Chapter 9
chapter nine
“Do you always go running with Roman on Saturday mornings?” Bennett asked once they were seated at an upscale bistro in the Church Street Marketplace. He was dying to get to know this version of Sandro Zanetti, and this was the first time Sandro had given him the opportunity to do so.
“Roman and Kas,” Sandro said, gaze on his menu. “And yes. Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, assuming I’m not on the road with the team. Do you still run?”
“Almost every day. At the gym here, though. You know how I feel about winter.”
Grinning, Sandro sat back in his chair. “That hasn’t changed in fifteen years?”
“I’ve been living in LA for most of those, so . . . no.”
“Do you still have that blanket with sleeves?”
“It’s called a Slanket, as you very well know.”
“Yeah, I’m never calling it that.”
“And no.” Bennett chuckled. “I forgot it at my mom’s when I moved to LA, and she refused to give it back. Said it’d do her more good in Washington than it would me in California.”
“She’s not wrong,” Sandro said with a laugh. “How is your mom?”
He asked it with so much love in his voice that it sent Bennett backward in time to .
. . their junior year of college? Senior?
They’d been visiting his mom for a quick weekend trip, and when he’d returned from the store where he’d been sent to buy a few missing ingredients for dinner, he’d found his mom and his boyfriend dancing to “Toxic” by Britney Spears in the kitchen.
The two of them had gotten along as though they’d been platonic soulmates in another life.
“She’s good,” he said. “She gave me the cold shoulder for a week after I broke up with you.”
He didn’t mean to say it. Didn’t mean to bring up a past they hadn’t talked about yet. But before he could mentally kick his own ass, Sandro threw his head back and laughed, drawing the gazes of the patrons at a nearby table.
Drawing Bennett’s gaze too.
Oh, who was he kidding? All Sandro had to do was breathe near him to draw his gaze.
“I knew she liked me best,” Sandro said.
“Here you go, guys.” Their server placed a couple of beers on the table. “Ready to order or do you still need a minute?”
“I need a minute,” Bennett said.
Sandro pointed at an item on the menu. “Want to share this cheese platter?”
“Yeah.” Bennett snapped closed the menu he hadn’t even looked at. “Extra crackers?”
“Obviously.”
The server left with a promise to return in a few minutes with their cheese board.
“So.” Sandro tapped Bennett’s foot with his own, like he’d done earlier, but this time he left it there. “Tell me about LA.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How’d you end up there?”
“Arjun . . . You remember Arjun?”
Sandro toasted the absent Arjun with his beer. “Sure. From your study group. Liked my egg salad sandwiches best.”
“Right, well . . . No, wait, that was Meg. Arjun preferred the pulled chicken.”
“Nope. The egg salad. Ask him next time you talk to him.”
“I will,” Bennett muttered. “Even though I’m right.”
“Bet you a thousand bucks you aren’t.”
“A thou—Jesus fucking Christ. Only hockey players, I swear to god. I’ll bet you twelve dollars.”
Sandro laughed again, shoulders shaking, the skin crinkling around his eyes and somehow making him infinitely hotter.
Age looked good on him.
“Besides,” Bennett said to distract himself, “you already lost me a hundred bucks at Thanksgiving.”
“Yet I still ended up with Mr. Wiggles.”
“CC’s going to break into your place and steal that back, you know.”
Sandro let out a disbelieving tch sound. “No, he won’t.” He paused with his beer halfway to his lips and narrowed his eyes. “Wait, have you heard something? Spill.”
“I haven’t heard anything. He just seems like the type to do that.”
Cursing, Sandro pulled out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure my house alarm is on.” Sandro tapped at his screen and put the phone away. “There. Done.”
“No one knows your code?”
“Just me.”
“Is it still 4-3-6-0?”
Sandro blinked at him. “And you, apparently.”
“Christ, Ro, you’re still using the same password you were using fifteen years ago? You’re just asking to be the victim of identity theft.”
“That is the literal least of my worries.”
“What’s the most of your worries?”
Had Bennett asked a decade and a half ago, Sandro would’ve given him an honest response.
But this was a different Sandro, and even though Bennett was expecting the deflection, he was nevertheless disappointed when Sandro said, “Whether we’ll have enough crackers for all this cheese we’re about to get. What’s yours?”
Fuck, Bennett was tempted to give tit for tat, but if he wanted to get to know this version of Sandro, he had to be willing to let Sandro get to know this version of him.
Assuming Sandro wanted to.
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.
“I don’t know about ever,” Sandro said, rotating his beer on the tabletop. “But definitely not right now.”
“Okay.”
Bennett sipped his beer to wet his dry throat, licking his lips as he lowered the bottle.
Sandro’s gaze dropped to his mouth, lingering for longer than was polite and sending Bennett’s pulse skyrocketing.
That gaze drifted lazily upward and met his.
Bennett held it, his muscles tensing with desire when Sandro’s lips quirked in an equally lazy smile.