So he gave him the truth. “That it’s been too long and I’ve fucked up too badly, and you’ll never let me into your life again.”
Sandro’s gaze, dark and tormented, flew to his, and the smile slipped off his lips. The air between them crackled with energy, fizzing and popping with every moment they should’ve shared in the past fifteen years. Birthdays and Stanley Cup wins and summer barbecues and road trips to Tobermory. Petty arguments and disagreements and makeup sex. That absent past played like a reel in Bennett’s head, a montage of missing moments that should’ve been theirs.
But they hadn’t been. Because of him.
Sandro licked his lips. “I . . .”
“You don’t have to say anything. You asked. I answered. That’s it.”
With uncanny timing, their server returned, toting a cheese platter that she placed on the table between them. “What you’ve got here are two types of goat cheese.” She gestured at two of the cheeses. “Then this one here is an Alpine-style, cave-aged cheddar, and the fourth is a local gorgonzola. In the ramekin, you’ve got cherry jam. Anything else I can get you?”
They shook their heads, and she left.
Clearing his throat, Sandro cut a thin slice of cheddar cheese, added it to a cracker, and handed it to Bennett. “You never told me about how you ended up in LA.”
Skin feeling stretched taut, Bennett accepted the offering, his fingers tingling where they brushed against Sandro’s. “Arjun,” he said. “He was the one who got me the gig on Man Into the Unknown. I was just a production assistant, but it opened the door to the next job, which opened the door to the next. That’s how you get jobs in this industry—through connections. Work was pretty inconsistent for the first several years, so I waited tables on the side and freelanced as a wedding videographer, which is as terrible as it sounds.”
Sandro let out a short laugh. “Not a fan of weddings?”
“Swear to fucking god, Ro, I saw more drama at those weddings than I’ve ever seen in a movie.” Bennett slathered cheese onto a cracker. “One just-married groom spent an hour being pissy and grouchy and a general piece of shit to be around because he thought someone stole his GoPro at the reception. His new wife was walking on fucking eggshells around him. You know where he ended up finding it?”
“On his living room table where he forgot it?”
“In the bag where he’d tossed the clothes he’d changed out of when he put on his tux. He was such an asshole about it. As if a GoPro can’t be replaced.”
“They’re not cheap, though.”
Bennett raised an eyebrow. “Says the guy who just bet me a thousand bucks.”
Sandro’s grin was much too innocent for such a handsome face. “So how did you go from Man Into the Unknown and weddings and waiting tables to—” He waved a hand. “—this.”
“The Trailblazers docuseries, you mean? I pitched it to the producer who backed Chain of Command. He’d already agreed to back this one before that one tanked, which worked in my favor. Though if this one tanks too, he’s never going to hire me again, and neither is anyone else, so . . .” Bennett toasted Sandro with his cheese-topped cracker. “Here’s to make-or-break career crossroads.”
“Wait.” Sandro grasped his wrist, lowering his arm until it rested on the table, the cracker still uneaten. He didn’t let go, his fingers warm against Bennett’s skin. “The series was your idea?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question seemed ripped out of Sandro, bursting out of him on a gasp like he both did and didn’t want an answer to it.
“Ro,” Bennett whispered past the emotion in his throat. “Do you really have to ask?”
The torment was back in Sandro’s eyes when he said, “Yes, B, I do. Because you left.”
“And I’ve regretted that for fifteen years.”
Sucking in a sharp breath, Sandro sat back, taking his hand with him and leaving the skin of Bennett’s wrist cold. He kept his foot nudged against Bennett’s under the table, though, the only thing preventing Bennett’s stomach from sinking.
Sandro scrubbed his hands over his face with a groan. “You can’t say shit like that, B. Not now. Not after so much time.”
Bennett crunched on a cracker and forced himself to remain casual. To not overwhelm Sandro more than he apparently already had. “Well. I did. Make of it what you will.”
“Why—” Sandro cut himself off with a strangled growl. “No. I don’t want to know.”
Bennett swallowed hard. “Now? Or ever?” He was dying to tell Sandro everything and explain why he’d retired from hockey and broken up with him. To give him all the words he hadn’t been able to back then.
But he had to meet Sandro where he was at.
