“Because he just got the biggest grin on his face, and I haven’t seen him smile like that in the longest time.” I can hear the elated relief in her voice, and my chest constricts at her words.
“He did?”
“Yes. What did you say?” she asks again.
“Some things are best left between brothers,” I tell her, my own smile widening at the phrase I haven’t used in years.
I hear her quick intake of a breath and know she heard it too.
And maybe, even if only for a second, we can both forget the accident, and I can revel in the knowledge that Jonah grinned about Dekker.
That’s something to me.
When I hang up thirty minutes later and head to training, I couldn’t be in a better mood.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
DEKKER
“WHY IN THE WORLD ARE we here?” I ask Hunter as he glances at me. He’s wiggling a key in what looks like an ancient door lock on a place that hasn’t seen any attention in years.
The parking lot has weeds growing up through its cracks, the paint on the outside of the industrial-looking building is peeling in huge curls, while some spots are in hunks on the ground.
“Come on.”
It’s all Hunter says and curiosity gets the better of me—though I make him walk ahead of me in case the Boogey Man plans on popping out of its depths. But the minute I pass through the entrance, I know exactly what this place is—an old ice hockey rink.
Despite the outside looking well-worn, the inside is in fair condition. The walls and stands are gray, the barrier between what used to be the ice and the stands a faded and yellowed white, but there are hints of what used to be here.
“Well, it doesn’t look like you’ll be getting any practice in,” I say, walking onto where the ice should be as he flicks on the overhead lights to brighten what the skylights in the ceiling don’t.
“Nope.”
“I thought you were taking me on a date to teach me some of your mad hockey skills.”
“Mad hockey skills?” he asks as he takes a step toward me.
“Very mad, above-average, beanie-wearing Hunter.” Instinctively, my arms slide to the side of his waist as he leans down and presses a chaste kiss to my lips.
It’s that easy, the simple rhythm we’ve found ourselves in. Him at my doorstep after a game when he’s in town. It’s never talked about, never discussed, and yet he hops on the subway from Jersey to Manhattan and is there. We never make plans, but we end up hanging out together or taking a drive or talking on the phone till odd hours of the morning despite my work schedule and his games and practice.
It’s fun and exhilarating and scary and overwhelming all at once—going from thinking only of yourself to suddenly thinking in terms of we when we’ve never really discussed anything.
As he walks around the vacant arena and moves toward the rink’s center, I know he’s changed in the few short weeks we’ve been doing whatever this is, and I like to think it’s for the better.
“So is this your way of remembering where you came from before you start the first round of playoffs?”
“If I were remembering where I came from, I’d take you to an outdoor rink where your fingers would be frozen before you were able to put your gloves on. The lights would flicker on and off, and there’d be a chair near the edge where my dad sat with his whistle as he ordered us to do suicide after suicide.” The soft smile on his lips tells me it’s a good memory. “So in a sense, yes . . . just not the cold.”
“This place could use some major TLC,” I say as I walk around the rink’s edge, my boots echoing around the space.
“I want to buy it.” His words startle me.
“You want to buy it?” I ask with a laugh, but when he turns to face me with that lopsided smile of his, I know he means it.
“Yep.” He shrugs as he takes a step closer, and there’s emotion clogging in his eyes.
“What is it? Tell me?” I say, stepping beside him.
“It’s a stupid idea. Never mind.” He starts to walk away, and I grab his hand to keep him here.
“I think it’s an awesome idea.” I take a step away from him and can see it through the dust and neglect. When I turn back to face him, I can sense his discomfort. “Hey, why are you embarrassed? You can tell me anything.”
“I believe I already have,” he murmurs, his eyes as quiet as his voice.
I nod. “Fair enough.” But it’s not. Nothing is fair in this life, and while Hunter knows that better than most, the fear I still have of admitting I’ve let him get too close is in the back of my mind.
I take a walk to the other side of the rink and run my finger along the dust atop the wall at its edge. The memories come fast and sharp and are ones I prefer to keep in the dark recesses of my mind . . . but he shared his with me. He let me in while I’m still pretending I’ve kept him out.
The irony.
“For the longest time after my mom died”—I clear my throat—“I thought I was the one who killed her.” Even the words are hard to say. I appreciate the fact that he stays silent to let me get them out on my own accord. “We’d been playing with those blow-up plastic baseball bats. My sisters and I won them at Coney Island in those games that cost like twenty dollars to actually win things.”
My smile is bittersweet as I remember everything about the day. The scent of sunscreen and fried foods filling the air. The bickering between us sisters as my parents strolled in front of us, fingers entwined, their laughter easy.
“Anyway, we came home and were being pains in the asses—probably ungrateful . . . but I refused to get in the shower. I was too busy doing who knows what,” I say when I know exactly what I was doing. I was texting the boy I had a crush on, because God forbid, my parents had taken us out for some family time instead of letting me stay home and stare at my phone waiting for him to text me. “My mom came upstairs to tell me I needed to get in because there were three others waiting for me . . . and one thing led to another. What started with her picking up the plastic bat and swatting me playfully on the butt ended with me grabbing my sister’s bat off her bed and hitting her back. We had a fake sword battle with those stupid bats. We hit each other everywhere—heads, backs, legs, until we were laughing so hard we had to stop.” I smile. I can still hear her laughter, can still remember her calling me Dekky-Doo, can still recall the drop in my stomach when I woke up in the middle of the night to the ambulance and its sirens and my dad’s frantic tears.
“What happened to her?” Hunter asks as he steps up beside me. I was too lost in my memories to realize he’d moved closer.
“She had a massive brain aneurysm sometime during that night. For the longest time, I thought it was because I had hit her in the head with the blow-up bat. I hid it from everyone, thinking they’d all hate me for killing her.”
“Dekker.” My name is a resigned sigh as he places his hand on my lower back.
“I know now that it wasn’t my doing, but back then, I was devastated. I worried the police would arrest me for murder, that my family would hate me for ruining their lives.” I rest my head on his shoulder. “It wasn’t until years later that I confessed to my dad that I’d killed her.”