Chapter 21 #2
“It was last season.”
“Last season? How? I… Oh, fuck .” His eyes widen, and for the first time, he relents on his hold.
His wheels are turning, and he’s not staring at me.
No, he looks through me, going back to that night.
“Vanessa was supposed to go to dinner with Auden, me, my mom, and her dad, but she decided not to. It was the day she got divorced. We figured she just needed her space, but…”
“She didn’t stay in her room,” I tell him.
“She went to a bar, and it just happened to be the same bar I was at. I didn’t know, all right?
I fucking swear to you, I didn’t know who she was.
She was just a pretty girl in the bar, and I was feeling lonely as hell.
All of you guys were partnering off, and I was just…
I don’t know. I wanted to experience something , even if just for a night. ”
He shakes his head like he can’t believe the coincidence, and I want to tell him to join the club. It’s the exact same way I felt when I learned who Nessa was.
“Then she came to Seattle, and I was stunned,” I continue. “I couldn’t believe she was the same girl you told us about.”
“Because she’s not. I don’t know what happened, but she’s changed.”
He doesn’t know what happened? She got her heart stomped on, that’s what fucking happened, but I don’t get into that now. He needs to know the rest.
“We didn’t want to lie to you, Hutch. I swear. We just didn’t think it mattered. It was one night months prior, and that was it. It wasn’t supposed to be anything else. But she…”
I can’t help but grin thinking about Nessa, and apparently, it’s the wrong thing, because Hutch tightens his hold once more.
“She needed a place to stay,” I tell him. “She knew how you felt about her and that you wanted her out.”
“So, what? You just offer up your spare bedroom in hopes of getting lucky again?”
For the first time, I return fire and shove on Hutch, and he staggers back a bit. He can say what he wants about me, but he needs to keep Nessa out of this. She’s off the table.
“It wasn’t fucking like that.” I shove him again, and this time he lets me go. “I was trying to help her.”
Unlike you goes unsaid, but Hutch hears it loud and clear. I suck in breaths of air, trying to get my bearings straight again, but Hutch just keeps going.
“So why not tell me? Why not just explain what happened if it was nothing?”
“Because it wasn’t nothing ,” I say, pushing off the wall. “It was never nothing. Not back in New York and not fucking now.”
He stares at me, seething, literally flexing his hands at his sides as if he’s holding himself back from hitting me.
I wish he would. I wish he’d take a swing at me.
Anything to make me stop feeling like absolute shit right now, to stop seeing that untrusting look in his eyes.
The last thing I wanted this season was for us to be split up, so I worked my ass off to keep my position on this team.
Who would have thought it would be actions off the ice that would tear us apart anyway?
“Why her, Locke? She’s my sister.”
I laugh humorlessly. “Oh, so now she’s your sister? Before, she was your step sister or the evil step sister. It’s pretty fucking convenient that when she does something you don’t like, she suddenly becomes your sister and you care about her.”
“Don’t fucking tell me what I do and don’t care about. I have always cared about her.”
“Yeah, well, you have a piss-poor way of showing it. She thinks you hate her.”
“What?” He rears his head back like I’ve just hit him. “She thinks that? I don’t…I don’t hate her. I just don’t… Fuck, I guess I just don’t really know her.”
“You never gave her a chance. You wrote her off the second she stepped into your life. Why?”
“I…”
He’s at a complete loss, having no answer for that, and I watch as it dawns on him that he truly doesn’t know his own sister.
“Fuck,” he mutters, stumbling back and dropping into a stall.
“I really did that, didn’t I? I didn’t even put up a fight when she said she was moving.
I just told her bye. Didn’t even question it.
Didn’t even think about checking the place out for myself.
I’m…” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’ve held her at arm’s length this entire time, and even when she came to me to mend things, I couldn’t be bothered.
” He shakes his head like he’s disgusted with himself. “I’m a fucking dick.”
“You really are,” I agree.
I look over at the guys, who are watching all this unfold. I nod toward the door, telling them to get lost. They do, minus Keller. He pauses in the doorway, then turns to face Hutch.
“I knew,” he confesses, and dammit, I respect the guy just a little more for that. He’s doing the one thing I couldn’t do—being honest with him.
Hutch’s jaw drops. “Did everyone know?”
“I did,” Fox says, popping his head back into the room.
“What?” Hutch and I say at the same time.
The goalie shrugs. “I got the feeling something had happened between you two when she first arrived. You got really pale, and it was obvious you were into her.”
“For the record, I knew nothing,” Hayes says, his head appearing right beside Fox’s.
“Me either,” Lawson adds, jumping over them to indicate who’s talking, as if we didn’t know. “But now I know”—another jump—“and this gossip is so good.” Jump. “Can I tell Rory?”
“No!” we all shout at the same time.
“Boo!” he says, still bouncing up and down.
“Go away. All of you. I’ll deal with you later, Keller.”
He doesn’t even make a smartass comment, just nods and shoves the other guys out of the way. Then it’s me and Hutch. He turns to me, his eyes still heated but not nearly as incensed as they were.
“So you love her, huh?”
I sigh and drop into the stall next to him, nodding.
“Yeah, man. I really fucking do. I don’t know when it happened, but it did, and I don’t regret it.
I wish I did, because it would mean you’re not mad at me, and it would mean I’m not breaking that unspoken rule about siblings being off-limits, but fuck.
I can’t, Reed. I can’t regret it. I love her too much to. ”
“Good. Don’t. I’d be pissed if you did.”
The guilt that’s been weighing me down since Nessa came to town slithers away, and while I’m still worried Hutch might clock me at any moment, I feel okay.
Also, I really feel like I want to see Nessa.
I want to tell her how I feel. She deserves to know, even if she doesn’t feel the same way.
I hope like hell she does, but if she doesn’t, I’ll wait.
I don’t think I have any other choice.
“All right,” Hutch says after several quiet minutes. “Tell me everything.”
So, we sit in stalls that aren’t ours, and I start from the very beginning.