I was sure it would be easy enough to ruin this guy’s life; Wesley could find time to fit it in.
The boys were waiting for me outside the car. Steele took the opportunity for a quick smoke break. It was a habit he’d picked up in the military and one he indulged in only infrequently. Breck had been strongly encouraging him to quit while privately confessing to me that he thought it looked pretty sexy. I privately agreed.
“Are we ready?” I asked.
“As we’ll ever be,” Steele answered, blowing a plume of smoke into the dark sky.
I followed the stream up into the night. This far from the lights of civilization, the stars glittered like diamonds in black velvet.
“Did you help Shauna?” Danny asked. He was perceptive, that one.
“I did.”
“Good. I liked her.”
“In the car,” Leo said, holding his hand out for the keys. “I’m driving.” Everyone piled into the car except me and Danny.
“What are you thinking?” Danny asked after the silence stretched out.
I stuck my hands deep in my pockets and stared up at the night sky. The lights from the parking lot and the thin clouds blowing across the face of the waning moon hid most of the stars. There’d be no answers from them tonight. “What if I’m fooling myself?” I asked.
“How so?” he asked.
It was hard to find the words. No, that was a lie. It was hard to say them. But like Charlie had taught me, there was no solving a problem if you couldn’t even admit it existed. “What if this big love I thought we had meant nothing to him? What if I’m trying to make what was puppy love into this…this star-crossed romance thinking it’s going to, what? Fix me?” Danny probably thought I was crazy but I couldn’t stop. I was on a roll now. I spread my arms to the blank face of the sky. “God, it was all so long ago. Lifetimes ago. What if I’m just tilting at windmills thinking they’re giants?”
"’Obviously, you don't know much about adventures’,” Danny quoted with a grin.
That surprised a laugh out of me. “Okay, Sancho. What’s your advice?”
“You—,” he stopped himself, shaking his head.
“What?” I asked, intensely curious to hear what he had to say.
“I was going to say you have nothing to lose, but that’s not true, is it?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“If you talk to him, and he says it meant nothing to him, just a summer fling, then you…you lose that good memory and you could think, you could feel…” he trailed off, running a hand through his hair and staring at the ground.
“You can say it,” I prodded gently. I had a feeling I knew where this was going because it was the same thought I’d had.
“You could think that no one ever really loved you.” The pain in his eyes was all for me. “But I don’t think that’s true!” he rushed to say. “You know, Carson. You know when someone loves you. When they really love you. Even if you’re young and people say you can’t. You do.”
In the face of all that, what could I do besides hug him? This kid was a treasure. I changed my mind about talking to his mother. They didn’t deserve him. Danny stiffened in my arms. I don’t think I’ve ever touched any of them this intentionally before. I don’t think I had registered that he was taller than me. He relaxed and hugged me back. We separated. “Thank you. I hope Wesley deserves you,” I said. “You’ll tell me if he hurts you, right?”
Danny gave me a puzzled look. “You care,” he said. “About me.”
Busted. “Maybe, Speedy. Maybe I’m just protecting my assets.”
He grinned, his teeth as perfect as genetics and access to the best dental care could make them. “You care. I promise not to tell. Your secret is safe with me.”
Breck called from the car. “What secret? Tell me.”
“Stop eavesdropping,” I called back.
“Carson has a heart,” Danny said before getting into the car, a smug smile on his face.
Breck scoffed. “Right.”
Yeah. I’d had a heart once. And look how that turned out. Be careful, I reminded myself. You’re walking into a potential minefield. A large part of my ability to keep the details of my life secret from my family lay in my not seeing them. No cover, no matter how tight, would long stand up to the scrutiny of people who had known you from birth.
If they ever found out who I really was and what I did, it wouldn’t matter what Charlie or I wanted. They’d kick me out again. I’d be lucky if they didn’t call the FBI on me.
No. This was a one-time deal and I had one shot. It was all or nothing. Either I came up with an excuse convincing enough to get my mother to forgive me for not coming home and Eric to take me back after not talking to him for fifteen years—though he hadn’t reached out to me either—or I burned that final bridge and was truly alone in the world.
Oh look, it was the consequence of my past bad decisions coming to kick me in the head. Wasn’t that just dandy? Thanks, Charlie. Thanks a lot.
I slid into the shotgun seat. Steele and Breck shared the back bench seat, content to be wrapped around each other in the cramped space. Danny and Ridge settled into the middle seats, setting up electronics and blankets and snacks as necessary.
“Ready?” Leo asked as he hooked up his phone and cued up his latest audiobook.
Not even a little. “As I’ll ever be.”
He pulled back onto the highway. The headlights burrowed tunnels through the night and the rumbling of the tires blended with the rumbles of Steele’s snores. I let the voice of the narrator wash over me and stared out the window as my past rolled closer with every mile.
4 Eric
The upbeat music pumping over the speakers in the rink was putting a damper on my pity party. It was hard to skate sullenly to Katy Perry. It was even harder to keep feeling sorry for myself when Grace Yamagishi took the ice.
“Eric!” she called, making a full-speed beeline over to where I was carving lazy circles into the freshly surfaced ice.
I opened my arms for her hug. She slammed into me at about a quarter of her top speed, and I let her momentum carry me into the boards. “Oof,” I said as my back hit the wall. “You’re too strong for me, Gracie.”
Her smile burned off a tiny part of the dark cloud that had followed me since I’d woken up, aching and stiff, and feeling twice my age. At twenty-three, Grace was one of the Special Olympics’ top figure skaters. She was also my stepbrother’s girlfriend, and, most importantly, my friend. We skated together most mornings after my morning workout.
“Why were you skating in the dark?” she asked. “Bad day again?”
“Yeah,” I confessed. Two decades of hockey were hard on the body. My joints ached on a regular basis and it took me a solid half-hour in the mornings to work out the kinks. Sometimes I wanted to stay in bed, but I knew I’d feel worse if I did. “Everything hurts,” I confessed.
“I know.” She nodded, eyes wide behind her thick glasses, and patted my arm consolingly. “You know what makes me feel better?”