Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MICAH
By some miracle, I slept. Or maybe not a miracle. It was probably my body shutting down entirely due to the stress and fear and everything else.
Luckily, the hospital was secure. They were used to having celebrities and sports stars hidden behind their walls, which meant they wouldn’t be letting just anyone get by.
That helped.
I didn’t sleep well in the uncomfortable chair, but I slept feeling safer than I had in a long, long time. I woke to the sound of my phone ringing loudly, chirping a number in my ear I didn’t recognize. I fumbled for it and answered without really thinking.
“Mr. Adams?”
“Mmpfh. Sorry. Yes. Who is this?”
“I’m sorry if I woke you. My name is Detective Barnes with Boston PD, and I’d like to have you come down to the station to answer a few questions if you have some free time this morning.”
I froze. “You…you don’t think I was the one behind the wheel, right?” I don’t know why panic took over, but it did. “They told you I was blind, didn’t they? Like, blind as it gets? I have no eyes, and okay, sure, I did drive a few times in empty parking lots, but—”
“Mr. Adams.”
My jaw snapped shut. Across from me, I could hear Vanya start to stir, and I wondered what time it was. If this fucker woke him up in the middle of the night, there might actually be a reason to drag me down to the station.
“You’re not a suspect. We have one in custody, but it’s very important we speak with you about the incident last night, and a few other incidents in the past.”
“Hunter,” I said.
“I can’t divulge any information over the phone. Do you need assistance getting here?”
“I—no. No. I’ll call a friend. I can be there in…god, what time is it?”
“Nine fifteen,” he said.
I assumed in the morning. I didn’t think I’d slept all night and then the rest of the next day. “Right. Okay. Give me an hour?”
“Take as long as you need. When you get to the reception desk, give them your name and mine, and I will come get you. I appreciate your cooperation.”
I didn’t know what else to do, so I hung up, letting my phone fall into my lap as I finally felt the ache of sleeping on a shitty chair all night.
“Micah.” Vanya’s voice sounded a lot clearer than it had when he was hazy on his post-surgery drugs. “Are you okay?”
I almost laughed. Then I almost cried. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
“Who’s calling your phone?”
I shifted to the end of the little makeshift bed and twisted around until I heard something pop. Then I did the other side. “A detective. They have a suspect in custody.”
“Was Hunter,” Vanya said quietly.
I knew it was. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind. But for some reason, hearing Vanya say it made my heart sink right into my butt. Fuck, this was all my fault. If it hadn’t been for me—if he’d never met me, he never would have gotten involved in this mess, and he wouldn’t have been hurt, and he—
“Yes, I see your face. Pretty face,” he added. “So worried. Come here.”
As much as I knew I should run and remove myself from his life, I obeyed and got close enough that he could drag me over the railing and practically into his arms. I forced him to stop just short of actually pulling me into his lap.
“You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Already hurt. What a little more pain will do?” he murmured, brushing fingers through my hair. “What detective say on call?”
“Just that he can’t give me info, but he wants me to answer some questions. Fuck. I’m so fucking sorry. Did you see him last night?”
“No,” Vanya said. He stroked a too-tender touch over the back of my neck. “But my brother call. He find a tracker on my car. I was in parking lot trying to find it. He must have been waiting.”
“How the fuck did he get past security?” I couldn’t understand how this had happened multiple times. Who was letting him in?
“I think Tyoma know, but I can’t call right now. Head hurts too much.”
“Jesus,” I murmured. I turned toward him and gingerly felt around his face for any cuts. There were several scabs, but nothing that felt stitched and no lumps. But he was definitely worse for wear. “I’m so fucking sorry. This is all my—”
“No. Enough.” He said something in Russian, then sighed. “Drugs making it hard to think in English. Give me time, I fix. Okay?”
“You don’t need to fix me—”
“Someone need to fix you.” He tapped my temple. “Until you love yourself as much as I love you.” Then he dragged me into a morning-sour, nasty kiss which I fucking adored. “Go to detective. Tell them to send Hunter to go live with polar bears. They eat him. Problem solved.”
“I, ah, I don’t think that’s a sentence they can give out, but I’ll do my best.”
“Because you are best. Best face, best body. Best dick.”
“Wow, Mr. Maximov,” came a voice from a person I hadn’t realized walked in. It had to be his nurse.
“Now that I’m thoroughly humiliated,” I said, sliding away from Vanya, “can you point me to the bathroom so I can drown myself in the toilet?”
“Noooo,” Vanya whined.
“I need a piss,” I explained.
The nurse laughed and guided me to the door, which I firmly shut behind me, and then I relieved myself, washed my hands, then made a half-desperate call to the only other person I was going to be able to stand that day.
“Thank you for this,” I said as I hunkered down in Hugo’s car. “This is such a fucking shit-show. If Ben didn’t love me so much, I’d be first on the list of trades for next season.”
“Ben’s a good coach. He’s not going to lose his top talent because things got out of control,” Hugo reminded me.
That was fair, but a small part of me wished there was a way I could get fired because I felt done. I felt more than done. This wasn’t fun anymore, and it wasn’t just Hunter.
It was all of it.
The obligation, the fear, the hiding. Knowing I would have to rewrite who I was to everyone I knew—and the people I didn’t but thought they knew me.
Hockey had been an escape, a way to flee my mother’s too-tight, unkind grasp she had on me and my brothers’ throats.
But she was who the fuck knew where, my dad was dying, and suddenly, hockey didn’t feel the same.
“Are you okay?”
Everything I was thinking was probably playing out on my face, and it was easy to forget that a lot of the people around me could see it.
“No. But I will be.”
“Is Vanya…”
“He’s fine. Right before you got here, Jonah texted and said he and Alexio were coming by to see him.
” I rested my head against the seat and turned my face toward the window.
The sun was out, bright enough to be hot through the glass, and I felt a little like Jonah’s cat—fighting the urge to curl up in the rays and sleep.
“And you think they have Hunter at the station?”
“Him or the person he pinned all of this on,” I said. I wasn’t giving it much thought. I was too afraid to hope that they’d gotten the right man and all of this could be over.
But I wasn’t going to let the wrong person go down for this.
I’d been avoiding cops out of fear of what Hunter could do to my reputation, but if that didn’t matter—if I really was going to make big changes in my life—then I decided I didn’t care. He could show anyone he wanted.
It was time to take my power back and stop being such a cowardly dipshit. God, it was a fucking wonder Vanya put up with me all this time.
Hugo let me rest as he drove. The police headquarters were a bit of a drive from the hospital—south of the Charles River—and while traffic wasn’t the worst after morning rush hour, it was enough time for me to fall into a half doze, hiding from nightmares that were most definitely going to grip me once I had some proper rest.
“Hey.”
I swallowed thickly as I fought my way toward consciousness.
“Micah, we’re here.”
Who…oh, right. Hugo. I fought off a yawn as I sat up, scrubbed sand from my lashes, then grabbed my cane from the floor. The car was at a stop, so I assumed we were in a parking space, and I tried not to lose myself to the fireworks of anxiety bursting beneath my skin.
Hugo came around to meet me, and then I took his arm and followed his low voice as he described where we were and where we were going.
“The detective said to ask for him at the desk,” I said as we walked in through the doors.
From the echo of my shoes and my cane tip, I could tell the building was tall and mostly empty, though I could hear low voices of people talking, and somewhere in a tiled hallway, I could hear footsteps.
“There’s an information desk,” Hugo said. “And some benches we can sit on to wait.”
My voice shook as I asked for the detective, and I felt like an ass for struggling to remember his name. “Uh…it was. Baker. No. Detective…fuck. No, sorry,” I said when the woman behind the counter let out a small laugh. “Bruce?”
“Detective Barnes?” she offered.
I let out a sigh of relief. “Yeah. My name is Micah Adams. And I’m not a suspect.”
“I didn’t think you were.” There was more laughter in her voice. “Go ahead and have a seat. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Hugo led me to a bench that felt like it was all posts and wires instead of an actual seat, but it was comfortable enough. My legs wouldn’t stop shaking, so I bounced them in an effort to keep from rocking or shaking my head.
When I was anxious, it was easy to fall into old habits, but I knew those little blindisms made sighted people feel weird. And while normally I didn’t give a shit about the delicate feelings of ableist weirdos, I didn’t want more attention than I was already getting.
“Want to hold my hand?” Hugo asked.
I stuck mine out, and his palm was warm, his fingers strong as they gripped me. It brought me back to the train ride with him—the quiet journey to Montreal, where someone finally got me for the first time in so, so long.
I needed to be a better friend.
“You’re just fine,” Hugo said, and I flushed. I hadn’t realized I was talking out loud.
That was more Jonah’s thing, but it was a bad habit I think we both had from when we were kids.
“Listen. I know I’ve been shitty, and I want to—”