“Well, whatever you said was enough.” My voice was so hoarse it hurt my throat. “The rumors never went away.”
“You’ve got to believe me. The only thing I said, and it was during our fight, was that her neighbors had to pull you out of her apartment. I swear I never said you were arrested.”
If he was telling the truth, one of the things I’d been furious about for years never happened.
“Why didn’t you say something about it then?” he asked.
My eyes burned, and I struggled to keep my voice even. “Why did you sucker punch me in our room?”
“Oh, like you did me in the locker room?”
“I admit that, but why didyoudo it?”
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t. All you said was that I should learn to keep my mouth shut.”
“Bullshit.” He slammed his hand on the chair arm so hard it made me flinch, then went on. “You told the team I forced her to have sex. That she didn’t want it.” His voice broke. “That could’ve destroyed me. I could have gone to jail.”
My brain locked up as I tried to understand. “Pack… I didn’t. I wouldn’t say that about anyone unless I was sure they were guilty. You were my best friend.”
“Don’t,” he said, his voice still raw.
I stared at him, trying to understand how he could’ve believed I’d say that about him. “I swear to God, whoever told you that is a fucking liar.”
“Nix, I know…”
Shaking my head furiously, I said, “Ididn’t. I know we’ve had our differences, but you knew me better than that. You knew… Fuck, you knew how I felt about you.”
Our eyes locked. He chewed his lips and tugged on a strand of hair until I nearly screamed at him to stop. Eventually, he exhaled. “You’re telling me the truth now?”
“Yes.”
He spoke so softly I barely heard him. “Stewie told me.”
I shot to my feet. “I’ll fucking kill him.”
Packy jumped up and grabbed my arms. “Stop.”
“That bastard cost us everything,” I shouted. “Years. I didn’t want to lose you. I…”
The room went dead quiet. Even the noise in the hallway faded.
Slowly, he let me go. “I’m so fucking sorry, Nix. I shouldn’t have believed it.”
“Why didn’t you talk to me?”
His laugh was bitter. “We were one bad night away from murdering each other. Talking wasn’t exactly an option.”
I looked into his eyes. “I hate that we let all this destroy what we had. All along, I’ve been wanting… And now I feel… Is there any way we can fix things?”
He took a moment to answer. “I don’t know. We’ve hated each other for a long time, and…” The sentence died.
“We could try,” I said.
He sank back into his chair and studied the ceiling. “There’s something else we should talk about. When the alternate captain position opened up, you told people you’d been coaching me. That without you, I couldn’t play worth shit.”
I narrowed my eyes. “No.”
