Chapter 15 #3
Fucking hell. No wonder Bennett hadn’t leaned on him. He’d been an unsympathetic asshole.
“Did you quit me for the same reason?” he found himself asking. “Because the thought of being together for another season—”
“Jesus Christ, Ro, no.” Bennett shot up from the bed and stalked toward him, long legs eating up the distance between them. “You were the best fucking thing in my life.”
Anger bubbled and Sandro tried to suppress it. “Oh yeah? That why you broke up with me?”
Bennett opened his mouth, then clacked it shut on a wounded noise. He dropped onto the end of the bed. Shoulders rounded, hair curtaining his face, he stared at his hands for a long moment. “Do you remember what your rookie season was like?”
Surprised by the question, Sandro straightened off the door. “Vividly.”
“So do I. You had eighty-nine points—thirty-five goals and fifty-four assists in eighty-one games. You were killing it out here, Ro. And I was drowning. Did you really think I was going to bring you down with me?”
What the . . . What the what?
The bubbling anger boiled over, flushing heat through Sandro’s body. “So you broke up with me to what? Protect me? Jesus fuck, you’re such an idiot.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
That brought Sandro down a peg.
“I couldn’t breathe, Ro,” Bennett said, quieter, which belatedly made Sandro realize that they’d been half-yelling.
“I couldn’t breathe, and you were having an all-star season.
There was no way I was going to dump all of that on you and risk being the thing that interfered with your game.
Do I wish I’d handled things differently?
Yes. But I didn’t know how to deal with everything I was feeling back then, Ro.
I didn’t . . .” Exhaling roughly, Bennett dug the base of his palms into his eyes briefly before dropping his hands. “I’m sorry. I—”
Sandro went to his knees at Bennett’s feet and wrapped his arms around Bennett’s waist. Bennett made a sound of confusion, but Sandro kept holding him until the anger, the disappointment, the sadness, the years of wondering what if .
. . they bled away, swirling down an imaginary drain and leaving him here, in the present.
Where things could be different.
He pressed a kiss to Bennett’s chest, then met his gaze. “I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t lean on me.”
“What? No, Ro, you—”
“Don’t try to make excuses for me,” Sandro interrupted calmly. “If I’d been the kind of partner you needed, maybe things would’ve been different. But I wasn’t.”
“Sandro, stop. That’s not—”
“Instead of listening to you,” Sandro said, speaking over him, “and standing up for you, I glossed over your problems. And because of that, you stopped talking to me, and because of that, I buried myself in hockey to escape the pain of you pulling further and further away from me.”
Bennett’s expression was pained. “Ro—”
“We’re both at fault for what happened. But we were kids, B. I mean, we were younger than Eli. We didn’t know anything.”
“And now we do?”
“Well, no, probably not.”
Bennett chuckled, and the sight of his smile was all Sandro needed. Without thinking twice about it, he blurted, “God, I was so in love with you back then,” and swallowed hard when Bennett’s eyes went glassy.
“I know,” Bennett whispered. “I loved you too.”
“It’d be so easy to fall in love with you again.” Hell, Sandro was more than halfway there already.
“Yeah.” Bennett swept a thumb over Sandro’s cheekbone. “I know the feeling.”
Eyes burning, Sandro dragged his palms up Bennett’s chest to cup the sides of his neck. “Things can be different this time.”
“Things will be different this time.”
With that understanding between them, Sandro surged upward and kissed him.
Bennett kissed him back as if he’d just solved all the secrets of the universe, and it made Sandro feel both ten feet tall and anchored in this very moment.
He pushed Bennett backward onto the bed, following him up until they were sharing the same pillow.
Curled into Bennett’s side, Sandro propped his head on one hand and traced Bennett’s lips.
He hated that Bennett had always felt the need to hide his pain.
To make himself smaller and easier to handle to make everyone else’s life easier.
It was a product of his upbringing, of wanting to make his mom’s life easier—Sandro understood that.
Had understood that from the first time Bennett had brought him home their sophomore year.
So, of course, when his rookie season had failed to live up to his expectations, he’d shut down. Of course he had. It was ingrained in him to deal with everything himself.
Sandro just wished he’d seen the behavior for what it was at the time.
“Don’t hide from me again, okay?” He tapped Bennett’s chest, over his heart. “I want to know what’s going on in here. I want to know you. Let me. Okay? You’re allowed to take space in my life. Hell, take all the space.”
Bennett’s lips twisted into a small smile. “Yeah, I’m beginning to see that.”
Tugging the cover over them, Sandro laid his head on Bennett’s shoulder.
And they stayed that way until they fell asleep.