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I froze at those words. Those words I had been dying to hear again for five damn years. “Don’t you dare do this to me.”
“Isn’t that what you want from me?” His voice was closer now, the heat from his body pressed against my back. “I love you. I never stopped.”
Tears spilled from my eyes before I could try to stop them. “Why couldn’t you have just told me the truth, Gretzky? Why couldn’t we have been together all this time? Maybe we could be having our wedding now, too.”
“Hey,” Tommy turned my head to look at him. “We can still have that. I want that with you.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“What?” Tommy’s eyes went round. “You don’t want that?”
“I do, and that’s the damn problem. You lied to me, fucked your way through how many teammates and rival hockey players, puck boys, too, probably, and then had this horrific accident while I cried myself to sleep at night, wishing I had stayed. Prayed for some sort of way to turn back time so that I never told you about my mother. Quit the band instead of leaving for California. I would trade all the fame, fortune, and everything else to still have what we did before that day you ruined what we had. If you had really wanted forever with me, Tom, you wouldn’t have done what you did. You would have worked with me. Late-night phone calls, text messages, twenty-four-hour visits, quickies in hotel rooms, anything to be together, but that’s not what you did.”
Tommy’s entire face had grown dark. “You’re saying I lied to you and got your mother the help she needed, so I could fuck whoever I wanted?”
“Yes, and while you did that, I was celibate for five years.”
“That’s a goddamn lie, Blake. I didn’t want to sleep with anyone else.”
I shrugged. “Guess we’ll never know, because you ruined everything.”
“I wanted you to live your life without worrying about your mother!” Tommy exclaimed. “Tour the damn world, meet new people, and have fun. You were babysitting your alcoholic mother instead of being a child! I told you my hockey career was not going to be like Jackson’s. I wasn’t even close to being half the player he was before I fucked that up like I fuck up everything else.”
“The accident wasn’t your fault!” I shouted back at him.
Tommy’s entire face trembled with rage. “It was. I took my mask off! I shouldn’t have gone after the guy, but he called me a faggot, and I saw red. I knocked him down, and he kicked me. So, yeah, it’s my fault.”
“Right, so, if you two want to sit back down?” Jamie coughed softly.
I had completely forgotten that we had an audience.
I reached for Tommy’s hand, but he shoved me away as he went back to the couch. The accident still wasn’t his fault. The guy kicked him in the face. With a fucking skate. Used a homophobic slur. That wasn’t right.
When I sat down, I didn’t leave Tommy any room, my body pressed right against his. I put my hand on his thigh to let him know I wasn’t going anywhere. He had to stop carrying this guilt around. Maybe we both did.
“Tom.” Jamie steepled his hands together. “You told Blake you love him. Did you mean it?”
I looked over at him, saw the sincerity in his dark brown eyes, and immediately knew the answer to that. Tommy’s hand came up to touch my face. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you call me, Tommy? I hate that I didn’t know you were in a hospital somewhere lying there and I wasn’t there to hold your hand. Whisper in your ear that it was going to be okay? Was it really because you didn’t want me to drop what I was doing while I was in Japan, or was it something else?” I gripped his wrist when he tried to pull away.
He worried his lip between his teeth. “I didn’t want you to see me like that, bug. This scar is bad, but before all the surgeries, it was so much worse. Seeing me with tubes in my nose and throat, that would have broken you.”
“I wouldn’t have cared. I’ve seen some scary shit. You’re my best friend.”
“Jackson tried to call you. I no longer had your number, and Mav had blocked him.”
I closed my eyes as more tears came. “I hate that I couldn’t help you when you needed me the most.” I felt like my heart was going to burst from my chest.
“Blake.” Tommy murmured my name and then I felt his lips brush mine in a feather-light kiss. “You’re here with me now when I really need you to help get me through PTSD. That’s what means the most to me.”
My eyes flew open. “Did you just kiss me? I thought you said you didn’t kiss anymore?”
“Baby steps, Bug.”
Chapter Thirteen
Tommy
