Hard to handle, p.20
Hard to Handle, page 20
“Why?” This time, he’s the one who takes a step closer to me. This time, he’s the one staring and demanding and wanting to know.
“Because I can’t,” I whisper.
“That’s what I thought,” he says and starts to stride off.
“Hunter. Wait.” He keeps walking. “Truth. Truth,” I shout, and this time he stops but doesn’t turn around. I stare at him, the bright lights of the arena he’s playing in tonight in the background. “I can’t admit to you why I’m here because the minute I do, whatever happened the other night can’t happen again. I can’t tell you what you want to hear, because there’s a blaring red line in the sand and once I cross it, all those things about you that made me want to come back to your room over and over once I left that night have to be buried and gone.” My breath hitches on what feels like a sob, but it’s really my fear in admitting the truth to both him and myself.
It’s the fear in admitting that I had fallen for Hunter Maddox before, and being here, sleeping with him, just reinforced that I never got over him. That I chose mediocre options in the interim who never dimmed his sparkle, but rather made it shine brighter.
He turns slowly and stares at me, eyes burning into mine in a way I’ve never seen or felt before. The muscle in his jaw feathers as if he’s trying to control any and all emotion from playing across his stoic face.
The hope I had that he might hear me drains away slowly.
I throw my hands up in a shrug and surrender whatever else I can’t express. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t. My dad sent me here to win you over to the agency because you’re you, and any agent would be crazy to not want you on their team. Now that I’m here, I don’t know that I can follow through with it. I know you’re struggling with something, and I would do anything to help you through it. But if I offer you that, you’ll always be wondering if it’s because I’m personally invested or because I want to profit off you professionally. The answer is I care, when it seems you don’t want anyone to. So you tell me, Hunter, what am I supposed to do?”
The first tear slips over and I shove it away with the back of my hand as I stand before him, intentions exposed, emotions on the line, waiting for him to respond.
“I’ve got to get to practice.”
He turns his back on me and walks toward the entrance.
And I watch him.
Every single step.
But this time through the blurred tears.
I now have my answer.
He walked away.
Decision’s been made.
He left me.
I’m done.
It’s time to go home.
DEKKER
I STARE AT THE MEMO and wish I could add more, but I can’t.
I’ve failed. My dad had faith in me, and I blew it.
I look at it one more time, and then I hit send.
HUNTER
Dad: Worst game I’ve seen you play all year. Why isn’t your head in the game, son? Think of everything we gave up for you to be there and prove you deserve it.
Me: Fuck you.
I STARE AT THE TEXT. At those two hostile words. At the cursor flashing. The pressure is mounting. I feel the exhaustion everywhere. Just. Fucking. Everywhere.
The suicide drills and the endless shooting challenges he made me perform until late into the night.
No breaks.
No sympathy.
Only the weight of the world on my shoulders. Only the knowledge that I’m the reason Jonah left that night. I was the catalyst who put him in the car and robbed them of his spectacular career.
I’m the mediocre brother forced to live out the dream Jonah no longer could.
Because living for Jonah is the only other thing they have. Even though I’m still alive and have dreams of my own.
And living for someone else is so exhausting, so daunting, so goddamn frustrating.
The cursor blinks.
The same two words I’ve wanted to respond with after every game I’ve ever played professionally.
Two words.
They say so much.
I’ll never fill his shoes.
I’ll never be as good as he would have been.
But I’m me. Fucking me. A man who rose to the challenge and have lived my every moment so that Jonah knows I’m sorry. That I’m so goddamn sorry for what I did that night. For how I lied. For not being responsible. For not being the one who took the keys.
The guilt is why I’ve always deleted those two words.
The guilt is why I’ve never thought I deserved anything—the praise, the accolades, the love.
The guilt is why I punish myself.
But hell if walking away from Dekker yesterday didn’t shoot that all to shit.
Fuck if looking up in the owner’s box and not seeing her there—as I have the past three weeks—wasn’t a blow to my concentration. I thought of the ten other things I should have said to her instead of the one sentence I did.
The hurt in her eyes when I didn’t acknowledge a fucking thing she said.
“You good, Mad Dog?” Callum asks as he walks by. I lean back against my locker, dropping my phone in my lap.
“Yeah. Just . . . that was a brutal fucking game.” I glance at the bag of ice Saran-wrapped to my knee and shake my head.
“It always is. The Bandoliers are fucking thugs.”
“Not going to argue.”
“You were an animal out there.”
I nod and replay the game in my head in the flash of time. All I can see are the shots I missed, the times I was stripped, the bullshit fouls called.
“Meh. I beg to differ, but it’s not worth the argument.”
He checks the bottom of his skates and busies himself before turning to look at me, eyes intense. “She leave?”
He doesn’t have to say who she is, and I’ll save him the bullshit of pretending I don’t know who he’s talking about. I have more respect for him than that.
“Not sure. I don’t keep tabs on her.” But I was looking. I was wondering.
“Huh.”
“You got something to say, Withers?” I ask.
“Nothing you’re going to listen to,” he says. “Shit. We finally get to go home tonight. My bed is calling me.”
“I’m listening,” I say, ignoring his color commentary.
He pauses, stuffing his gear into his bag and stares at me. “She’s obviously under your skin.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means, I’ve never seen you give a fuck about anything other than hockey and your family . . . but you give a fuck about her.”
I blink and try to hear him—really hear him—and then like always, play it off. “I think that punch you took to the head tonight was harder than we all thought.” I chuckle to sell the lie.
“You’re indifferent with women. They’re a dime a dozen to you because they’re everywhere you go—”
“Whatever.”
“But Dekker challenges you.” He hefts the bag over his shoulder and walks a few feet toward me.
“Your point?” I ask.
“It’s a good thing she does.” He reaches a hand to my shoulder and squeezes. “She’s a good person, Mad. She deserves to be treated right. Whatever happens, just remember that.”
And without another word, Callum walks out of the locker room to our transport waiting to take us home for the first time in what feels like forever.
But I sit in the empty locker room. There are a few guys still in the trainer’s room getting worked on and their laughter filters out to me, but other than that I’m alone.
So goddamn alone.
The worst part? The only time I haven’t felt lonely is when she’s around. Fucking Dekker.
Closing my eyes, I think about what Callum said. About Dekker and what she deserves and wonder what I’ve never allowed myself to wonder. About me and what I don’t deserve, but hell if the moments spent with her haven’t made me want. An us. About the opportunities I’ve passed up, the dreams, the happiness I told myself weren’t merited.
Christ.
So fucking alone.
But this time when I stand to head to the bus, I don’t delete the text like I normally do.
This time, I hit send. Finally.
DEKKER
“IT’S MIDNIGHT. WHY ARE YOU here?”
I laugh as Brexton props her shoulder against the doorway of my office and debate how much I should tell her. “I guess the same could be said for you,” I respond.
“I forgot a contract I need for the morning. Less traffic to get it now than to fight rush hour, and you know how I love my sleep.”
I smile softly and wonder why brusque Brexton is being so kind.
“Smart,” I say and look out the window to the city beyond. The Manhattan skyscrapers and their lights dot the distance. A city still alive, while I’m struggling with so much turmoil.
I walked away from Hunter, from my time with the Jacks, without saying a word. I walked away, knowing full well I left my heart behind. I came back home with the bitter taste of rejection on my tongue and knowing I was letting my dad—my sisters—down by not finishing what I set out to do. Letting Sanderson win.
“Wasn’t there a game tonight?”
I nod and exhale a sigh. “Yeah, but . . . I decided to skip it. I have a shit ton to do and being in the press box isn’t going to do anything toward getting Hunter to sign with us.”
“Huh.” She makes that stupid sound I hate that says I don’t buy a word you’re saying, and then twists her lips in thought as she studies me. “So you finally told him KSM wants him?”
“Something like that.” I look at the papers on my desk and relive everything—my confession and his nonchalance—and wish my mom were here right now, as I’ve wished many times over the last fifteen years, so I could get her advice. I think I just screwed everything up. “He didn’t react, so I’m not sure what to make of it.”
I’m not exactly lying—he didn’t react—so why do I avert my eyes and blink back the tears that threaten?
“Humph.” She moves to the window of my office and looks out. Her hands are on her hips as she scans the skyline. I study her. “It never went away, did it?” Her voice is soft, gentle almost, when she’s never gentle.
“What never went away?” My mind is thinking of clients and contracts I missed while I was on the road trip. What didn’t I—
“The way you feel about Hunter.”
I freeze and am grateful her back is to me so she doesn’t see. Like with everyone else, I want to deny. Deny their observation. Deny my feelings. Deny it all. Especially now. Why can’t I tell the truth?
“You’re delusional.”
Brexton takes her time moving to my desk before setting her hip on it. “I may be delusional, but I also know you have a habit of running the other way any time you get feelings for someone.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you do.”
My guard is up, my defiance front and center. “Name someone.”
“Chad.”
“What-the-hell-ever. Next.”
“I’m being serious. You were fine with Chad—content with him—because you didn’t feel anything for him. He was safe. He allowed you the appearance of having someone without you having to get emotionally involved.” She picks up a trinket on the corner of my desk—a hockey puck given to me from a client a long time ago—and weighs it in her hand. “Chad is the latest casualty. Before him that software salesman who wore his pants too tight—”
“Come on. He wasn’t that bad.” She eyes me until we both start laughing and I nod. “Yes, I guess he was . . . but his pants were too tight for a reason,” I say to try and get the focus off me.
“At least he had that going for him,” she says and shakes her head. “And before him was the baseball player. Then Gene Harsket. I never understood what you saw in him.”
“Brex—”
“No, I need you to hear me. To listen to me. I need you to see that you make a habit of being emotionally unavailable because you refuse to put yourself out there. You refuse to be hurt.”
I open my mouth and close it, because it hits me how very right she is. And then to make matters worse, why can she see that when I can’t?
“Look.” She waits until I meet her eyes, and then it’s a struggle for me to keep them there. But I do, and she continues. “It’s okay to have feelings, Dekker. Mom died, and we all retreated into ourselves. It’s natural to pull away and not want to be hurt when the last time you really loved something, you were devastated.”
I clear my throat and rise from my chair, needing to abate the restlessness her words cause me.
“You’re making me think I failed at this big sister thing. You’re the one giving advice.”
Brexton steps up beside me but we both stare at the streets below for a few seconds. “That’s the thing, Dekker. We love that you’re our big sister, but you became our mom and in doing that, you never allowed yourself to grieve. You never allowed yourself to rage. We did, and you were too busy holding us together to be able to do it yourself . . . so of course any kind of attachment scares you.”
“I grieved.”
“Sure,” she says. It’s her way of telling me she doesn’t believe me.
“I did. I raged and screamed but I had to do it in a pillow so you guys wouldn’t hear me.” The wave of memories hits me. The loneliness. The fury. The unknown. The sadness.
“Okay, then why don’t you let yourself love?”
I laugh despite the tears welling in my eyes. “Grieving for Mom and falling in love with someone are not mutually exclusive.”
Her arm goes around my shoulder. “It never went away, did it?” she asks again.
I blink away the tears, but one escapes down my cheek as I think of how heartbroken I was three years ago when I walked away from Hunter, and how similarly I felt this time with his nonchalance and nod. “The first time, he didn’t ask why the abruptness of it all. Why we went from seeing each other as much as we could to nothing.”
“Maybe because he had feelings for you and felt scared about them too. If you bailed that easily, why is it hard for you to believe that he could do the same? If you’re afraid of love, why is it unfathomable that maybe he’s afraid of it for other reasons?”
I lean my head on her shoulder and breathe deeply, hearing her words but not wanting to believe them.
“What happened this time, Dekk?”
I let the silence settle as I struggle with telling her the truth. Their problems are my problems but my problems are no one’s problems. So, I usually keep everything close to the vest.
“What happened this time?” I repeat. “He’s like kryptonite to me.” I give a self-deprecating laugh. “There’s something going on with him he won’t talk about, and of course, I want to try and fix it.”
“No surprise there.”
“No, I mean . . . I went there to do my job as an agent—what Dad asked—but when I saw him, I knew he was wrestling with something.” I continue to explain his acting out, his hot and cold, his being completely burned out and finally admitting it.
“So you slept with him.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And then what?”
“And then I bailed to my room. It was much easier doing that than trying to sort through my feelings with him sleeping right beside me.”
“But you felt something, right?”
“I felt fucking everything,” I admit without hesitation and know how stupid it sounds. To run away from those kinds of feelings, but the fact that she doesn’t point it out makes me feel a little better.
“And when you confronted him?”
“He acted like I was asking him about the weather.”
Brexton turns to face me and puts her hands on my shoulders so I’m forced to look at her. “The question is, what are you going to do about it, Dekker? Are you going to let him walk away a second time when you know damn well he’s the only one who’s lit your fire emotionally and sexually?”
“Christ.” My cheeks flush.
“No. I’m being serious. What are you going to do? Rob yourself of the chance of seeing what happens because you’re too chickenshit to try?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Why isn’t it? Maybe what’s not fair is how we’ve let you sneak by doing this and not really living for anything other than work and a false sense of security with people who put water on your fire like Chad.” She gives a little shake to my shoulders. “So the question is . . . what are you going to do about it?”
“There’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t ask him to be a client and want to have a relationship at the same time. I can’t—”
“Fuck that.” She waves a hand at me. “We’ll figure it out. Dad will have to deal. There are always solutions to every problem. We can handle him.”
“But that doesn’t fix the other problem.”
“Other problem?”
“Like how other clients would perceive me sleeping with a client I’m going after.”
“Then he’s not with the agency or we pass him off to one of us to represent. Done. Next excuse.” She flashes a dazzling smile my way, and I groan because the next one isn’t so easy.
“You can fix all the things in the world on the professional side, Brex, but nothing will make Hunter see me as anything other than a no-strings notch on his busy bedpost.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
“Good for you.” I move back toward my desk and the stacks of paperwork, hoping that if I ignore her, maybe this conversation will go away.
“If Hunter didn’t have feelings for you, do you think he would have gotten all butt-hurt when you left after Callum saw you that night?” She lifts her eyebrows and crosses her arms over her chest. “Do you think he would have been more of a dick and less dismissive when you confronted him in the parking lot? You made him feel like you put work before him . . . and I’d say that screams that he has feelings for you.”
I see what she’s saying but . . . “You weren’t there.”
