He walks up to me, grabs me by the chin gently, and tilts my head to the lights. “You are going to have one hell of a bruise, but no broken eye socket or cheekbone.”
His fingers press my tender flesh just to make sure and I wince. Nash has his head hanging, eyes on the carpet as Dad says, “I’m going out there and I’m going to distract your mother and the crews. You two are going back to your hotel and you are going to talk this out. And I am going to see the difference in you both by tomorrow morning or you won’t be involved in the ceremony. At all. I will ask that Braddock bench you both.”
“What? Dad!” I stare at him in shock. “What about the sound bites for the ceremony reel?”
"They've got enough older footage of you talking about me and my career. I will make sure it's fine," he says and then he hugs me. "I love you both but this, whatever is going on between you two, is heartbreaking, and fixing it is all that matters. So go fix it."
He lets me go and I watch him leave the room. I turn to Nash who is still staring at the carpet. “I took a rideshare here.”
“I drove. Come on.” I move to the door, and I half expect him not to follow but he does.
Luckily the hotel is less than five minutes from the arena so we are back in my room within ten minutes. I shut the door behind Nash and he walks over and stands by the window, holding ice in a dripping wet paper towel to his lip. I stare at his back. I don’t know where to start. He didn’t say anything in the car on the way over except, “Want some ice?”
I toss my car keys on the small table by the window and just say what I’m feeling. “I don’t know where to start.”
“I’m not a homophobe or whatever,” Nash says flatly and finally turns around to look at me. His lip is swollen so his words are kind of slurred. “I don’t mind that you’re bisexual, Crew. I don’t care if you’re gay or trans or anything. I can’t believe you think I’m that guy. You’re supposed to know me better than anyone.”
“You were always so cringey when the subject came up. You bristled, you got weird or shifty,” I explain.
“Because I was embarrassed,” he admits and tosses the ice and wet paper towel onto the table next to my keys. It hits with an audible splat. “Embarrassed that I found out accidentally. You didn’t confide in me. Dad assumed you would. That’s why he mentioned it, but you didn’t. So every time it came up I felt anger and shame and embarrassment that you thought you had to hide that from me. That you didn’t want to tell me. Why? Because you don’t give a shit about me.”
“Are you crazy? I love you. I want to be you when I grow up, Nash.” My voice is raw, and it cracks a little and I’m fighting tears again. “I didn’t purposely not tell you. Do you remember that night? That night I caught Anne-Marie with someone. In my bed? Our bed?”
He nods. I continue, trying hard not to let the images of my mental meltdown that night come back too vividly. I want them to stay in the past. “I don’t. Not all the details. I remember feeling shame and anger and like a fucking failure. I gave her everything she wanted, a big house, an open marriage, everything she asked for instead of a divorce. I didn’t want you, and Dad and Mom, to say I told you so. I didn’t want the world to think I had made a mistake even if I had, but I definitely didn’t want you to see me fuck up that badly.”
“Crew, she was the fuck-up not you. I would always have your back and never say I told you so.” Nash looks young and tired. Like he used to look after a particularly grueling weekend tournament when we were kids. Only now what’s put him through the wringer isn’t a hockey team, it’s me.
“What you might not know… what Dad knew but I was too ashamed to tell you is that…" I swallow, my cheek throbbing with white-hot pain. "Anne-Marie used my sexuality as a reason to end it. The reason she cheated. She's the one who wanted to try threesomes. She's the one who wanted to try a guy. I did it and I discovered a part of me I didn't know about, and I thought she supported it. I thought we were growing together. I didn't want to leave her but then she turned it all around and said, to Dad and the lawyer, that we needed to up the money despite the prenup because she would argue in court that I had lied about my sexuality. I was gay so that would void the prenup.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Nash looks horrified. His eyes darken with outrage. “Is that why you paid her so much? Why didn’t you tell me? I thought you still had feelings for her. I was so pissed it was like, why is he throwing money at her and letting her get away with everything and risking his career by burning shit and almost lighting the whole house on fire?”
“I had a bit of a breakdown from all her bullshit. I can’t explain it other than it was everything boiling over.” I sigh. “You handle feelings better than me.”
"By not letting myself have any," Nash quips, and our eyes meet.
“You bawled today and you punched me. That looked like feelings to me.” He almost smiles. “I’m sorry I drove you to that.”
“I drove myself,” Nash replies and walks to the small club chair in the other corner of the room. He drops down into it like a sack of potatoes. I lower myself the same way onto the edge of the bed. “And if I’m so much better than you at handling things then why didn’t I have a conversation with you about everything instead of just being so hurt that I made you think I was a freaking homophobe?”
“Well… bright side of this is it turns out we’re way more similar than we thought,” I say because I can’t not make light of even the heaviest of moments. “We both are fantastic at misinterpreting and assuming the worst.”
He lets out a burst of air and almost smiles but winces instead because his lip is rightfully fucked. “Is that why you’ve been bailing on everything to do with the captaincy? Because who wants to share the C with a homophobic jerk?”
I nod a little because now I feel super bad about it. “I wanted to share the C with my brother. My best friend since birth and I didn’t feel like we had that bond anymore.”
He nods and looks away. I wish I could be in his head for just a second. I think it’s about all I could handle. Nash is so intense, he vibrates at a whole other frequency. I love him but I also worry about him. “I fucked up. Something big. I’ve been trying to tell you for a while. Since Vegas.”
“Okay. So tell me now.”
Nash leans forward, then back, then forward again. “I always wanted to be you when I grew up. Carefree and cocky and so fucking sure that no matter how stupid the move, you could talk or walk or work your way out of the consequences.”
“Warning: I can’t. No one can.”
“Yeah, well I didn’t get that memo and took a stupid dare and…” His hazel eyes lock with mine. “I got married.”
“You… did you saymarried?” He nods and my brain fumbles the word around in my head like a slippery football. My brother. The king of ‘I’m married to my career’ got hitched. “To… to a woman?”
He stares. “No. To a hellion. The devil’s daughter. A goddamn nightmare dressed as a daydream… I married Tenley Garrison.”
