Page 29 of Flagrant Foul (Totally Pucked #3)

Sev Delorean

Then

I wore a white button-down shirt to meet Nate.

A white one with a fine gray stripe. The fabric of the shirt was scratchy and new.

A little too store-pressed to allow for the type of comfort I usually sought.

I had it tucked in initially, but I couldn’t quite make the leap from my usual look to wannabe youth pastor, so I untucked most of it and rolled up the sleeves, leaving only a bit in the front tucked in.

Despite the shirt, I had a skip in my step as I walked.

A little extra bounce, courtesy of the bubble of hope that filled my lungs.

I knew I’d done the right thing stopping Teddy that night at the club.

Any asshole could see that. He was drunk.

There was no doubt about it. If anything had happened that night, it would’ve been a clear-cut case of me taking advantage of him.

Last night in the O’Reilly’s backyard was different. He was stone-cold sober .

Time had passed since I’d run into Teddy in New York.

Months. Almost a year. He’d been to college.

He was playing good hockey. He’d turned nineteen, and he’d lived a little.

He was still young, obviously, but there’s a big difference between being eighteen and nineteen. Don’t ask me why, there just is.

I took a left onto Main Street and crossed the road. Mo’s Diner was open. The red and white striped awnings looked cheerful and inviting. It was so early that the sidewalk was still wet from being hosed down.

I was on my way to ask for permission, and I knew it.

There was a slight flurry in my chest that went with that, but honestly, no part of me thought that permission wouldn’t be granted.

Not even the smallest, most self-loathing part of me thought that.

I thought it was a formality. The right thing to do.

A nod to the bro code. A necessary check in a box.

I got to Mo’s Diner before Nate did and ordered a large plate of fries, a double-thick chocolate milkshake for him, and a Pepsi for myself. The food and drinks arrived a couple of minutes after he did.

As always, I smiled when I saw him. To me, being with Nate was like being curled up in a warm, sunny room after I’d been out in the cold for too long. It was like getting home after a long day, when I knew nothing else needed to be done for the day.

As always, he smiled when he saw me too.

His familiar face cracked open, lips splitting wide enough to show teeth.

Nate’s eyes are blue like Teddy’s, but darker, and his hair is lighter.

Nate’s taller and broader, but people often say he and Teddy have a striking resemblance to each other.

I’ve never really seen it. To me, Nate looks like himself, and himself only.

No one on Earth looks like Teddy.

We were sitting in our favorite booth. The one in the front, at the window that faced onto the street. The window box was full of flowers. Red and purple petunias, I think.

“'Sup, bud?” Nate asked, plucking a small, crispy fry from the plate and popping it into his mouth. “What’s with the shirt? You got a job interview I don’t know about?”

I waved him off and waited until he’d washed the fry down with several large glugs of his milkshake before speaking.

“So,” I said, suddenly a little breathless. My words bunched up and came out a lot quicker than usual. “I went by your place last night. I got my wires crossed and forgot you wouldn’t be there, and Teddy…uh, Teddy was there.”

Nate chewed a fry, swallowed, and then raised both brows in a way that triggered a tiny sense of unease in me. A slight chill made the hair on the back of my neck feel funny.

I ignored it.

“He was sober,” I clarified. “Completely sober.”

Nate’s mouth was a straight line and the rest of him was completely immobile. “What happened?”

I was leaning back against a booth I’d sat in many, many times before, but I felt as though I was somewhere strange. Somewhere new. Somewhere out of my element. “Well, um, you know what happened at the club last year, right? He was…like that again. He, he held my hand…a-and he tried to kiss me.”

There was something wrong with Nate’s eyes. They were different. Cold. Bricks of ice with tiny cracks in them. They were nothing like they usually looked. It shocked me so much my rib cage contracted, and I couldn’t take a good breath.

“What did you do?” he asked, tilting his head back and rolling his tongue over his molars when he finished talking .

I didn’t like this version of Nate, and I especially didn’t like that I’d never seen it before.

One of the things I love most about Nate is that I always know what to expect from him.

Always. He never lets me down, and he never surprises me.

That day at Mo’s, he surprised me. “I-I told him no. I stopped him, I swear.”

His shoulders relaxed visibly and his eyes morphed back into their usual expression so quickly that I was left wondering if I’d imagined what had just happened. He had a sip of his milkshake and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“The thing is,” he said with a shrug that was part defeated and part accepting, “Teddy thinks he’s in love with you, Sev.

It’s a stage. A phase. He’s a kid, and he’s infatuated.

He’s not like you and me. He’s different.

He feels things differently than we do. He feels them deeply.

In his bones and in his soul. If you…and him…

If you try, it won’t work out ’cause, well”—the next shrug was fully accepting—“you’re you, and we both know what you’re like.

When it goes to shit, he won’t be okay.”

He didn’t say it, but I heard what he was implying as clearly as if he had— and if he’s not okay, we won’t be either .

It stopped my heart and made my blood run cold.

“He’s my brother. My blood. You know I can’t let anyone hurt him.

” Nate looked at me for a beat and then dropped his gaze. “Not even you.”

A hundred things hit me at once. Shock. Horror. Hurt. Humiliation. But mostly, I was struck by the complete and utter common sense of what Nathan had said. It was a cold splash of water straight to the face. An ice bath that my entire head got dunked into.

Obviously, I couldn’t be with Teddy. He and I? It was ridiculous. Preposterous. What in the fucking world had made me think I was good enough for him?

When I came up for air, I was sobered, and Nate was extending his arm across the table to me. I reached out to him, but he didn’t take my hand like he usually did. He gripped my wrist instead, squeezing hard. I did the same.

It was a power grip. A safety hold.

I held on for dear life.

“Course not,” I said quickly, doing my best to recover from what felt like a thin blade piercing my intercostal muscle and working its way up to my heart.

“We never let anyone hurt Teddy.” I tried to smile and was grateful Nate was still looking down because I couldn’t work out how to make my bottom lip stop trembling and peel back the way I needed it to.

“We sure as shit aren’t going to start now. ”

Nate looked up at last and got up from his seat, leaning across the table until his forehead touched mine.

Our hands were still locked in a vise, but the contact where our foreheads met was warm.

He took the back of my head in his free hand and whispered into my hair.

“We may not be blood, Sev, but you’re my brother too.

” His lips pressed lightly against my crown. “You’re the brother I chose.”

I left the restaurant in a daze and did something I hardly ever did.

I went home in broad daylight. My dad was sitting on the front porch, a can of beer in his hand and an empty bottle of vodka on its side at his feet.

His undershirt had sweat stains on it and his bloated belly rolled over his waistband.

Perhaps it was the fact that it was daytime and the sun was shining, so the lighting was good, or perhaps it was the conversation Nate and I had just had, but either way, I saw things clearly.

I was insane to think someone like me, someone from this family, could be with someone like Teddy.

My dad raised his beer to me and looked down at my shirt. “Whatever you’re selling, kid, we ain’t buying. We can’t afford shit,” he said, laughing uproariously.

I scoffed. “Good one, Dad. ”

I took a seat on the camping chair next to the one my dad was sitting on. There was a hole in it, which made it feel kind of like sitting in a hammock that wasn’t built to take my weight. I didn’t mind. It seemed fitting. After a while, my mom came out. “Want a cold one, baby?”

Up until that day, I’d never accepted an offer of alcohol from either of my parents. I guess I was trying to make a point. Be the better man. Rise above it. Some bullshit like that. Anyway, that day was different.

“Sure. Why not?”

The stupidest—or saddest—thing is that it made my dad so happy. I’d been signed by the Dogs earlier that year. An NHL fucking hockey team, yet my dad looked prouder of me when I took that first swig of the beer my mom handed me than he had when I told him about my contract.

We sat on the porch all afternoon and drank as my dad talked shit. At one point, the seat of my chair gave way, and I fell through it, landing on my ass.

We all laughed and laughed and laughed.

We drank until my mom, who is tall for a woman, looked small and fragile to me.

Once beautiful, she’d morphed into a slip of a thing with stringy hair, and my dad, who is at least four inches shorter than I am, looked massive.

Gargantuan and threatening. A creature from my nightmares, even though he was smiling and having a good time.

When he used his hands to gesture as he talked, I crept into myself and felt the same instinctive urge to flinch I had when I was a child.

When they were so drunk they were barely aware of my movements, I went to bed.

I was unsteady on the stairs and had to hold on to the banister with both hands and pull myself up.

As I brushed my teeth, I leaned in close to the mirror and studied my face.

I had my mother’s eyes. Bloodshot with tiny red veins that splintered across the whites, and I had my father’s mouth. Lips parted and sagging crookedly.

As I looked in the mirror, I saw my future clearly. I had two possible paths. One was darker and full of detail, filled with twists and turns I recognized. I knew the gravel and dirt on that path well. I knew every bump and where it would take me.

In many ways, it was a path that would have been easy to walk because I knew it so well. It felt familiar. Like home. It felt inevitable almost.

The other was hard. Unknown and unfamiliar.

A clear, bright path that felt nothing like home.

Nothing like me either. Not really. I didn’t recognize the pristine pebbles it was paved with, and I didn’t know what was around the corner.

It was a path I was afraid of. The only thing that made it even remotely appealing was that I knew Nathan stood on that path, hand held out, as he waited for me to walk it with him.

Seeing him there, on the scary, bright path, soothed me, as it always did, but given the events of the day, it soothed me differently that day. More in some ways, less in others, but ultimately, it reminded me who he was to me.

He was the brother I chose, and if I chose that path, he’d be the only family I had.

I slept restlessly, head spinning, heart beating too fast. The next day, I woke up, rolled the button-down shirt I’d fallen asleep in into a tight ball, and threw it in the trash.

Then I walked out the front door and never looked back.