Chapter 25 – Lena
chapter
twenty-five
Lena
The text sat in my phone like a splinter I couldn't stop pressing.
Call me. I need to explain something, and you need to hear it.
Trevor.
I'd stared at it for twenty minutes. Then I'd locked my phone, set it face-down on my desk, and picked up my old Wilson racket. Swung it once in the cramped space of my room, wrist breaking exactly where it remembered. Muscle memory. Seven years and it came back like I'd never put it down.
Like some things.
I set the racket back against the wall and unlocked my phone.
Twenty minutes later my UBER pulled up at the Marquis. I didn’t know what he was doing still in town but I wanted to get this over with.
I'd texted when I arrived.
Me: I'm downstairs.
His reply came in under a minute. Bar off the lobby. Five minutes.
The bar was pretty quiet with a few guys in suits nursing drinks at the far end. I took a stool at the corner of the bar and ordered a water and waited.
He was down in less than five minutes wearing a jacket, white T and dark jeans.
He looked like I remembered. Somehow bigger, but still him. There’d been a time when he was my favorite person.
No he wasn’t. It was always Trace.
The nibble of guilt had me sucking in a sharp breath.
“Hey Lena. You look good.”
I ignored the compliment. “What am I doing here, Trevor?”
“You don’t need to be nervous. I come in peace.
You sleeping at all? Forgive me for saying this, but you’ve looked better.
” He'd always been good at reading me. It was one of the things I'd mistaken for intimacy back when I was seventeen and didn't know the difference between someone who paid attention because they cared and someone who paid attention because they liked knowing where all the pressure points were.
“Still a dick I see. What the hell do you want.?”
“Sorry, but you do you look tired. And I think that has to do with me.”
He slid onto the stool next to mine and signaled the bartender without looking at the menu.
"I’m surprised you came," he said.
"You texted." I kept my hands around my water glass. "Say what you need to say."
He sighed and gave me a sharp nod. "Okay," he said. "Then I'll make it fast. I was a dick. To you, specifically, and for a long time, and you didn't deserve any of it. And “I never ever should have called you a whore.”
I waited for the but…It didn't come.
"When I showed up at your dorm —" He stopped.
His jaw flexed, and it was so much like Trace's tell that my stomach turned sideways.
"I’d seen the press coverage of the event.
There's no version of that where I get to feel okay about what I said.
So I'm not going to try." He looked at me straight. "I'm sorry. Full stop."
All I culd do was stare. Was I in the twilight zone?
But he kept talking.
"I’m not even sure what I hoped to accomplish coming to town, I just couldn’t believe my brother would do that.”
“For starters he only needed me because you fucked up.” Not me standing up for a man.
He shrugged. “That’s fair. If I’m being honest, Trace is naturally more talented at hockey, school, he’s better with people." He sucked in a deep breath. "And I told myself that didn't bother me."
“Still not sure what this has to do with me.”
"I'm telling you because you deserve to know you weren't crazy. The way I treated you it had nothing to do with you. You were just collateral damage. I knew he wanted you. But I wanted what he had our could get. It was fucked up.”
“You know I don’t even care. You were in my rearview years ago.”
“Ouch.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you, I just, Trace hurt more than you did.”
“You love him huh?”
I shrugged. “I think I always have. But it’s complicated.”
“Then you should probably tell him.
“You called me here to tall me to talk to your brother?"
“Yeah well, Mom is pretty convincing. I shouldn’t have reacted that way. And you’re right. You ended up with him because of me. But you should have been with him all along. You know he still taps out your name as his pregame ritual right?”
“He does not.”
Trevor laughed and in that moment looked so much like Trace. “All you have to do is watch him before he start of every game. You’ll see.”
God I missed him.
My arms tightened around my ribs.
“My brother was always the better man. So the question is how long are you going to make him wait.”