Page 87 of My Pucking Crush

Only he’s living a lie of the heart.

Maybe he’ll hook up with Damien Carter when I’m gone. I squeeze the steering wheel to the point of denting the leather with my fingers thinking of another man’s mouth around Max’s cock.

The Crushers made it to the postseason before. I’m prepared for the schedule. Four rounds, sixteen days each to play seven games with back-to-back travel. It’s a security nightmare on a good day.

My love of hockey will also come to an end when this season is over. I’ve let my obsession with Max go too far. I know every expression on his face, and now that I caught his sexual attention and saw how that changed him, I’ll notice it again. But it will be because of another man.

My stomach revolts and I pull over to vomit. God, I’m so pathetic. Here I am, on the side of the road, on my knees in the grass, vomiting because of a guy.

When I get back into my car, I keep driving, holding it together. The sign for Harlow comes intofocus and I want to be sick all over again.

“Shit,” I mutter, pulling off this fraud of a highway and start driving through the small town where I buried what was left of my son from the fiery car crash.

Lia named him Elijah, but after they died, I stole his remains from the funeral home with a team of brigadiers. It took weeks before the medical examiner confirmed it was him based on dental records. They were the most excruciating weeks of my life.

With his little body, I drove him here myself and had him buried in a place where no one would ever take him from me again. I come here once a year on the anniversary of the car crash. I hate that Eli is here all alone. Belova flew Lia’s body back to Russia.

One day I’ll have Eli moved. Closer to where I end up settling down so I can visit more often.

I’ve not given up on the idea that I might have a family again. But on my terms. Elijah was of my blood, and I get that having a child with a man I love might mean giving up that element. But I know that regardless of whose blood he or she has, that child will still be precious to me.

The small memorial park, filled with a sea of handsome gravestones, catches my watery eyes as my car crests a hill. It fills me with the same sense of sadness every year. I steer the car into the cemetery and park, sniffling as I slog to the site where my tiny son is buried.

I don’t bring flowers. I wire money from a shell account to make sure the gravesite’s planting is maintained.

Standing in front of the headstone, his name etched in the granite sits in my stomach like a lead weight. His death is a symbol of my failure. Had I been the husband Lia needed, he’d be alive. As much as I blame myself, I know the true culprit is her brother, Ivan, who forced meto marry her when he knew full well that I was gay and could never love her the way she deserved.

Lia knew this too and convinced herself she could change me. She thought if she were the perfect wife, I’d fall in love with her. Despite me telling her my inability to love her wasn’t her fault.

“You love our son. I gave you that little boy,”she cried.“He’s a part of me. Why can’t you love me?”

She’d been drinking during this particular fight while Elijah was being looked after by a nanny.

I never answered her. Maybe if I had, things would be different.

I open my wallet to the photo of him I keep there. In my jewelry box on the houseboat is a lock of his soft brown hair like mine. These are the only things I kept. All I took with me when I fled.

I stopped wearing my wedding ring after the accident. I hope Ivan found it. I hope the abandoned gold band hammered into him how I was done with him long before he chose to have me killed.

A chill in the air clings to everything this far north for late April. Unlike cemeteries in large cities with offices and security, only a low white horse fence lines the perimeter of this one. Arrangements for burials and groundskeeping issues are handled at the town center building a mile away.

Standing here, I fill my mind with happy memories of Elijah’s four short years. I clutch my chest, readying myself for the barrage of apologies I’ll make for not being there that night to stop Lia from getting into the car with him.

Before a single word slips from my lips, an Escalade pulls up next to my Pathfinder. And three other black sedans idle behind that one.

It happens in slow motion. Ivan Belova gets out.

FORTY-FOUR

Luca

Ivan waits by his car, likely respecting that I drove several hours to see my son. How long has he known Elijah was here? Did he follow me?

I place my hand on the headstone and say a final prayer. “I might be seeing you soon, my son.”

Shoulders back, I march toward the SUV.

Belova leans on the door, and when I get close, he motions for me to sit on an iron bench near the entrance.

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