Chapter Twenty-One
Dáithí
“Like I said, it’s not a secret,” he continues.
“Fifteen years ago, I went to my ex-boyfriend’s house with my hockey stick and broke all his windows, beat the crap out of his car, and turned his mailbox into scrap metal.
Unfortunately, he came out of the house and got in the way, and I accidentally hit him as well. ”
Jared’s face is horrified. “Accidentally?”
“Yeah. He got between the stick and the window beside the door after I’d already started swinging, and I couldn’t pull back enough to stop it.
It didn’t hit him hard, though. He got bruised, but not too badly.
The assault charges were dismissed because he had one of those doorbell cameras, and the video proved it wasn’t intentional. ”
That seems to appease Jared a little, but not completely. He’s a very nonviolent person, which makes his love of hockey surprising.
I, on the other hand, can totally appreciate the occasional need to smash a window. “What’d he do?”
“My ex?”
I nod, and Felix sighs. “He cheated. A lot. The whole three years we were together, it turned out. We’d agreed to be monogamous, but I’d found out that day that he’d never even tried.
” His frown somehow manages to be both sad and angry.
“If he’d said from the beginning that he wanted an open relationship, I would probably have agreed, you know?
It’s not like I was thinking we’d be forever right from the outset—I was only twenty-five, and we’d only known each other a couple of months.
Settling down wasn’t in my plans when we decided to be exclusive.
But he never even mentioned wanting to see other people, and he was the one who brought up monogamy. ”
“Bastard,” I mutter, pressing my hands harder against the ground.
I need nature right now, because Felix’s story is knotting up my insides, dragging my memories of Alan back to the forefront of my mind.
Eoin’s not like that—he’d never deliberately deceive me.
I know he’s sticking to our monogamy agreement.
“He deserved broken windows,” Jared agrees. “That kind of deliberate dishonesty doesn’t belong in relationships.”
“Right? It was the lying that hurt the most. The whole time we were together, he was lying to me, over and over.” Felix swallows hard and looks away.
“When I confronted him, he laughed. It was all a joke to him. He said he’d been waiting years for me to find out and he couldn’t believe how stupid I was. ”
The wordless sound that explodes from me clashes with Jared’s angry, “Fuck that!”
“It’s not stupid to trust your boyfriend,” I snap. “He’s a malicious prick.”
Jared points at me. “What he said. The cheating was bad enough, but the rest just makes him a bad person. I’m glad you trashed his car. Too bad he didn’t have a boat too.”
There’s a stunned silence as Felix and I process that decidedly violent statement from our pacifist friend, and then he snorts a laugh. I bite my lip, not wanting Jared to think we’re laughing at him.
“What?” he demands. “Just because I live by the edict to do no harm doesn’t mean I can’t recognize when other people deserve to have their boats trashed.”
That does it. I laugh so hard, I fall backward into the clover, while Felix sounds like he’s choking.
But the time I can breathe again, my eyes are wet with tears.
I swipe them away and stare up into the endless blue of the sky, still chuckling lightly, letting go of the painful knot of memories.
Alan is in my past and no longer merits my hurt.
My concerns about Eoin don’t have anything to do with him cheating or deceiving me.
Something nudges against my arm, and I roll my head to the side and smile. “Hello, sweetheart,” I croon to Elsking, scooping her onto my chest and stroking her soft fur. “Did I startle you? I didn’t mean to.”
She doesn’t seem upset at all, sniffing around my shirt for a moment before she jumps back down and heads for the sage plants nearby. I sit up so I can keep an eye on her, and my gaze lands on Jared’s self-satisfied smile.
“You said that on purpose,” I accuse, and he shrugs.
“Of course. How would I have said it accidentally?”
That’s not what I meant, but I let it go. He’s a natural caretaker, so I shouldn’t be surprised that he wanted to lighten our moods.
Felix must agree, because he says, “On purpose or accident, thanks. I needed that.” He seems to have let his guard down, making him look a lot younger, and I remember what he said earlier and do a quick calculation.
“You’re only forty-two?”
He blinks at me. “Yeah. Why? How old are you?”
I shake my head. “More than a hundred times older than you. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude—I just thought you were older, for some reason.” I try to remember what I know about shifter maturity. “Were you even considered an adult when all that shit happened with your ex?”
“Why wouldn’t he have been? He was… what? Twenty-eight or so,” Jared says, frowning, then glances at Felix. “Right? That’s what you said. You met when you were twenty-five and were together three years.”
He nods. “Yeah, I was. Dáithí might be confusing adulthood with reproductive maturity, which happens when we go through our second puberty.”
The way Jared’s jaw drops makes me wish I’d been recording. “What?”
“Shifters don’t go through puberty until they’re around forty,” I tell him. I can’t even remember how I found that out, so it’s not surprising that Jared, who only learned about the community this year and has been focused on us elves, not the other species, doesn’t know.
“Reproductive puberty,” Felix corrects. “We go through puberty at the same time as the other species, too, as we develop into adulthood, but it’s less intense.
The theory is that learning to control our shift is already hard enough without adding reproductive hormones.
That happens in our late thirties or early forties, when we’re adults and better equipped to handle it. ”
“Wow. That’s… wow.” Jared’s eyes narrow. “Is that why you’re so aggressive on the ice? Hormones? Has your puberty finished yet?”
I cough. “Whoa, Jared. That’s me levels of nosy.”
His expression turns apologetic, but Felix waves him off. “I don’t care. No, it’s not finished yet—I’m a late bloomer. It’s made things really hard lately.”
It’s an effort to keep a straight face and not say, “That’s what he said.” Things being hard during puberty? It’s the perfect time for a dick joke.
But I’m proud of my mature restraint when he continues, “I’ll admit to being more annoyed than usual lately, but I’ve always been an aggressive player, and I just dialed it up when I realized it was the only way to hold my own against the bigger guys on the ice.
When I was a teenager, my coaches encouraged it—there’s only so many spots on a team roster, and if the bigger guys have talent, they get picked first. If I wanted to play pro, I needed to bring more to the table than everyone else. ”
“But you’re a great player,” Jared protests. “You have tons of talent! And the Warhammers is the only team in the league that doesn’t have a more even mix of player sizes. You’d still be able to play based on your talent and skills alone.”
Based on Felix’s face, that’s not true, but I don’t know enough about hockey to have an opinion. Maybe I should learn about the sport. If Felix and I are going to be friends—and I think we are—I should know a little about what he does. It’s friend law.
“Thanks,” he says, not sounding convinced. “But I don’t want to move away from here, and Coach would cut me if I stopped playing rough.”
“He’d cut you?” I demand, outraged, and then my knowledge of sports terminology reasserts itself.
“Oh. From the team.” It’s been over a decade since I learned to speak English, but sometimes I still get tripped up.
“Would he really? Even if you were still scoring… points?” I’m guessing on that last word.
“Goals,” he corrects. “And yeah. He pushes us all to play rougher. It’s right on the edge of encouraging us to play dirty—in fact, I’m pretty sure he’s crossed that line with some of the guys.” Disgust mixes with misery in his tone.
Jared’s appalled. “That’s disgraceful!”
“Don’t get too upset on my behalf,” Felix says with a wry smile. “I really am an aggressive player naturally, and Coach never told me to beat up on my own teammates.” He winces. “Which is what led to that Ari guy saying I assault people.”
“You beat up your teammates?” Now I’m intrigued. “I had no idea hockey was a last-man-standing kind of sport.”
“It’s not,” Jared says firmly while Felix laughs. “Felix gets frustrated with his teammates. That’s all.”
“Part of it’s puberty,” Felix agrees. “It’s so fucking annoying that some of them are on the team just because of their size, even when they’re making sloppy mistakes. I used to deal with it better, but the last few years, hormones have been killing my patience.”
“So why haven’t they been cut yet? Jared said the other teams have a mix of player sizes. Why are the Warhammers so fixated on big players?”
He shrugs. “That’s the way Coach and the old general manager wanted it. I’m not sure if the new GM is the same—too early to tell.”
“Your coach sounds like a douchecanoe,” I tell him, and he nods.
“Fuck yeah. Any other coach would have suspended me the first time I belted a teammate on the ice, but he just ignores it.”
I make a mental note to talk to Eoin about the coach. If the king is going to be around that man, Eoin needs to know what to expect. Maybe I can call hockey Erik and get his take on the new general manager too. We’re not friends, but I bet I could sweet-talk him.
“But that’s my side of the deal done,” Felix continues. “And hey, good news is, I won’t have to see my ex or that Ari asshole ever again. Now I want to hear about your complicated boyfriend, Dáithí.”
I groan. “I’ve talked about this way too much lately.
The short version is, I had my heart broken in the past by someone whose history is a lot like Eoin’s, he and I agreed starting out that we’d keep it casual, but now he wants to change that and he’s going to complete a bunch of challenges to prove his commitment. ”
He stares at me. “I’m going to need the long version.”
Of course he does. I tell the whole story—with many interjections and additions from Jared—and every word I say makes it all seem even more ridiculous.
Felix lets out a low whistle when I’m done. “I thought I was fucked-up, but you’re giving me a run for my money.”
“Hey!” He’s not wrong, damn it.
“I’m just saying, that man must seriously want you. For one thing, he’s spending his Saturday morning cleaning your apartment while you’re here bitching with us.”
I reach out to where Elsking and Marge are napping and stroke my sweetheart’s soft fur. “Yeah.” How dare he keep making factual statements that contain valid points?
“That’s only a fraction of it,” Jared adds.
“Did you see the updated progress report last night? Ari says Eoin’s been researching custom accessories for Elsking because he doesn’t think what she’s got is good enough for her.
And he told you to bring her so she wouldn’t be upset by his cleaning today.
He’s killing it on the task he doesn’t even know about. ”
“See?” Felix gestures to Jared. “He’s not only willing to tackle this stupid challenge, he’s trying.
I don’t know the guy, but from what you’ve told me, he’s determined to show you he can be what you want, and you’re comparing him to someone who not only didn’t try, but blamed you for it afterward.
” He shakes his head. “There’s no guarantees in any relationship, Dáithí.
But if you care about someone enough, you risk it anyway. ”
Ouch. Stung, I demand, “Have you been risking it since your ex screwed you over?”
“Yes,” he says bluntly. “A bunch of times. Jared met me the day my last boyfriend broke up with me.”
Jared winces. “That’s why you threw your phone?”
He nods. “Uh-huh. I’ve been burned a whole bunch of times, and I’ll probably be burned some more, because I’m looking for someone who loves me so much, he’ll do whatever it takes to show me.” He cocks a brow. “Sound familiar?”
I guess we’re friends now, because only a true friend would call me on my bullshit like that.
Damn him.