Chapter Five
Hunter
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Why I’m still on this roof, leaning against the building in a tux, watching Lucas lying on his back, smoking a cigarette.
Ellis hated that he smoked. It was Ellis who caught him first when he was sixteen.
He complained to me about it on the phone half the night.
To Ellis, it was just another way that Lucas was throwing away the talent he had—that he wouldn’t take care of his body, when if he just cared enough, Lucas could have all of Ellis’s dreams, all their father’s dreams. I hadn’t thought it was that big of a deal.
Lucas had been a kid, and kids do dumb shit, and we all knew Lucas was never going to be interested in playing football.
Ellis didn’t really work that way, though.
Because he couldn’t make the one thing he wanted happen for himself—football—he refused to be denied anything else.
I swear, I don’t think there was anything Ellis couldn’t do, and if he’d decided not to stop fighting Lucas on smoking, eventually he would have worn him down.
If there was one thing Ellis knew how to do, it was fight for what he wanted, to push and persuade until everything worked out the way he planned.
I envied him that sometimes. The only thing I ever tried for was football, and I didn’t have the same energy for anything else.
As much as I respected that about him, though, sometimes it was hard to deal with.
Sometimes it made me feel like I would never be enough, and he would always want more from me, which is a shitty thing to think about him.
Ellis was good and kind, and he loved me so fucking much.
I was lucky to have him, and that’s something I try to remind myself of every day.
“Let me have a drag of that,” I find myself saying.
He rolls his head to the side and cocks a brow. “Are you drunk?”
“No.”
“You want a drag of my cigarette?”
“Shut up and give me the fucking thing.” I’m twenty-eight years old and have never had an interest in smoking. It’s terrible for you, and I’m a professional athlete who has no business even asking for this. I don’t even know why I am, and I expect Lucas to tell me no, but he hands it over.
I bring the cigarette to my lips and inhale. The worst taste that’s ever been in my mouth attacks me, and I start coughing. “That’s disgusting,” I say, handing it back to him.
“I don’t smoke as much as it might look like tonight. It’s not the healthiest habit.”
“I’m surprised you let me try it,” I admit, and he frowns.
“You don’t need my permission to do anything.” He takes another drag, clearly enjoying it much more than I did. “But I also know you. You’re not going to start smoking, Hunter.”
“Fuck you. I could start.” There’s not a chance in hell, so I don’t know why I’m arguing with him about this.
“No, you won’t. And that’s okay.”
No, I won’t. He’s right. Should I be surprised that Lucas sees that about me? Probably not, but a part of me is. I expected that exchange to go down differently.
With a sigh, I take my suit jacket off, ball it up the way he did, and lie down beside him.
The night is clearer than usual. The stars aren’t as bright as they would be somewhere else, not with the city lights and the smog, but they’re there, these dim, silver sparkles in a sea of blackness.
I should say something to him, but I don’t know what, so I just lie here, looking upward with the brother of my dead boyfriend beside me.
He’s not my boyfriend anymore. He hasn’t been for a long time.
Lucas and I were rarely alone together—just at random times, bumping into each other in the kitchen or me getting to their house earlier than Ellis a few times.
But we didn’t spend time together without Ellis present.
I don’t even know what to talk to him about, but the silence is uncomfortable against my skin, so I say, “I miss him.”
It takes Lucas a moment to answer. He smokes and maybe thinks. I’m not sure any of us ever know what’s going on in Lucas’s head. If Ellis ever did, he never shared it with me.
“He loved you…a lot.”
I wince because though I know that’s true, it’s the worst thing he could have said.
Ellis did love me. There has never been a day that I’ve questioned that.
We were so lucky that everything fell into place so we could meet.
We were meant to be in each other’s lives, even if things turned out the way they did, but it hurts to think about him loving me, so I say, “He loved you too,” because I’m not sure if anyone has ever said that to Lucas.
Not about him and Ellis. I know Abbie has said she loves him, and I assume Coach Blake has too.
Ellis would have told him, but they also fought worse than most brothers, were complete opposites, and were never close.
“Yes. Ellis was too good not to love me, but he didn’t like me very much.”
“That’s not true,” is my knee-jerk response, but I think it is.
Not that he hated his brother, but they never knew how to connect.
To Ellis, who cared about being good at everything, it seemed like Lucas cared about nothing because he didn’t care about football.
Ellis didn’t know how to wrap his head around that.
Lucas laughs, the sound startling me, making my heart jump.
“What are you laughing at?”
“You, Hunter. My brother didn’t like me.
We both know it. We don’t have to pretend otherwise.
I’ve accepted my role in my family a long time ago.
” There’s a finality to his tone, one that says he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore and that even if I tried for a hundred years to persuade him he’s wrong, he would never believe me.
But then, I have things he or anyone else could never make me believe either, so I have no choice but to accept it, at least for now.
“Was your photography on display here tonight?” I ask, grasping for something to talk about.
“No. I didn’t want to take the attention from the other art. How could anyone look anywhere else if there’s a piece from the Lucas Blake collection?”
I roll my eyes and have to bite back a smile. “You’re so fucking conceited.”
“And you’re not when it comes to football? Why is it okay for athletes to know their worth and not others?”
I frown. “You have a point.” It does seem to be more acceptable for athletes. “I definitely know I’m good.”
He huffs, and we fall silent again. This is different, and I don’t know what to think about it. I can’t help feeling like I don’t belong here, that I have no right to be beside Lucas right now, but still I stay.
Even though he didn’t admit it, I know Lucas misses Ellis, and even though I could never admit it to him, I think we both have similar insecurities when it comes to Ellis—not feeling worthy of him, knowing we let him down, albeit in different ways.
“So should I not mention that fumble against Denver in the second quarter in the playoffs last season…”
I gasp, both annoyed he mentioned it and strangely pleased by the way he says it, as if it’s not the end of the world. “Fuck off. I played a decent game that night.” Decent isn’t good, though. Decent isn’t what I would have ever strived for before, but it’s what I have right now.
“Eh, it was all right,” he says, eliciting a surprised chuckle.
“You watched my game? You hate football.”
“I do, but sometimes it’s impossible to miss. People fucking love it. I don’t get it, and your face is everywhere I look. It’s annoying as shit.”
“My face is everywhere because I’m good.” It takes me a moment to realize I said that. I used to have more reason to be cocky, so I don’t do it as often.
“I was in LA. They sorta have to show you here. You’re their golden boy.”
I huff. I used to be, but not anymore. He knows as well as I do that I don’t play like I did before. “Depends on which day of the week you ask them.”
He shrugs. “There’s no loyalty in sports, even if people pretend there is.”
I sit up, and Lucas does too. “Sometimes it feels that way. Is it not that way with art?”
“I guess. They aren’t counting on me to win certain nights of the week, but…people are fickle, and they love you one time and hate you the next.”
“So it’s not unique to sports.”
“No. Just humans,” he replies, and then…then we just continue talking. Some of it is a blur, like it’s not really happening or someone else is inside my body.
Eventually, Lucas asks me if I’m hungry or thirsty, and I am, but I don’t want to leave this spot, don’t want to leave the roof and take the stairs back into the real world. “I thought we were stuck up here.”
He grins. “That was a lie.”
“Asshole.” But I’d known it was from the start.
“I have stuff downstairs. I can go get it. The party is over, and the gallery is closed.”
I don’t ask how he knows that. I haven’t even looked at the time. “I should probably just go home, then.”
“It’s okay to not always do what you should, Hunter.”
Is it? When photos of me partying have come out over the last few years, when I first started being seen with different women, I always heard about it from my coach, the media…Coach Blake. This isn’t you, Hunter. You’re better than this, Hunter. What would Ellis think?
What would Ellis think of me up here with Lucas?
“Okay,” I say, shutting down the voices in my head.
We go downstairs and get a bottle of wine, cheese, cold cuts, and crackers from his office fridge, then return to the roof—elevator keys in hand now.
We eat, drink, and I just do this weird, simple thing—being on a roof with someone it’s strange for me to be with.
We don’t talk about Ellis, don’t talk about their family at all, though he does ask about my mom.
We stick to safe topics—something, it seems, we both need.
Eventually, we’re lying down again, the sky lightening as night transitions toward day.
We’re not talking anymore, just lying there, awake, taking in the never-ending space above us.
The silence is more comfortable than I would have expected, more comfortable than maybe I should have felt with Lucas because I’m not sure I’ve shared a similar silence with anyone in years.
“Come here.” He stands and holds his hand out to me. I let him take it, let Lucas pull me to my feet, and we walk to the other side of the building, where the sun is beginning to peek over the horizon, orange fading into yellow and pinks.
Lucas lights a cigarette, and we watch the sunrise, a new day beginning. My chest feels heavy, the sadness I tamped down for most of the night resurfacing from the darkness.
“I should go,” Lucas says.
“Me too.”
We clean up after our impromptu picnic, then take the elevator down, and before I know it, we’re standing outside his gallery, back in the real world.
“See you later, Hunter King.”
“See you later, Lucas Blake.”
Lucas walks away first, and I only make it a few steps in the opposite direction before I’m twisting back around…but he’s already gone.