Chapter 52
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
boston
The shit with Danford has been kept rather quiet.
I’m surprised. I thought somebody would have witnessed the scene we made in that hallway and ran with it.
Luka has said nothing to anyone. He just continues to ignore Danford like the rest of us.
If Danford keeps his end of the bargain and permanently keeps his wife away, I think the team will survive this.
He didn’t know.
He says nothing to any of us, not during practices and not during any of the preseason games that we’ve had so far.
He avoids Saltzy like the plague, which means Morgan must have fessed up what she actually did to him.
I haven’t seen that woman since the night Penny tore a strip off her, and Danford is only ever around when we’re working. They took our threats seriously.
Good.
I want to ask Saltzy if Danford reached out to him directly.
To talk or to apologize. Maybe I’d be a little warmer with him if he had made a genuine attempt to have a conversation, to grovel.
I don’t ask because Saltzy is dealing with the worst of it in this situation, and he’s had to cope with the weight of it for weeks.
He knows where I stand. If he wants to talk about something, I’m here.
If he hasn’t mentioned it, I assume it’s because he doesn’t want to.
I respect that.
I pull up to the curb outside the library and a pretty little blonde hops into my truck. She smiles, big and wide, and winds her hand around my neck, hauling herself across the console to my mouth.
I have missed these lips. Especially when they’re smiling at me.
“Mmm,” I say, my eyes scanning her face as she pulls away. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she says, falling back into her seat.
We haven’t seen each other in nearly two weeks. The longest we’ve gone since we started doing this. It’s been…hell without her, to be quite frank. My bed is empty, my house lacking in laughter and mess, and even doing mundane, routine things has become lackluster without her constant talking.
“I got the highest mark in my class for my proposal,” she announces, sitting up a bit straighter in her seat.
I glance at her, brows lifting. “Yeah?”
She smiles shyly, but I can tell she’s proud of herself. Good. She should be.
“I’m killing it.”
I smirk, my hand draped over the steering wheel. “Of course, you are. You’ve got a big, brilliant brain in that head of yours.”
She leans against her seat, smile growing, eyes shining. “You think I’m brilliant?”
I dip my chin. “I know you’re brilliant. One of the hottest things about you is your ambition. Your drive. Your intelligence. How you get every single thing you want based on pure brains, talent, and hunger.”
She rolls her head to look at me entirely, face softening.
I meant every word of that, by the way. Strings attached or not, I am well aware that she is one of the most remarkable women in the world. Never denied that.
I know she’s thinking about that job she lost, and I can’t pretend to know every detail about that situation, but it’s clear that it took something from her.
Made her less sure of herself. She might not realize it, but losing her job changes nothing about her.
She’s still exactly who she’s always been.
Whoever let her go was intimidated by the way every single eye always goes to her when she’s in the room, every ear always listens.
She will demand control, power, and attention without fail.
Every single time. They were scared of her.
That’s all there is to it. It had nothing to do with her inadequacies and everything to do with how she didn’t have any.
She gets everything she wants, all the fucking time.
That takes power. Pure, unadulterated ambition and power.
Look at us, right now. This girl has been chasing me for years, unapologetically, and look where I am.
Look whose mouth I’m kissing. Look who I can’t stop thinking about. Who I miss when she’s not around.
Ariana Forkerro is a force of nature and she will always, always be the one in control of her story.
When we pull up to the house, the sun is starting to set. She hops out of the truck and marches right around the porch without glancing back in my direction, leaving me behind to go and say hello to all the animals that she hasn’t seen for weeks.
That is my second favourite thing about her.
Or third. I can’t quite pinpoint a favourite.
It changes every day, so I don’t actually know where this one lands, but it’s up there.
She adores this farm as much as I do. She gets dirty for it.
She rolls up her sleeves and helps me feed the animals, helps me clean, and begs me to get on the ground with the goats every single day.
This place and this lifestyle are a big part of who I am, so seeing her so excited to experience it…
It makes me look at her in a way that I shouldn’t. Even now.
I have a cup of tea waiting for her when she comes in through The Penthouse.
Unsurprisingly, Wanton is at her heels, staring up at her with his tongue lolling out of his mouth.
She thanks me with a peck on the lips and then takes her usual seat at the table, watching my every move as I cook her dinner.
I feel when her eyes linger on my body, and I love when they do. I try to stay focused instead of hauling her off that chair. It’s been a long couple of weeks without her, but she’s also had a long day of non-stop studying. She needs to eat.
We finish dinner, we cuddle the dogs on the couch while we watch a movie, and then we head up to bed.
Nice. Routine. Something I thought I’d grow to hate quickly, but time has been passing and I yearn for it more than I’ve grown tired of it.
Of her. I’m not panicking either, which is what typically happens the second that women start looking at me with something more in their eyes.
But she’s always looked at me like that.
“Can you tell me something about yourself?” she whispers, her head on my bare chest.
I run my fingers over her arm. “Like what?”
“Anything. Something about Boston Black that I don’t know yet.”
None of it is pretty, sweetheart.
I stare at the dark wall of my bedroom, wondering what to say. Nothing comes to my head, that’s how simple of a man I am. I play hockey. She knows that. I run a farm. She knows that, too. I’m a country boy who hates country music. That doesn’t seem important enough.
“I chew that bubblegum because it was my brother’s favourite.”
She stills, her hand freezing on my chest. There’s a long, painful pause, and I fucking kick myself in the ass for saying it. I wonder why I said it at all. I don’t share that shit. Ever. That’s something that nobody knows, Forker and Lowesy included.
“Was?” she finally asks, her voice soft.
I clear my throat. “Uh, yeah. He died when he was four.”
She slowly lifts her head from my chest, her brow furrowed, eyes full of sympathy. I hate that look. It’s why I box these conversations away and let them collect dust.
I smile gently, reaching up to brush my knuckles against her cheek. “I’m okay.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t know.”
“Your brother, Lowesy, and Lemmy are the only people who even know he existed,” I admit, and that frown deepens. I’ve decided I don’t like that expression on her face at all. “I’ve never told anyone besides you about the gum.”
“Does it…” she starts, her throat bobbing. “Does it make you feel closer to him?”
I’ve never thought about it. I’ve just picked up this brand of gum whenever I see it since he died.
I had a pocket full of it at the funeral, slipping a few pieces into his casket.
It is such a notorious part of who I am now that the brand actually offered to work with me.
I declined, but they sent me a huge box of gum, anyway.
I got a kick out of that. Opening it, I could picture Ryan’s face if this had landed on our doorstep as kids.
It felt like he was beside me that day. I hadn’t felt him in a while.
“It makes me feel like I’m doing my part to remember him, I think. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“It does,” she says quickly. Her eyes search mine. “How did he pass?”
Something dark and ugly awakens inside me.
My first instinct is to cut this off, leave the room, and send her home in a cab.
But I don’t. I brought this up. I chose to tell her about this part of my life.
I have to deal with her questions now, her interest, because it’s not fair to punish her for the truths I’ve offered.
It’s not a bad thing either, that question, but it makes me think about the things I seal up and keep away.
The scary things. The things that changed me all of those years ago and completely destroyed my life.
“My mother was…is an addict,” I say, trying not to focus on the way those pools of blue in her eyes get bigger and bluer, wider and sadder.
“She left some of her stuff on the coffee table one day. He got into it. I’m not sure what he was doing or why, but I…
I came in from playing in the yard and found him. ”
Ariana is horrified, and I don’t blame her.
It’s an awful story. It isn’t any easier to talk about now, just because time has passed.
It still hurts all the same, too. It’s an ugly story.
A painful one. Her reaction is completely justified, and I don’t move to defend the actions of my mother like I used to when I was little.
She did what she did. She has to live with that for the rest of her life, and so do we.
“Boston,” she whispers, reaching forward to cup my face.
I smile sadly, stroking my hand up her forearm. “I’m okay.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Me too,” I admit. I don’t say it’s fine, or that it’s okay, because it’s not.
It’s fucked up and it shouldn’t have happened.
I wish I could have stopped it. I wish I had taken him outside that day, but he always wanted to be near her, and she ‘wasn’t feeling good’ that afternoon and couldn’t get off the couch.
He adored his mom. Wanted to take care of her.
“My mom went to prison for a while, but then my dad got addicted to the same shit. It destroyed our family. Destroyed my relationship with my brothers. We’re all… fucked up now. In our own ways.”
“How many brothers do you have?”
“Two. Miller is a lawyer out in Arizona—he’s the oldest, and my brother Kane is thirteen months younger than me. He’s a contractor back home.”
“So, three,” she corrects gently, her thumb brushing my cheek. My heart stills in my chest at the acknowledgment, at what she’s just done for him. “What’s his name?”
I swallow, but it feels heavy and hard to do. “Ryan.”
“Ryan,” she repeats, her voice laced with soft recognition.
My eyes are suddenly burning. I swallow again, staring into eyes that are so full of warmth, understanding, and sorrow.
Eyes that care. I nod, my face contorting with pain.
I hate that this wave of emotion just completely took over, but someone besides me said his name.
I haven’t heard his name from another mouth in over a decade.
A small part of me feels like he’s been erased, that he only exists in my heart and my memories.
That I was the only one remembering him.
But Ariana asked. She spoke his name as if he’s important to my story. As if he’s important, even still.
“Yeah,” I say finally, my voice breaking. My bottom lip shakes as the first tear falls. “Ryan.”
“Boston,” she whispers. She scoops me up in her arms, resting her cheek on the top of my head. I cling to her, falling apart that easily, my heart aching and my mind reeling. I hate myself for doing this in front of her, but I can’t ignore the dam that she opened by caring. About me. About him.
I knew I trusted her, but I hadn’t realized how deep that line of trust went.
I’m telling her things I have never told anyone in this city.
Things that my friends don’t know. Things that I refuse to talk about because it physically kills me to have a conversation about my parents, or my brothers, or Ryan.
Ryan. My littlest brother. He loved bubblegum and baseball.
His laugh sounded like a cartoon super villain, and it always cracked the rest of us up.
Even my dad. I want to tell her these things.
I feel safe enough to tell her these things.
So, I do.
We talk until the sun comes up. She knows all about Miller now, and about Kane.
She knows about the time Ryan stuffed his mouth full of gum, which he was probably too young to be eating, and blew a bubble so big we thought he was going to end up beating a world record.
We watched videos of Bennett playing hockey, and her eyes lit up when she realized that he’s a miniature version of me.
I told her how Kane finally agreed to come visit this season and watch a game, and she looked genuinely happy for me.
I fell asleep in her arms, exhausted, dozing off to the feeling of her hand stroking my hair.
And not once did I regret giving her the piece of me that I’ve tucked away for so long, the piece that I left in the hands of my little brother. I have a feeling she’ll keep it safe.
And again, I feel his presence in my dreams for the first time in years.