Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
boston
The early summer sun is warm on my face, reminding me there are upsides to the off-season. This. I spent the morning cleaning the animals’ living areas, and by early afternoon I somehow found myself with my ass in the grass inside the goat enclosure, entertaining them with music and dog toys.
I built this jungle gym for them a year ago and they still love the hell out of it. The one thing they love more? Dog toys and music. Kelly Clarkson, to be exact. Don’t ask me why or how I figured that out, but she is a crowd favourite around here.
I watch them with a gentle smile. There are ten of them now.
I know, it’s a lot. The four kids are the biggest nuisance in the world, but that’s why I love them.
I let Lemmy name them this time, so they’re all namesakes of reality television stars.
I don’t have a clue what show they’re from, or who any of the people are, but I can promise you that one is named after a housewife from some city.
Goats are pure, unrelenting chaos. For some reason, they bring me peace.
My phone starts ringing, which interrupts Kelly Clarkson, and the goats immediately freeze. I curse, digging in my pocket for it, but then Meredith starts screaming and drop-kicking everyone in the vicinity, and Stassi runs headfirst into old, grumpy Bucket, and drama ensues.
“Sorry! Sorry!” I call out, getting to my feet. I kick one of the dog balls that makes a noise and they go crazy for it. I take that second to excuse myself from their enclosure and disconnect my phone from the speaker, answering my brother’s call.
“Kane.”
“Boss!”
He sounds chipper. That is not what I was expecting.
“Any news?”
“The police found them. They were walking down Valley Street this morning. Apparently, they moved to new housing. I have their updated address now. I’ll check up on them.”
I expect to feel relief, but I just feel…nothing. “Good. That’s good.”
“I’ll sleep a little better now, anyway.”
I’m walking through The Penthouse when a soft ringing echoes through the receiver. I glance down at my phone. Kane. Incoming video call.
Um…
Not really knowing what else to do, I accept. It takes a second, but suddenly, I’m staring at a smaller version of me, draped in my jersey, holding his new skates. He’s doing this painfully awkward little dance, like this is the best day of his life, and damn—if I’m not smiling after that.
“Thanks, Uncle Boss!” Bennett says, running toward the phone with excitement radiating off him.
He snatches it from his dad and his eight year old face fills the screen.
All I see is big, green eyes. “I love them! They’re the best kind.
Everyone is going to be so jealous. I’m going to be the fastest guy on the ice now. ”
“That’s what I like to hear,” I say, an ache sprouting in my chest. I have never had an actual conversation with a grown-up Bennett, but he’s talking to me like he knows me. Like…like Kane talks about me. Like I’ve been there, all these years. “I’ve seen your work, kid. You’ve got chops.”
He beams at me. “Like you?”
The ache worsens. “Better.”
“Nobody is better than you,” he says, eyes burning into mine through the screen.
It’s not an ache anymore. My chest is fully splitting in half.
I smile at my nephew, ignoring the way the room feels like it’s caving in on me. Clearing my throat, I lower myself into a chair at the kitchen table. He’s studying me, beaming ear-to-ear, thrilled to have this tiny blip of time with his uncle.
I’m thrilled, too.
“Keep working on it, buddy, and you will be. I can tell.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I rest my phone against the vase on the table. “You’re a center, right?”
He nods, eyes bright.
“I know the best center in the league. You a fan of my buddy, Declan Lowes?”
His face ignites. “Are you kidding? Besides you, he’s my favourite player! He’s way faster than me, though. I could never be that fast.”
“Who says?”
“I’m eight!”
I bark a laugh. “You’ll be eighteen soon enough, and then what? You have to believe you’re going to be the best, buddy. Work for it. You’ll get there. You better wind up playing for Pittsburgh, too. We can make our own Black family legacy.”
I don’t know why I said that. Legacy is a word I’ve grown to hate.
I don’t have a family, not one that’s intact.
But I’m looking right in his eyes, for fuck’s sake.
My eyes. I can’t just pretend he isn’t a piece of me.
I can’t pretend I wouldn’t love for another Black to take over when I hang up the skates for good.
“Dad would die if I moved away,” he says, breathing heavily into the phone. “He’s already sad that you’re there. If I moved there, too? He might cry, Uncle Boss. Like big, baby tears.”
My smile falters a bit. I reach up and rub the spot on my chest that suddenly won’t stop hurting. Bennett’s eyes flicker above the camera and he shakes his head. After a few seconds of silence, he rolls his eyes.
“Gotta go, Uncle Boss. Dad wants to talk to you.”
“Alright, buddy. Talk soon.”
Seconds later, my brother is on the screen.
He looks…like Kane. He’s younger than me, but prematurely graying on the sides.
His dark brown eyes are framed with lines, like life dealing with our parents has aged him, or maybe he just laughs a lot with a functional, decent family of his own. Who knows? He’s still Kane, though.
We have never video-called before. Not once.
“You need a haircut,” is the first thing he says.
I smirk. “You need some hair dye.”
He snorts, rolling his eyes. “Have a couple kids, Boss. That’ll do it.”
He brings me through his kitchen. I’m glad he tore down our old home and rebuilt it.
Started anew. There’s no touch of my parents or of what happened to us all those years ago.
All I see are modern farmhouse walls and doors, white and black.
Pristine and fresh. None of our history tainting any corner.
“Your boy is talented, Kane.”
He lets out a long breath, shaking his head. “Yeah, well. Uncle Boss pays for the best lessons.”
“Nah, that’s natural.”
“I know,” he says, bringing a mug of coffee to his lips. “He reminds me of you. All the time. The talent. The attitude. The desire to grow his hair to his ass crack.”
I chuckle, and we both just look at each other.
Our smiles slowly fall at the same time.
I know without asking that he’s feeling the same pain that I am.
Why are we so distant? Why don’t I know my nephews?
Guilt slams into me, realizing Bennett and the boys know me.
I have a name. They know my face. They wear my jersey.
Kane keeps me a part of his family, even though we don’t speak. He’s…kept me alive to them.
I have never once returned the favour. I have never once attempted to know his kids, his wife, the man he’s become.
“What happened to us, Boston?” is all he says, and it’s quiet. Contemplative.
I swallow, letting out a long breath. Too much. Too young. “I don’t know.”
“My kid idolizes you.”
I look down, that guilt blossoming into a rage. A rage at how badly our parents fucked us up. How we let them tear us apart after Ryan died. How we should have clung to each other, rather than run from each other. Years have passed. Years. I haven’t even met my brother’s youngest son.
“He’s a smart kid then, eh?” I ask, and when I glance at the camera, he’s grinning. The perfect image of Kane as a kid. A smile that takes up his whole damn face.
“Don’t be a prick. You can’t be a heartthrob and arrogant. That’s unbecoming.”
“Big word for a small brain.”
He lets out a big, booming laugh. “I’ve missed you, man. Badly.”
Well, fuck.
“Me too. Even Miller, that sack of shit.”
He nods, his face serious. “Even Miller.”
We study each other, and then his boys start screaming in the background. He yells at them to quiet down, trying to diffuse the argument, but it only escalates. With a curse under his breath, he glances back at me with an apologetic smile.
“I’ll call you soon, alright? If you want.”
I dip my chin. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good.”
“Alright, let me go wrangle these demons.”
He hangs up.
I lower my phone to the table, swallowing the lump in my throat.
A weird, guttural pain washes over me. Bennett, the miniature me, talked to me as if I were present throughout his childhood.
He acted like these calls were a regular thing.
What he said about Kane being sad that I live so far—it caught me off guard.
I thought my brothers preferred the distance.
I always preferred the distance from home, but not from them.
It was just easier to let it all go than to cling to any scraps.
We talked on the phone just like brothers would.
It was a normal conversation, not about missing parents or rehab centers.
It was about his kids and our relationship.
He said he misses me, and fuck, I miss having brothers, too.
We were thick as thieves as kids, the four of us, and then we just… weren’t.
Sometimes when you grow up with siblings, and suddenly the number of you drops in a permanent, unchangeable way, it’s hard to fill the space where the one who left used to stand.
It’s even harder to acknowledge that a space shaped like them exists at all.
Sometimes, it’s just easier to let go. To refuse to remember all of them, even the ones who are still here.
Why did our parents have to fuck us up this badly?
When Ryan died, Miller shut himself off emotionally.
I was determined to get the fuck away from my parents, so I found something I was good at and worked my ass off.
I didn’t have a backup plan. It was always hockey.
The only other option was running the farm, and I didn’t want to do that, no matter how badly Kane wanted me to do it with him.
I cut ties with my family sometime around then.
And Kane tried his best. He called both Miller and me frequently for the first few years.
He tried to plan trips for us to come home and stay with him.
He invited us to his wedding. We both went and stood beside him at the altar, but it felt like a sham.
I didn’t even recognize the man who was described in his best man’s speech.
I didn’t know him anymore. He invited us home when each of his kids were born.
Sent pictures when neither of us showed up.
He tried to include us. I don’t think either of us reciprocated that energy.
Eventually, he gave up.
A shaky breath leaves my chest, and then I’m crying.
Really crying. I bury my face in my hands, wondering how different things would be if Ryan were here.
Would my dad be sober? Would my mom eventually have gotten clean?
Would I have still gone pro? Would I have a morsel of a relationship with my brothers? Would I want a family? Kids?
Who would I be?
Who would still be around to care about me?
I know things have gotten bad with my family, and I don’t pretend to want to go home, hold hands, and sing campfire songs, but I have a nephew who wants to be just like me.
I have two more that I wouldn’t even recognize without social media.
I want to know them. I want to know Kane.
I want to fix whatever was broken so badly in Miller.
I want my brothers in my life.
I wipe my eyes, hating the ache in my chest. My instinct is to call Lemmy, ask her to come over, and let her sit with me while I get this out.
Eventually, I’ll kiss her. She’ll kiss me back.
Our clothes will come off and I’ll feel wanted and satiated by the time we’re finished.
She’ll spend the night, and I’ll send her home with a coffee and a kiss in the morning.
We’re each other’s therapists. I don’t know how it happened, or when, but we fuck each other to feel better about our misery.
We both have no interest in settling down, and neither of us is ever going to bring a kid into the world with our genetics, so it works.
It’s medicine for us. We’re friends the other ninety-five percent of the time.
If you ever wondered why I am the way I am, why I don’t share my personal shit with anyone, it’s because of this.
If I let myself think about it for too long, nevermind talk about it, a hole opens up in my chest that threatens to eat me alive.
It’s a dark fucking head to live in. I wake up to nightmares of my dead baby brother.
I refuse to have kids because I’m afraid that what my parents have is hereditary.
I don’t want to get married because I don’t want a family that could ever wind up like my own, and who's to say I don’t end up like my mom as a parent? Or my dad?
I don’t want to feel this. I choose not to.
I hate feeling any of it. It fucking kills me.
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to be Boston Black, the son of two people who destroyed him.
I want to be Boston Black, the professional hockey player who nobody will ever know on a deeper level than what I show them.
I dial Lemmy. She’s over within the hour. By the time I’m finished venting, we’re stumbling up the stairs and leaving a trail of clothes behind us, and then she’s on top of me and my head shuts off. Just for a blink. Just enough for me to keep breathing.