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Shit.
Damn you, Davis.
Of all the teams, all the damn head coaches in all the league, you had to find my brother.
Humphrey Bogart’s voice fills my head and I smile. I can’t drown myself in a bottle like Rick Blaine did. I can…but I won’t. I won’t let Davis Franklin George derail my sobriety. I will not!
Chapter three
“Ouch,” I snarl.
“Well, hold the fuck still,” Levi barks back as he surveys the gash along my cheek and the other one on my chin.
I sigh and tilt my face so he can clean it up and apply some butterfly bandages. A doctor’s touch he does not have. Would he treat Brady like this? I doubt it. Just like that, his hands lighten along my chin and cheek. Then Levi steps back and takes a seat.
He looks at my left hand, takes it in his. We both stare at my scraped-up knuckles. This is the first punch I’ve ever thrown before—off the ice, that is. And even on it, I only threw a few throughout my entire career as a player. That wasn’t my job. We had guys for that. My job was to create turnovers and get the puck to my forwards as they headed to the net. I pull my hand from Levi’s and flex it, wincing as the pain shoots through it and up my arm.
Carter’s angry words reverberate in my head. What did he mean by that? Did I ever wonder why nobody thought I was gay, too?
“Talk to me,” Levi breaks me out of my trance. I raise my eyebrows. Seriously? I think. Of all the people I would spill the angst that is my life to, it’s not Levi Holt.
“It’s okay.” I shake my head and stand up. “I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask if you were fine,” Levi says.
Refusing to meet his eyes, I stand and walk away. He makes no move to follow me.
“Davey.” That deep rumble of a voice is quiet and calm. I turn and look into his eyes. “Carter doesn’t just up and throw punches like that, not sober anyway, and that anger, those punches… he was very sober when he unloaded on you. What did you do?”
I chuckle a bit. There it is. The blame. The accusation. It certainly couldn’t be anything that Carter did. My hackles are up now. I go into defense mode. It’s where I’m the most comfortable. Where I’m used to being. “Thanks. Of course, it’s what did I do.”
I shake my head and then turn away again to storm out. I’m not sure why I give a damn what this man thinks of me. But dammit, I do. And I have for far too long. Levi Holt blew into town in a trade with Calgary and two of the people I care most about in this world fell for him, hard. Devyn was smitten from the first glance and Brady… well, that was unexpected, to say the least. Levi has all but declared he doesn’t like me very much. He certainly doesn’t care what I have to say about anything that isn’t about hockey. It’s always bothered me that I’ve never been able to win him over. We don’t have much in common other than our mutual adoration for Devyn and Brady. And hockey. But I can’t stop wanting him to like me… at least respect me. And he’s hot as hell.
“He is responsible for the death of the one man I ever loved.”
I turn to catch his reaction and watch him process this – the horror and confusion creep across his features. Then I once again try to make my escape. This concern of his. This attempt to pry some feelings out of me. It’s suffocating.
“No, no, no, no, no… you don’t get to drop a bomb like that and walk away.”
Levi leaps up with the reflexes of the amazing goalie he still is, grabs my arm, and spins me around to face him. I let him. But the look in his eyes shocks me. There is sympathy there. Or is it pity? Nope, it’s sympathy. Not hatred. No accusation. Sympathy. A wave of exhaustion and emotion sucks all the wind out of my sails. I sit.
“What do you know about me? About my past?” I’m guessing that between Devyn and Brady, he knows more than I wish he did.
He gives me a clipped nod. “Some.”
I stare at him, weighing how much more I could, or even should, tell him. The answer to that is that he should know everything—or at least, his husband should. There is no way for us to keep this buried any longer. Not with Carter and I in the same city and so deeply connected now, whether we like it or not.
“I know about Luke,” he says. I feel him take a seat next to me.
Hearing that name sends a shiver through me. Hearing someone else say his name…hearing Levi say his name, is jarring. What he knows is the version of Luke I’ve been willing to tell at this point. The one Devyn told him. Because when Brady entered my life, it was the only version I could spin without possibly losing the best friend I had. It was enough of the truth to explain my reasons for keeping my private life private. But it isn’t the entire story.
“How does Carter fit into all of this?”
I exhale. Where in the hell do I even start?
“You obviously wouldn’t know what it was like to be a young gay man playing hockey during the age of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ Do you even know what I mean when I say that? You were a kid growing up in Canada then.”
“I do know what you’re talking about. It applied to the military here back then, right?”
