothing, while everything we wanted to say filled the air between us like smoke.

“You haven’t signed the divorce papers,” she said. “I check with my attorney every day.”

“I didn’t want to sign them without talking to you first.”

She nodded. “Okay. Say what you need to say.”

I took a deep breath and launched into the speech I’d written in my head on the long drive off the mountain. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the way that whole conversation happened. I did it all wrong. I was just so amazed by you in your natural element…”

“The America’s Choice Award isn’t my natural habitat,” she said. “I visit there. I don’t live there. If that makes any sense. I know that about myself now.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” I said, thinking of her at the cabin and in her beach house. The guitar on her lap, sunshine in her hair. “You’re right. But you handled it all really well. And I just wasn’t ready to say good bye.”

Predator got up off my feet and started to pull away on the leash.

“Predator,” Sydney said, and handed the dog another treat.

“You’re going to spoil that dog-” she glared at me and I shut my mouth.

“Remember,” she said, not looking at me. “When I said I didn’t want to have sex because it would complicate things?”

I nodded.

“You said that sex could make things simple.”

“We were both right,” I said.