I stand up and add. “And your meal is on me.”
“Also cool.” Gael smiles. “Thanks. Talk soon.”
I nod and head toward the door. I don’t want to stick around because I know my family will have a billion questions and I don’t want to answer any of them. I glance toward the counter to wave good-bye and Terra, Ma, Finn, and Jake are all staring back at me with various expressions of glee, excitement, and confusion on their faces. Fuck. This is not what they think it is, but I’ll explain that later.
Right now, I just want to get back to my apartment and take a long nap before I have to start packing. And before Abbott shows up and we have to unpack all the crap that went on this morning.
16
ABBOTT
I saidI would swing by his place at eight-thirty but it’s only ten to eight when I knock on the door. Declan swings it open and, after my eyes slide over his workout shorts and tank top and sexy, angular face, I give him a sheepish smile. “I finished up with my trainer early and couldn’t wait to see you.”
“Come in,” he says, but he isn’t smiling back. He holds the door wider and when I step into the hallway and glance into the living room I see there’s already about ten half-packed boxes in it. Some knot that’s been knitted between my shoulder blades since our text messages this morning loosens.
“I was worried you’d change your mind after the whole Cassidy thing,” I admit, turning to face him.
He shakes his head and folds his arms across his chest. “I thought about it, but I can’t hold your past against you. That would make me an asshole. I’ve worked too hard at trying not to be one. That doesn’t mean I like it. I don’t. I don’t like the idea of you fucking anyone else. I think I’ve made it clear I have a bit of a jealous streak when it comes to you.”
“I swallowed down jealousy every time I saw you being a loyal, happy husband,” I remind him. “So yeah, I get that.”
“So the Mrs. Green thing… did your team’s PR person see it?” I watch him cross the room. He walks over to the teak bookcase in the corner of the living room and grabs a couple of books and puts them in one of the open boxes. He looks sexy as fuck and all I really want to do is put my hands in those athletic shorts he’s got on, but I know we’ve got a lot to get through before sex.
“She did,” I answer and think back to how excited Pennie was on the phone. “She had already called Cassidy Green and offered her a pass for the Cup Day and tickets to the home opener. I wish I could have told her my old flame was you before this happened.”
“Of course Cassidy accepted those.”
“Oh yeah.” I reach up and rub my eyes with the pads of my fingers. “And Pennie was even about to call Dunkin, where Cassidy works, and see if they wanted a collab.”
“Oh fuck,” Declan hisses out.
“She’s eager to impress. Get the team noticed. She’s doing her job, but thankfully I reined her in before she got that far,” I tell him as he strides across the room and picks up two candle holders from a small side table and puts them in a different box than the books.
“So Cassidy gets free tickets and we have to deal with her ass at the Cup Day. But she was probably going to show up anyway so I guess it’s not a catastrophe,” Declan mutters, preoccupied with looking around the apartment to see what else he can pack.
“I appreciate you not making this into our first fight,” I tell him, and he pauses, bent slightly at the waist where he’s leaning towards the bookcase pulling some paperbacks off a lower shelf.
“Our first fight was a while ago,” he says. “When I told you to come out or it was over and you said it had to be over.”
The memories flood my brain like an unwanted tsunami. We were at the beach. It was cold. There was even frost on the dunes which is probably why he wanted me to meet him there. Because we’d be alone in that weather. And also because it was where it all began and I think he was trying to pull at my heart strings. I remember wanting to tell him yes. Wanting to say that I would come out, to everyone, and hold his hand while he told his parents. That we would go to my draft together and it would be him I hugged and kissed when my name was called. The way other players hug their parents and kiss their girlfriends. But I couldn’t because that wasn’t a reality. It was pure fantasy. The league didn’t even have a serious inclusivity campaign at the time. They just kind of ignored the idea that there were gay guys who played hockey. I was nervous and convinced I would be black balled. Also, I was panicked Lucy and Charlie might react the same way my parents did. I didn’t want Declan to lose his family.
“That doesn’t count. We were stupid kids,” I reply and walk over to a side table by the couch and rub the small Buddha statues he has there. Declan has been drawn to the principals of Buddhism since college when he took a religion course as an elective. I grab some paper that’s piled on the coffee table and begin to wrap the small statues.
He keeps packing books and finally, as I put the statues in a box on top of the candle holders, I confess something that I’ve been holding in my heart for far too long. “I didn’t pick hockey over you. I know it seemed that way. That I wanted to be a hockey star more than I wanted to be with you. It wasn’t that. It was that my parents had already disowned me. I was out on my ass, living at a teammate’s place.”
“I know that.”
“And Aspen showed up the night before you gave me the ultimatum,” I continue. “She had run away. Refused to live under my parents roof anymore because of how they treated me.”
“I know that too,” Declan replies. “She squatted in Terra’s bedroom for a couple of weeks before the draft. Before you signed your first contract and got a paycheck so you could rent her a place.”
I nod. “So I had to get that contract. So she was looked after. So she not only had a place to live for the rest of her high school days but also money for college. Because our parents cut her off financially like they cut me off.”
Declan stops packing and stands up, looking right at me. His brain is cycling through what I’m saying, seeing it in a new light for the first time, I can tell. “I wasn’t picking hockey. I was picking Aspen. Because I had to after what she did for me.”
“I would have done the same for Terra. Or the twins,” Declan says after a moment of silence. “I couldn’t see that at the time though. I was too young and vulnerable. And I just… I needed what I needed, even if it wasn’t what you could give. I was convinced my parents would react the same way as yours did. And if I didn’t have you backing me up, I couldn’t do it.”
I stand there staring at him as he finishes packing a box and starts to close it up. I reach for the tape gun on his side table and hand it to him. Declan moves with such precision. Everything he does always looks so determined. I remember how he would stride through the hallways in school like he had somewhere to be that was way more important than anything the rest of us were doing. And how everyone always looked up when he walked into the lobster shack in his sexy suits. They were sexy. I wasn’t home often over the last few years but when I was, I always took note of whatever he was wearing and tried to find something similar for my pre-game outfits during the season. I know his family loves to tease him about his suits and his slight obsession with perfecting everything from the restaurant’s image to his own, but it was sexy as fuck to me. Still is. I miss that side of him although I’m still turned on by this laid-back version he’s been toying with. I just worry about why he’s changed so much.
