Chapter 14 #2
“But . . .” Sandro glanced around helplessly, his gaze pinging around the room without settling on any one thing. “My car’s in the shop still.”
“I know, baby.” Bennett swept his hands down Sandro’s arms, his heart squeezing tight at the fear on Sandro’s face. “We’ll take my rental. If you’re ready, we’ll leave right now. Okay?”
“Fuck.” Exhaling loudly, Sandro dropped his forehead onto Bennett’s shoulder. “My dad, B . . .”
“I know.” Bennett hugged him close, and Sandro shuddered against him. “I know. Do you have your phone?”
Sandro nodded against him.
“Okay. Grab your charger and let’s go.”
In Bennett’s passenger seat, Sandro’s leg bounced.
He held his phone in one tight fist, and every few minutes, he illuminated the screen to make sure he hadn’t missed a call or text.
Of course he hadn’t—he’d set the notification volume as high as it would go.
He wouldn’t miss it ring even if it was buried under a pile of snow.
Of which there was a lot. Another storm had hit the area while the Trailblazers had been in Vancouver, and although it was pretty, it wouldn’t last. It was already beginning to melt as the temperatures rose above freezing.
“So much for a white Christmas,” he muttered.
“It’s still nine days to Christmas,” Bennett pointed out, one hand lazily holding the steering wheel. The other held one of Sandro’s hands on his thigh, and it was the only thing keeping Sandro grounded in the present instead of a thousand kilometers away in Tobermory.
With his dad, who may or may not be okay.
It felt like all of his fear was knotted in his throat, and he swallowed past it, his mouth dry. “True, but there isn’t much snow in the forecast in the next week.”
Was his dad dying? Why hadn’t anyone called to update him yet? They’d been on the road for an hour and a half already, had passed into Canada forty minutes ago. Surely Darcy knew something by now.
Sandro checked his phone again. Nothing.
Bennett squeezed his hand as the GPS on his own phone told him to take exit eleven for Highway 30 West. He’d punched in Sandro’s parents’ address before pulling out of the driveway without Sandro having to remind him what it was.
Why did he remember it after all this time?
“Tell me about you.”
Sandro blinked at the request. “Pardon?”
“Tell me about you,” Bennett repeated. An hour ago, he’d grumbled about “the stupid headrest” before undoing his bun. Now, his gorgeous hair hung loose to his shoulders, and if it weren’t for the winter jacket, he might look like a typical California surfer dude.
Sandro pulled a strand of hair away from Bennett’s chin, where it had gotten caught in his stubble. “You already know about me.”
“I know the version of you from fifteen years ago and the version of today.” Bennett sent him a quick smile. “Tell me about the time in between. Travels, new family members, what it was like to win the Cup, if you’ve had any pets, any memorable boyfriends or girlfriends.”
“Uh . . . okay.” Drumming one corner of his phone on his thigh, Sandro thought back to the previous fifteen years. “Well, when we were dating, Darcy was engaged to Danielle. Remember? They broke up before the wedding, and he’s been seeing Olivia for . . . I don’t know. Ten years now, I think?”
“Cool.” Bennett nodded. “I didn’t ask about your brother, though. I asked about you.”
“Fuck, I don’t know, B.” Sandro dug the back of his head into the headrest. “I’ve traveled to Portugal, Iceland, Japan, and Brazil, sometimes with teammates, sometimes with my brothers. Six nieces have been born—”
“Six? Man, your family’s prolific. Any nephews?”
“Nope. Six nieces ranging in age from three to eleven. Winning the Cup was like . . .” Sandro paused there, because there wasn’t any way to describe what that was like. “You know that feeling you get when you score a goal? It’s like that, but a thousand times bigger.”
“What’d you do with your days with the Cup?”
“The first two times I brought it home.” Sandro smiled at those memories, but it quickly slipped off his face as he recalled how brightly his dad had grinned when he’d looked at it for the first time. “The third time, I brought it to the hockey camp I coach at during the summer.”
“You coach at camp?” Bennett squeezed his hand again. “That’s a new thing. Tell me about that.”
“It’s the Vermont Trailblazers Youth Hockey Camp.
” Sandro thought he felt his phone vibrate, but when he checked, there were no new messages.
Maybe no news was good news? Or maybe everything had fallen apart and they were afraid to tell him.
“I, uh . . .” He wiped the back of his hand over his forehead.
“I volunteer for two weeks in the summer. One week with the younger kids, usually the nine- and ten-year-olds, and one week with the teenagers.” His heart began to pound, and he pulled his collar away from his throat.
“Sorry, there was something else you asked about, but I can’t remember what it was. ”
“Pets and memorable significant others,” Bennett said, though his voice sounded like it was coming through a tube. “But I don’t actually want to know about that last thing.”
“Oh no?” Sandro forced out, sweat dampening his hairline. “You don’t want to know about the actor I almost married in Vegas?”
“Ro? Hey. Baby, you’re panicking. Shit. Ro. Right now, tell me what thirteen times twenty-seven is. No, don’t use your phone. Thirteen times twenty-seven, Ro. I need you to tell me in the next thirty seconds.”
Sandro didn’t bother asking why—if Bennett needed it, Sandro would give it to him even though he was dizzy and it felt like his heart was going to pound out of his chest. “Uh . . . three times seven is twenty-one,” he muttered to himself, and the pounding in his ears abated.
“Carry the two over. Seven times one is seven plus two is nine.” He opened his eyes—when had he closed them?
—and found it was raining. “Two hundred and fifty-one? No, three fifty-one.” The world stopped spinning. “Is that right?”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Laughing softly, Sandro rested his forehead on Bennett’s shoulder and inhaled a breath that smelled like whatever product Bennett used in his hair. “You didn’t actually need to know what thirteen times twenty-seven is, did you? How did you know that would help?”
“Because your brain can’t panic and do complicated tasks at the same time. I learned that on Bull.”
Sandro squinted at him. “The TV show?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well.” Sandro swallowed hard. “Thank you. And thank you, Bull. Still want to know about the pets and the actor?”
Bennett’s smile stretched across his face. “Fuck you with the actor.”
Sandro’s phone rang, loudly, startling them both. “It’s Darcy,” he said, swiping to answer. “Darce? What’s going on? Is he okay?”
“He has a sprained wrist.”
Sandro let that settle for a moment, confusion overshadowing the panic. “He . . . sprained his wrist?”
“He was on a ladder without a spotter, fixing the Christmas lights on the house—”
“The fuck was he doing on a ladder by himself?”
Next to him, Bennett made an aborted sound.
“Fixing the lights,” Darcy said slowly, very obviously annoyed. “Isn’t that what I just said? Anyway, he slipped and fell. Landed badly on his arm.”
“Jesus Christ, Darcy.” Reclaiming his hand from Bennett, Sandro punched his own thigh and pretended it was his brother’s face. “You made it sound like he was dying.”
“I’m sorry, okay? I panicked when Olivia called. I did think he was dying.”
“Is she there?”
“Yeah.”
“Put her on,” Sandro snapped.
“Jeez, okay, relax.”
A second later, Olivia was on the line. “Sandro, I am so sorry. If I’d known Darcy made it sound like your father was on his deathbed, I would’ve called you right back.”
“Not your fault,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. “Do me a favor? Murder him for me.”
She cackled. “Gladly. Are you on your way here?”
“I was. But we’re turning around now that I know it’s just a sprained wrist. Fuck.” Coach Madolora hadn’t been happy about him making another trip home so close to the previous one, but he’d changed his tune once Sandro had told him about the accident.
The non-emergency accident, it turned out.
“We?” Olivia said. “Who’s we?”
Yeah, no. He was definitely not in the mood to go into detail about Bennett, so he thanked Olivia, said goodbye, and hung up.
Bennett, who’d heard him tell Olivia they were turning around, had exited the highway using the nearest off-ramp. Sandro’s heart ached looking at him, and now that the terror had receded, he could acknowledge what he hadn’t earlier.
Bennett hadn’t hesitated. He’d packed them a bag, looked up flights, and had jumped to the task of driving Sandro all the way to Tobermory without a second thought.
Had Bennett called any of his own people to let them know he’d be away for a few days or had his concern been all for Sandro and everything else was a non-issue?
Bennett signaled to go left at the lights since it looked like that was the best way to get back on the highway going in the other direction, but Sandro waved him right as he called his dad. “Can you pull over?”
“Why?” Bennett asked, immediately on high alert. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Sandro said as the line rang and rang. “Just pull over when you can. The sign back there said there’s a McDonald’s this way. Did you let Fowler know where you were going?”
“I was going to do that when we stopped for gas.”
As Sandro had suspected, Bennett’s focus had been entirely on him.
His stomach doing somersaults, Sandro left a voicemail asking his dad to call him when he had a minute. Not that he didn’t believe Darcy and Olivia, but after the last two hours of dread, he needed to hear his dad’s voice for himself.
“Is this okay?” Bennett nodded at a bank coming up on their right. “I don’t know where the McDonald’s is, but you said to pull over as soon as I can. Or there’s a Tim Horton’s across the street if you’re hungry.”