Page 36 of Absolutely Pucked (Punk as Puck #3)

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

FORD

“Why are you still here?”

It had been three days, and in spite of how pissed off he was with me, Tucker was still in my apartment.

And so was Amedeo. And so was Boden half the time.

They were hovering in all the corners of my place, watching me putter to and from the bedroom.

Watching me take care of Nugget, and go out to get the mail, and call my work to let them know I wasn’t going to come in.

The last real conversation I had with any of them was when Tucker sat me down, looked me in the eye, and asked what the fuck I was thinking.

“I was lonely,” I’d told him. Which was a partial truth. I was lonely.

“Not good enough.”

“I was stupid.”

“Hate that word. Try again.”

I fell in love with him the second I met him, and leave it to me to be the only fucker on the planet who would fall head over heels in a single night for the one man I was not allowed to have.

Couldn’t really say that, could I?

“Look, I don’t know, okay? Things have been hard for me.

Everything is changing, you’re all leaving me behind, even if you’re not going anywhere,” I added when Tucker sucked in a breath to remind me again that he was coaching in Boston, not the moon.

“I know this whole… thing he and I had wasn’t supposed to last forever.

He showed up at my door, and he was destitute and sad, and he needed someone. ”

Tucker had been quiet for a long, long time. Then he sighed and said, “You look like you need to lie down.”

I didn’t. But also, I did. So I crawled into my sheets and rotted for the next two days.

I didn’t expect them to still be here though.

I figured after I ate totally silent meals and ignored any attempt to get me to talk to them, they’d give up for a while and let me be.

But as I walked into the kitchen to attempt to eat some dry toast, Amedeo and Boden were walking out the front door, and Tucker had made himself comfortable on my couch.

“We need to talk,” he said as I filled a mug with black, tepid coffee.

“Haven’t we been talking?”

“I’ve been talking, but you’ve been a silent, defensive asshole, and I still have no real answers.”

Fuck. I hated that he knew me so well. Maybe it would be better if I just torched the friendship and tried to start over somewhere else. There were plenty of snooty-as-fuck, upscale grocery stores all over the US. I could find some other place that tolerated my bullshit .

“Ford,” he snapped.

“Uhg, fine.” I limped over and threw myself into the chair, glaring at him though I was pretty sure he couldn’t see that clearly from where he was.

Tucker sighed. “Please don’t make me be the mature one here, dude. You know I fucking hate that shit. I want to go back to frolicking in the goddamn leaves with my husband. I don’t want to do feelings.”

“So go back to frolicking, and come back here when you’re done being mad at me.”

“I’m done being mad at you.”

Blinking at him, I scoffed. “ Dude .”

“I’m serious.” Tucker sighed and shook his head, leaning over his thighs.

I realized he didn’t have his legs on, and I regretted putting mine on that morning because every muscle in my body was aching.

“I’m hurt, okay? Like, really fucking hurt that you kept this from me.

I’m hurt that you didn’t think I’d…I don’t know…

understand? Find a way to deal with it?”

“Really? You’d find a way to deal with me humping your twin brother?”

“Don’t say it like that, Jesus Christ!” He passed a hand down his face. “But…I guess? I mean, it sucks. He fucking sucks, and I don’t know what you see in him. I mean, he’s a narcissistic bastard who?—”

“Tucker.”

“Please don’t defend him right now,” Tucker said.

I swallowed back my protests.

“I get it that…I don’t know…he and I were never really nice to each other. I own my part of that shit-show. But what he did sucked. ”

“Would you believe him if he said it didn’t happen the way you thought?”

He laughed. “No.”

“Would you believe me?”

“No. You weren’t even there!”

“Would you believe a PI who got a bunch of information and texts and shit that your ex sent proving that your timeline was wrong?”

He went dead silent, then cleared his throat. “You saw everything?”

“No. I’m not a—” Okay, I kind of was a dick, so I couldn’t say that. “It wasn’t for me to see. Killian offered it when he was, like, pleading his case or whatever. And for the record, I didn’t start humping him the second I knew who he was. I made him work for it.”

Tucker grimaced. “I want to punch you in the mouth.”

I would have deserved it.

After a long moment of silence, he sighed. “I don’t even think it matters anymore.”

He wasn’t wrong about that. “He’s gone anyway.”

“Ford,” Tucker said, warning in his tone.

“No, I’m serious. He’s gone. He blocked me on his phone. I tried to call him and text him after he left, but he cut me off. So maybe he really is a dickhead.”

Tucker groaned. “Don’t make me defend him, you asshole! He’s not cutting you off. He’s trying to save you. He’s such a fucking martyr, God .”

I stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“He thinks I’m a monster. And maybe for a good portion of our lives, I gave him a reason to think that.” Tucker’s voice cracked. “Maybe he thought stealing my shitty ex was a good way to say fuck you to me after the way I treated him for so long.”

Another, heavier silence fell between us.

“No one would deserve that, Tuck.”

His face was full of pain. “I guess, yeah. I mean, he sure as fuck picked a dark moment to kick me in the balls.”

Also not a lie. But it wasn’t the truth either.

Tucker had been so absorbed in his own pain—and rightfully so—he couldn’t see how his accident had affected Killian.

How the survivor’s guilt was eating at him.

How he felt responsible for the whole thing because he’d picked a fight with Tucker right before he left.

And they’d never talked about it. Tucker shut him out, and by the time he was ready to let Killian back in, things had gone upside down. But I believed Killian when he told me things with Delia had happened so far after Tucker thought.

“Do you love him?” Tucker asked.

The question was a goddamn sucker punch. It took all the breath out of my lungs, and I had to take a moment to recover before I could speak again.

“No.”

He hummed, but I couldn’t tell if he was accepting or didn’t believe me.

“I think you should take the coaching job when Hugo leaves. You need to get out of this rut. Not just the dick rut,” he added, giving me a look. “An everything rut. You’re not being left behind, Ford. But you’ve spent a lot of years being comfortable holding back.”

Ouch .

“I know shit with your family isn’t good. I know how that trauma can threaten to ruin you.”

I brushed a hand down the side of Carol-Ann. It was a comfort thing—the memory of the nurse making me feel better because I was entirely alone. The weight of how important that had been in keeping me grounded. In keeping me from wanting to die.

“My stepdad is the one who made me lose my leg.”

Tucker was dead silent. “Sorry…what?”

I let out a trembling breath. “The horse?”

“Yeah,” he said slowly.

God. It was weird that I could tell Killian this story like it was nothing, but saying it to Tucker was like choking on razor blades.

“My stepdad was trying to get the horse to trample me. We’d been fighting all day.

A few days before it happened, I found out that he wasn’t my bio-dad. He’d adopted me when I was three.”

Tucker let out a little wheeze. “Dude. Why don’t I know this?”

“Because it’s a fucking shitty moment in my life, and I hate talking about it,” I all but yelled. Taking a deep breath, I shook my head. “I didn’t want you guys looking at me like I was this pathetic piece of shit who wasn’t wanted by anyone.”

“Ford. We have literally never, ever felt that way about you.”

I choked on a laugh. “Yeah, but if you thought that even my own parents wanted to kill me?—”

He moved, lifting on his hands and shifting his body to the coffee table. Scooting across, he came to a stop at the edge and reached for me, tugging me into him, knocking his forehead against mine .

“You are such a jackass,” he growled.

I couldn’t help a watery laugh. “I know.”

“What happened? What did he do?”

“I was mouthing off to him. The older my sisters got, the more he hated me. His fake kid. You know all about that,” I said.

And Tucker did. He knew the part about my stepdad being an asshole.

He just hadn’t known why. Or how far he’d gone.

“My whole world just…crashed when I found out, you know? I was so angry. I wanted to tear all my skin off so the outside pain could match the inside pain.”

Tucker squeezed the back of my neck tighter. “I know that feeling.”

“A few days later, my attitude was the worst it had ever been. I was cussing, screaming, refusing to do chores. I liked being out by the stable though. He had a horse that was a rescue—it had been abused, so it was really skittish unless the pen door was closed. I liked talking to her. I felt kind of like she got me.”

“Only you would bond with a horse,” he said.

I shoved him back and flipped him off as he laughed. “Fuck you. I’m literally baring my soul here.”

“I know, but your story is sad, Ford. It’s really goddamn sad, and I want to cry.”

“Sorry.”

He punched me in the thigh. “Shut the fuck up. Finish it so we can move on to something else.”

I shrugged. “He opened the pen when I wasn’t looking, and when she came out toward me, he spooked her. I don’t know if he was actually trying to kill me or if he was trying to teach me some fucked-up lesson, but yeah. I almost died. ”

“Is that why you relate to the little creepy ghost girl?”

Rolling my eyes, I shook my head. “No. My parents abandoned me at rehab, so the nurse who took care of me watched old-school horror movies with me. We both liked Carol Anne best. And I was kind of fascinated by the fact that she became immortal after her death through this one random movie. It’s… whatever. You get it.”

He laughed. “Yeah. It’s still weird as fuck, which suits you.” He went quiet for a second. “So, like, did you ever find your bio-dad?”

“No. I eventually got his name out of my mom, but she had no idea what happened to him, and she wasn’t interested in helping me find him. She was super fixated on me apologizing to my stepdad for everything.”

“After he let a horse crush you?”

My laugh was bitter. “Mhm. She went on and on about karma and how the more I acted out, the worse things would get for me. That’s why I don’t talk to her.”

“God, what a monster.” He was quiet for a long beat, then sighed and leaned back on his hands. “I guess I really am done being mad at you.”

“You aren’t,” I told him. “Once you get over what a sorry sack of shit I am, you’ll be angry again.”

He pulled a face and hand-walked himself across the table and back to the couch. When he was settled, he grabbed his phone. “I’ll tell Deo we can go home now.”

“You trust me to be on my own? Don’t you have a couple other brothers I can fuck? ”

He glared. “You’re so not funny. Like, not even a little bit right now. It’s too fucking soon!”

I smiled.

“Ford?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you in love with him?” he asked again.

Taking a breath, I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore, does it? I choose you. I will always choose you, Tucker. I need you to understand that. We were going to end it because no matter how either of us felt, we were both choosing you.”

He licked his lips. “Not the best way to show it.”

“I know. And I will regret that for the rest of my life. But I’m dead serious, okay? I’ll take the coaching job and eventually maybe date someone else, and this will be a blip. And you will be there because you are my best fucking friend in the entire world, and I will not lose you.”

He met my gaze, his slightly fogged but sighted eye fixed on me. “You’re not going to lose me.”

That was the only comfort I could hold in that moment. The only comfort that was allowed to matter.