Chapter 28
JAKOB
“You’re in loo-o-ove.” Levi Dunn spoke in a sing-song voice that had more in common with a gossipy teenager girl than a six-foot-five, two-hundred-and-forty-pound hockey team enforcer.
I would’ve blushed a lot worse had any of our teammates been around to hear that suggestion. They would’ve piled on, creating a game-over scenario. As it was, I must’ve blushed a little, because I felt warm all over and struggled against the urge to look in the opposite direction.
“Let’s play hockey, whaddaya say?” I asked and slapped a puck to the opposite end of the rink.
Levi swooped in and snatched the puck before me, and I lunged forward to steal it back. When he kept the puck, I stayed on him, trying to overpower the meathead, but it felt like I’d slammed into a brick wall.
God, he was big.
He broke away from me, soaring down the ice at a pace faster than anyone his size had a right to possess, and I chased him.
Only when he neared the net did I finally catch up with him.
He swung around the net, hugging the boards.
I tried checking him again, meeting a worse fate than before.
This time, I landed flat on my back and found myself staring up at the lights.
Then I saw Levi towering over me, laughing uncontrollably, in that oh-so Levi Dunn way.
“You like the ice so much you’re gonna lay there all day long?” he asked.
I didn’t answer him. That remark proved the trait that made him Levi Dunn in the first place.
I climbed back to my feet, thankful for the embarrassing fall. That should’ve created the perfect distraction from Levi’s unexpected and uncomfortable suggestion.
What was I supposed to say? That I’d fallen head-over-heels in love with the enemy?
That we were ga-ga for each other? Better yet, we would be getting married, and I wanted Levi Dunn himself to walk me down the aisle.
That last part sounded like the perfect Larkin Lion answer, but I couldn’t let him dig in any deeper.
“What happened, bro?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Must’ve slipped and fallen.”
“Like they’ve been dropping banana peels on the ice?”
“Yeah, that must be it.”
“It’s either that or… you’re in loo-o-oove.”
He stuck his tongue out so far that I worried it would fall from his mouth.
Remember a minute ago when I said I hoped my fall would foil Levi’s uncomfortable suggestion?
Well, fuck that.
“Just admit it, bro,” he said. “Your life will be a hundred million times easier.”
“Hold on, timeout.” I made a T with my hands. “What makes you so damn sure I’m in love with anyone?”
“It’s written all over you, bro.”
“What, am I wearing a sign or something.”
“No, but you might as well be. You’ve been super distracted lately, like your mind’s been someplace else, but not in a bad way, you know? Plus, you’ve got that dumbass look in your eyes.”
“That dumbass look is my normal look.”
A shit-eating grin stole over his face, and I wanted to have that comment back badly enough to add it to my Christmas wish list.
“Words aren’t always needed,” he said, “but I can tell what your deal is clear as day and, remember, I’m the guy that crushes beer cans on his forehead.”
Maybe I should’ve come right out and said it but I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell Levi he was right, even if there was apparently a first time for everything.
Wait, what the hell was I thinking? I couldn’t tell Levi that, and not for the reasons you might think.
Conceding to that blockhead would mean follow-up questions, digging deeper and deeper for details.
Maybe I wouldn’t tell him right away that I wasn’t in love with a woman, but he would probe until he reached that point.
And then what the fuck would I do? You see, all my life I’ve suffered from this really bad habit of telling the truth. I could’ve saved myself a boatload of misery if I’d at least been willing to fib, let alone bastardize the truth.
“What’s her name?” he asked.
I said nothing. Compare my lack of response to the Miranda rights.
Anything I said or did could and would be used against me in a court of law.
Only it wouldn’t be the normal court of law with the scales of justice and picture of the President.
It would be Larkin Lions court, with Ryan Detenbeck presiding, while wearing a black gown and dumbass powdered wig.
“Come on, bro,” he said, “if some hot babe is sitting on your face every night, you should take the chance to crow about it a little.”
I burst out laughing mostly because he’d made yet another Levi Dunn comment. Pain in the ass though he was, I could always count on him for a laugh.
“Are you actually in love with Quinn,” I asked, “or…?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“An honest one. Since you drew first blood with the personal questions, I figure I’m perfectly within my rights.”
“There’s no such thing as a personal question on this team.”
Levi had a point. While only tacitly understood, nothing was supposed to be off-limits for teammates. The Larkin Lions were a brotherhood, and my teammates flesh and blood. That would only make this way worse. If they learned the truth, I could imagine how far the shit would fly.
“If nothing’s off-limits, why don’t you answer my question?” I asked.
“No problem, bro. I love him to death. I don’t go around telling people that, but I tell him enough, if you know what I mean.”
“What does it feel like?”
“You’re the one who’s in love. Shouldn’t you know?”
I wanted to slug him—you know, if he wasn’t four inches taller than me, and thirty or forty pounds heavier.
“I guess what I’m asking is how did you know?” I asked. “Tell me about the moment you stopped and told yourself, Holy shit, this is it!”
“Didn’t happen like that, bro. There wasn’t a moment that I fell in love with Quinn. I always was.”
“What do you mean you always were?”
“Quinn and I knew each other in elementary school. I used to bully the shit out of him. I totally didn’t get it at the time, but I was in love with him. I just couldn’t handle it. Acting like an asshole was my dumb-fuck way of dealing with it.”
“Because you were scared?”
He shrugged. I felt sort of relieved at his mild reaction. I totally would’ve expected him to lash out at the mention of fear. Guys like him insist that the word doesn’t belong in their vocabulary.
“I don’t think I was scared,” he said. “Just confused. I grew up thinking that guys like me are supposed to like girls, and that’s pretty much it.”
“What about gay people?”
“Oh sure, I knew about that stuff, but figured gay people came in short supply. I didn’t think you could mostly like girls, but also like a guy… and that my feelings for the guy would be way more powerful than what I’d felt for any of the girls.”
“But you didn’t, like, have this eureka moment? Nothing that screamed L-O-V-E to you?”
“That’s just in the romance stories, bro. Well, maybe some of the cliches are true. For me, there actually was a warm, fuzzy feeling. I know that sounds like something totally mushy for pussies, but it’s the truth.”
I sputtered laughter because that last remark proved the most Levi Dunn comment yet. I couldn’t deny he’d struck a nerve, too. I’d felt warm and fuzzy around Zane Hirst, a huge departure from the days in which he’d made me want to throw up, but nevertheless.
“But there was more,” Levi said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about him.”
“Oh yeah, I get that.”
Levi arched his eyebrows like I’d confessed to murder… or had proven his original point. In truth, I didn’t see the difference.
“Uh, um, I mean, I can totally see how you would feel that way,” I said.
He half-smiled as if to say I hadn’t hidden jack shit from him and that he was so on to me.
“But it was more than that,” he continued. “I wouldn’t give up. No matter how many times he shot me down in the beginning, I wouldn’t quit. You know why?”
“Tell me.”
“Because it was meant to be, bro.”
He fired a puck all the way down the rink, and it actually landed squarely in the net. A perfect way to underscore his proclamation.
“What about what you said about the mushy stuff for pussies only being in the romance movies?” I asked.
“Different subject. You asked about a eureka moment. That’s not what this was.
Sometimes you just know something’s right.
That’s exactly what happened to me. I knew it was right, no one could change my mind, and I stuck with it until everything came together.
The fact that my skull is thicker than most people’s is a total coincidence. ”
He rapped his temple with his knuckles. I smiled and fired a puck of my own down the ice but missed the net.
I realized that everything he’d mentioned mirrored my feelings for Zane.
Sure, I hadn’t known him since elementary school, but still.
I’d even tried to express my true feelings for him over cheeseburgers at Amy’s Place, but realized it wasn’t the time or place for such an emotionally-charged announcement.
More than that, I worried he wouldn’t have been able to handle it.
And would he feel the same way?
“So, now that we’ve established that you’re head-over-heels in love,” he said, “why don’t you tell me who the lucky lady is?”
I slapped another puck with my stick and missed yet again.
“Not gonna tell me?” he asked.
“You’re assuming there’s something to tell.”
He flashed a full, toothy smile. He knew I was full of shit.
That suited me fine. He could think what he wanted, and I would stick to my guns.
At least I’d escaped this conversation without spilling too much tea.
Still, I couldn’t deny that I was falling madly and deeply (and hopelessly) in love with Zane Hirst. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
I hadn’t planned on it. I’d never wanted it.
But it was there whether I liked it or not.
And I would only sink into it deeper and deeper and deeper.