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CHAPTER FIVE

TUCKER

“What the fuck, man? What the fuck ?” I could hear the high, tight panic in my voice, and something in my brain couldn’t connect it to me. I wasn’t the one freaking out. I wasn’t the person who had a fucking husband at home.

At every stoplight, Boden reached over to hold my hand. He was being much nicer than he’d ever been, which was weird, but I wasn’t mad about it.

“Breathe,” he ordered. “Deep, slow breaths.”

I shook my head so hard I got dizzy. “Don’t tell me to fucking breathe, Boden. You breathe!” I wheezed. “ You take some goddamn deep breaths.”

“I am breathing,” he said dryly. “But you’re going to pass out if you keep hyperventilating.”

“I—” Oh shit. I was. I’d felt like this before. When the reality of my situation set in at the hospital, I worked myself into such a state they had to sedate me, and I could not let that happen again. “I need your purse.”

“Tucker,” he said, annoyed.

“Briefcase. Laptop bag? Whatever the fuck you call it, you fucking priss.”

He jerked his chin behind him, and I fumbled around, groping until I found the handle, then shoved my face into it. This is what they always did in the movies, right?

Uhg, it smelled like leather and—eugh, were those old gym socks? That was maybe the weirdest combination ever, and very gross, but the more I began to inhale my own carbon—dioxide? Monoxide? Whatever it was—the better I felt.

“I’m married?” I groaned.

“That’s incredibly unlikely. Definitely not legal.”

I turned my head to glare at him. “What would you know, you fucking Canadian.”

My anxiety induced anger didn’t seem to faze him at all. “I know that there are rules when it comes to legal marriages, and you have to file a marriage license. It’s very unlikely that you managed to be drunk enough to forget yet coherent enough to be granted one. And you said yourself you woke up alone the next day. Unless this—what did Ford say his name was?”

“Amedeo,” I said, testing the sound of it on my tongue. It was terrifyingly familiar. “ Amedeo . What kind of name is that?”

“Sounds Italian,” Boden answered like I was asking literally. “Unless Amedeo filed the license the next day—which I doubt, considering he wasn’t even around to meet you in the morning—it’s probably…”

“A nothing burger,” I finished for him.

He wrinkled his nose. He hated that phrase.

“So why is he, like, at our house?” I was starting to panic again and shoved my face back in the bag. “Oh God, I think I’m going to puke.”

“Not in there, you’re not,” he snapped, tugging the bag away from me. “Open the window.”

“I’m not being serious, you dick.” I yanked the bag out of his hands and took a deep breath of his feet stench. My shoulders relaxed, and I took a moment to hope I didn’t develop some kind of weird fetish for sweaty toes after this. “Seriously though. Why would he come here if it’s nothing?”

“It’s possible he’s trying to piece together that night just like you.” He pulled to the stoplight that was at the corner of our condo unit and rolled to a stop. I was still close to hyperventilating. “Tucker.” His voice was uncharacteristically kind. He stretched out his hand and brushed a touch over the back of my neck. It was instantly soothing. “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, and neither will Ford.”

I didn’t know why that brought me back down to earth. Maybe it was the truth of it. We weren’t the nicest guys—none of us really had ever been. We all had chips on our shoulders and tragic pasts that made people like us hard to love.

Boden was a chronic rule follower, even when he occasionally rebelled. Ford and I were the fuckups, which was why we’d probably never make more than minimum wage and never be team captain.

But we were family. And we would live and die by the rule that no one—no matter who they were—would ever be able to hurt one of us.

If this were happening to Ford or Boden right now, I’d be saddling up to ride to war.

“I’m going to call Ford and see what’s going on.”

Boden smacked my hand away from my pocket. “You aren’t. You’re going to sit in the parking lot and take a few more deep breaths. You’re going to use your cane when you walk up to the house so you don’t fall on your face in front of this stranger,” he instructed. “And you’re going to calmly but firmly ask him what he wants.”

“Guide me,” I begged. I didn’t want to use my cane. Too many people saw it was a weakness. As a way of taking advantage of me. I didn’t know this stranger, and I didn’t want to give him the impression that I was an easy mark.

He sighed. “It’ll be your job not to trip over my wheels, then.”

I could do that. But I wasn’t feeling any better. This guy had really tracked me down, showed up here, told Ford he was my husband, and for what?

“Do you think he’s some kind of weird fetish serial killer who has a thing for amputees?” I asked, half-hysterical again as he pulled into his parking spot.

He gave me a look. “I think you’d have been dead in Vegas if that was the case.”

“But, like, what if I karate chopped him in the balls and he ran off and that’s why he wasn’t in bed with me. And now he’s coming back for revenge.”

“You’ve been watching Micah’s creepy indie horror movies too much,” Boden said flatly. He turned the car off, then twisted his body to face me, taking me by the shoulders. “He’s probably just confused and wants to know who you are and why this all happened.”

“Well, I don’t have an answer for that,” I said, throwing up my hands. “I mean, what do I even say? I was sad and pathetic sitting at a bar while my brother partied with his frat boy friends before his wedding to my ex?”

Boden’s mouth twitched.

“Fuck you. Don’t laugh .”

He cleared his throat. “I’m not laughing. But you never know. Maybe his story is worse.”

I couldn’t imagine how, but the longer I sat there, the more I realized that logic was the only way I was going to survive this. I couldn’t let myself get caught up in panic and conspiracy theory. He was just some guy I’d met at a bar. He was probably hot because I could be a real shallow prick when I was drunk, and he was probably a twink because I could also be a real picky prick when I was drunk.

I probably took advantage of him too, which made me feel worse.

“I don’t know if we had sex.”

“One more question for your list,” Boden said. “Wait right there for me.”

That wasn’t a hard ask. I wasn’t going anywhere until he made me. He set up his chair, then sat down, rolled to my side of the car, and pulled my door open. I stepped out into the dim parking lot, which ruined all the usable bits of my vision, and I followed the shadow of him until I was gripping his shoulder.

“Go slow,” I said. “Take your time. There’s no rush.”

“That’s not going to make this go away,” he said. But he went slow anyway, and I kind of wanted to hug him for it.

The walk toward our front door felt a bit like a goddamn death march. The Darth Vader theme should have been playing on a speaker somewhere. I gripped Boden’s shoulder tight enough to make him hiss, but he didn’t push me off. He didn’t pause though either.

He just kept his annoyingly steady pace to the door. When I heard his keys jangle, my heart leapt into my throat, and my nonexistent knees began to give a phantom tremble. God, I wasn’t going to be able to stay upright. Fuck.

Before Boden could get the key in the lock, the door flew open, and I recognized Ford’s silhouette immediately.

“Unclench your balls. He’s gone.”

His words hit too hard, and between one stuttered breath and the next, I hit the ground.

* * *

I was down for maybe two minutes, but it felt like two hours. I came to on my sofa with my legs up and a cool cloth over my head. Blinking up, I focused my eye on the figure above me, and with the perfect lighting of our living room, I could see Ford.

Unlike Boden, with his small stature and his baby face, Ford was tall and very broad. He was an everyday pretty boy with long hair and hazel eyes. His only flaw—and that felt like a ridiculous term to use—was the little cluster of pimples that always lived in the right corner of his nose.

He had a single, thin scar that ran over the bridge of his nose from the fall that had taken his leg, and his jaw was a little crooked.

But seriously, the man’s face belonged on magazine covers.

“Welcome back.” He smiled and showed off his missing canine, which he hadn’t replaced yet after a puck knocked it out three weeks ago.

“Where did I go?”

His brow furrowed. “You know where you are, right? You didn’t even hit your head.”

I sat up, snorting as I turned my head from left to right to take in the room. Boden was nowhere to be found, and the place was empty. “Seriously, he left? He showed up, said he was my husband, then he bailed?”

Ford shrugged as he flopped down next to me, kicking his foot up on the coffee table. “He panicked after I called you. But he left you a note.”

I held out my hand, and Ford dropped a torn bit of paper folded into a very neat square. It triggered a strange, foggy memory of a bar napkin. I ran my finger over the edge before opening it and holding it close to my face so I could read it clearly.

The handwriting was the same as the Post-it:

I’M STAYING UP ON KITE HILL ROAD IN A VACATION RENTAL. HERE’S MY NUMBER. CAN WE TALK?

-AMEDEO

There was that name again. Amedeo. It was…different. I think I liked it, but it was hard to tell when all of my emotions felt like they’d been thrown into Boden’s Vitamix and left on pulverize for six hours.

“What, um…did he, uh…”

Ford looked at me, his brow raised.

“Did he seem like a serial killer with an amputee fetish?”

His lips twitched. “Uh. No?”

“Okay, but how do you know ?”

“Well, I hit on him at the grocery store. He saw Carol-Ann, and he did stare, but not in an ‘I want to fuck you and then kill you’—or kill you, then fuck you—kind of way. However serial killers do their thing.”

My eyes widened. “You hit on my husband ?”

“Bro. Seriously?”

Right. Right. Focus, Tucker. But no, I couldn’t let it go. “Okay, but…you hit on him? Was he hot?”

Ford shrugged. “He was cute. I mean, not my usual type or anything like that, but yeah. I guess. He was talking to himself, and then he started taking a video of the pasta aisle, which was weird but kind of adorable?” He waved his hand dismissively. “I flirted with him, and he turned me down. Said he was married. You’ve got a loyal one there, babe.”

Why the actual fuck did that make me feel better? “Was he weird about your leg though?”

Ford shook his head. “She was doing her slutty thing, and he stared—it happens. I gave him a little bit of shit for it, but he told me I reminded him of someone.” Leaning forward, he curled his hands under his chin and smiled. “Must have been you,” he singsonged.

“I…no, dude. Whatever. Shut up.” Yeah, I was a real mature adult who definitely should be married. “Fuck, okay. Do I call him?”

“Probably. He seemed a little fucked-up.”

“On drugs?”

“What? No . Like, he was upset.” Ford’s brow furrowed, and he looked concerned. Boden might have been the Dad friend, but Ford was the guy who took care of everyone. He was the ginger ale, saltine crackers, and Price is Right friend. “He didn’t seem to want to talk much, especially when I answered the door. He got a little panicked and thought I was you for a second, but when I explained I was just here to steal your laundry soap, he kind of relaxed. Then he panicked again and said he had to go when I invited him in to wait for you.”

I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. “I’m gonna call him. Yeah, I—okay.” My hands were shaking as I picked up my phone, but somehow, I managed to get the number typed in right after the third try. “Hold my hand. I think I’m gonna puke.”

“If you’re going to puke, I’m leaving.”

“Just hold my fucking hand!” I’d never heard my voice go up that high before.

Ford looked terrified and grabbed it, squeezing tight. “Can you not lose it totally or whatever’s happening? You’re my rock, Tucker.”

I took a deep breath and looked at him. “I’m fine. I’ve just never screwed up this badly. Not since, you know.” I gestured down at my legs. There were words clawing at my throat, begging to be released. Words I’d been avoiding saying even in my head since I got back. Words that would make this all very real—not necessarily the marriage part, but the promise I’d made to myself. “I swore I would never get blackout wasted again. And this time, I didn’t lose a limb, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t ruin everything.”

“Hey.” Ford squeezed my hand. “We’ve all done it. The fact that it took you this long to do something monumentally foolish is a good thing.”

He was right. I needed him to be right. This didn’t have to define the rest of my life, did it?

At most, I’d gained a husband, and divorce was a thing. It didn’t need to be forever. At the least, I gained a stranger who I’d spent a weird night with.

I was going to be okay. But I did need to nut up and be an adult and face this.

“I’m calling,” I said, calmer this time.

Ford shifted his palm so he could lace his fingers with mine as it began to ring.

And ring.

And ring.

“He’s not going to pick up. God, I can’t sit on this all night! I can’t just?—”

“Hello?”

“It’s him,” I hissed.

The voice on the other end of the phone made a strange noise, then said, “It’s…me, yes.”

Fuck. He could hear me. Right. I coughed. “Hey. Hi. Is this Amedeo? Am I even saying that right?”

Another pause. “Tucker Banks?” Amedeo’s voice was quiet but a little sharp, like I could hear the punctuation in his sentence.

It was weird to hear someone say my full name who wasn’t the game’s announcer for the night, and that always came with a flourish: “ Tuckerrrrr Baaaaanks !”

“Yeah. Hey. I’m home, and my friend is here.”

“Carol-Ann,” he said.

I burst into laughter that was mostly anxiety. “Well. That’s part of him, yeah. His name is Ford.”

“Right. Yes, I knew that. I’m sorry. That got in my head, and?—”

“No, don’t worry. It happens to all of us.” My shoulders were starting to relax fraction by fraction. How was I so comfortable so quickly with a total stranger? Had it been like this at that bar? “So, uh…we’re married, huh?”

He coughed. “Yes. Ah…right. Married. We should probably meet up and talk about it.”

“Do you want to come back here, or…?”

“I’m not sure I should drive anymore tonight. I have terrible jet lag. Is there a chance you could drive out to meet me?”

“I don’t drive,” I confessed. “I don’t know how much I told you about me, but?—”

“No, right. Of course. Your eye.”

Both eyes, but that was semantics. “I get rides from friends, and they’re both a bit occupied right now.” A bit of a lie, but frankly, I was too scared to go. This had to be enough for now. God, I wished I could remember what he looked like.

He was still no clearer in my memory than that dark hair and sweet laugh.

“Breakfast, then?” He made a soft, unthinking humming sound. “I don’t know what’s good around here. I’m sure you told me what you do, but I can’t quite remember, so if you have work?—”

“No. No, I coach peewee hockey. That doesn’t happen until later. I’m not typically a morning person but—” I wasn’t a night person either. I was a curl up in bed and nap person. What a fucking catch, right? “I can make breakfast work.”

“Would you feel better if I brought breakfast to you?”

Yes . But I wasn’t going to say that. Ford was giving me A Look , and I had a feeling he could hear Amedeo’s voice on the line, which meant he was ready to judge me. He and Boden had work in the morning, so there would be no one to watch the place in case this guy really was an amputee fetish serial killer.

“I can meet you. I’m a master at the bus schedule. Just, uh…when you figure out where you want to meet, text me? I’ll set like nine alarms so I don’t miss it.”

He laughed, and my entire arm erupted into goose bumps. There it was—that sound. It woke something in me, a memory of leaning in, feeling his warm hands, feeling like I couldn’t get enough. Had we kissed?

It would be a shame to not remember that. I think he had a pretty mouth.

“Do you remember me?” I asked.

He was dead silent again. Then he made that soft little hum. “I do. N-not the whole night though. I remember meeting you at the bar. Then seeing you in the bed the next morning.”

So he had been there. Okay. “Did we…you know…”

“I’m not sure?” he answered a little too quickly. “I didn’t find any, ah, evidence. Fluids or…otherwise.”

So his butthole had remained pain-free too. Fair enough. I had another dozen questions for him, but I wanted to see his face when he answered them. I’d be able to tell if he was lying—or, at the very least, get a better guess at whether or not he was lying.

My gut was telling me he was in this as dark and deep as I was. So maybe we could figure it out together. “Tomorrow, then?”

“Yes. I’ll text you shortly. Thank you for calling, and sorry I didn’t stay.”

“Nah, I get it. This is weird as hell, right?” I didn’t want to hang up, which was usually my sign to tell me that I needed to. “Talk soon.” I hit End before he could answer and felt a little bit like a dick, but also proud of myself for not spiraling.

“Cute as a button!” Ford said loudly.

I stared at him. “Uh. What?”

“That was the phrase I was trying to remember when you asked me what he was like. Cute as a button. He’s pretty short.”

“I’m short,” I reminded him. I’d gone from six one to four nine overnight.

He rolled his eyes. “Only technically. You can be as tall as you want.”

Also true. I’d gotten an extra inch on my legs for shits, giggles, and bragging rights that I was now taller than Killian. Unfortunately, that didn’t get under his skin the way I’d hoped. “What else?”

“He’s got kind of a dad-bod thing going. Wild hair, like he’d been playing with it all day. Uh…” His brow furrowed in thought. “He looked really young, kind of like Bodie, until he started talking, then he had grandpa energy, which I loved. Gave off nerd vibes.”

“Everyone here is a giant fucking nerd,” I said. And we were. The jock kind. But this wasn’t high school. No one really cared.

“He seemed fragile. That sounds mean,” Ford quickly corrected. “I just don’t know what other way to say it.”

I sat back and tugged on the hem of my shirt as something new hit me. “What if he’s married? Like, not to me. To someone else.”

Ford opened his mouth, then shut it. “Shit.”

“Or engaged. Or, you know, in a long-term thing. What if I ruined his life?” My voice cracked at the end. I had done a lot of terrible things in my life—especially in the early days after realizing my career with the NHL was over.

I was unkind. I hurt people on purpose. I allowed myself to get hurt in hopes of upsetting my family. I took every chance I could to make my brother feel guilty that he remained whole while I was shattered apart.

I’d even encouraged Boden to go against everything he wanted and destroy his chance to play in the Paralympics because I wanted to take people down with me.

But I hadn’t been that man in a long while. I didn’t want to be that man anymore. And the idea that when I was drunk off my tits and not thinking, I could revert right back to him was…terrifying.

“Fuck. I’m the monster. I’m?—”

“Hey. Tuck, please don’t.”

My head whipped to the side to see Boden walking into the room, leaning heavily on his crutches. He made his way over to his armchair and sat, dropping the crutches against the wall and leaning over his thighs. His gaze met mine and held it.

I shook my head. “Bodie, you and I both know that if anyone is to blame here, it’s me.”

“We don’t know anything about this guy. He could be a total sociopath who preys on vulnerable people,” Boden said, his voice low and rumbly.

I looked over at Ford, who was biting his lip.

“Uh. I mean, maybe. But my gut says no. Even though I did try to hit on him, and you and I both know my taste would totally go for a shitty dude.”

That was true, but I also trusted Ford’s judgment.

“Chances are you were both drinking to escape something, and both of you made an equally foolish decision,” Boden said.

“Exactly. Exactly that. Okay? So…crisis averted?” Ford started to stand up.

“Are you serious? No! Crisis still very much crisising!” I all but shouted.

Ford sighed and flopped back down onto the couch. “I need to go feed my cat.”

“You know Nugget is fine,” I snarled.

Boden waved a hand at him. “Go, bud. I’ve got this.”

“But—”

“Stop being a child,” Boden snapped, then immediately softened. “I understand you’re freaked-out, Tuck. This is not the best situation you’ve ever found yourself in. Crisse, I’d say it’s second worst.”

“I do not find our last Paralympics as tragic as you do,” I said stiffly.

He sighed, then held out his hand toward Ford and tugged him down, knocking their foreheads together in a soft, affectionate goodbye. Boden didn’t do that with just anyone. In fact, he did that with almost no one, and not even always with us, which meant he was trying to calm everyone down.

Which, of course, was my fault again.

God help me if my brother ever found out what a mess I’d made of that night. “Killian can never know,” I said suddenly.

Ford looked over at me and rolled his eyes. “We don’t talk to that douche.”

Boden just nodded, which was as good as a promise carved in stone, then turned back to Ford. “Come by tomorrow after your shift.”

Ford nodded, then blew me a kiss and headed out the front door, closing it so loudly it shook the walls.

“Remind me to make him open and close that door until he learns not to slam it,” Boden snarled, sounding a little too much like my dad when I was a kid. “Now. You. Time for bed.”

“Are you fucking serious right now?” I demanded.

He sniffed. “No, actually. Shower first. You smell like sweaty butt-crack. Then get your ass in bed.”

I stared at him in horror. “You’re a terrible friend.”

“No, I’m not. You’re meeting this guy tomorrow for the first time that the two of you will remember, and you might never see him again. Do you really want the one thing he remembers about you to be sweaty butt-crack?”

Fuck my life, but he had a point. And hell, maybe if I was lucky, I’d turn into bubbles and rinse down the drain and not have to deal with this pesky being a person shit ever again.