Page 96 of Puck Struck
I hand one glass to Cam, then sink onto the leather couch. He follows, sitting next to me.
"Your family's great," he says. “You’re really lucky to have them.”
"Yeah, I am." I take a sip of whiskey. "It's been just the three of us for a while now."
"What happened? To your parents, I mean." He pauses then waves his glass toward the bookshelves. “The reasons for all of those books?”
“Yeah.” I stroke my chin, silent for a long minute.
“Look, you don’t have to tell me. I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.”
"No, it’s fine. I was just thinking for a second. My dad walked out when I was fourteen," I say, staring into my glass. "Just picked up and left one day. He never came back, never called. Mom tried to hold it together for a while, but then she started drinking. By the time I was sixteen, she was more interested in vodka than me and my sister."
"Fuck," Cam breathes. "Logan?—"
I shrug. "So I raised Tessa. Always made sure she had lunch money, clean clothes, someone to sign her school permission slips. I tried to make things as normal as possible for her. She was just a little kid." The words scrape against the sides of my throat on the way out. "When Tyler died, I wanted them close. I promised him I’d always take care of them and I wasn’t about to let her handle everything with Ethan on her own. So they moved in with me, and it's been the three of us ever since."
"That's why you're so protective," Cam says. "Why you need to be in control of everything."
"Someone had to be." I drain my glass. "Someone had to make sure everything would be okay."
Cam sets down his glass on a coaster and turns to face me fully. "I get it," he says quietly. "I get why you think you have to handle everything yourself."
"Do you?"
"Yeah." His voice gets gruff. "Because I've been doing the same thing my whole life." He blows out a shaky breath. "I didn't have the perfect family either. Never had doting parents, brothers, sisters. It was just me. Pretty much on my own."
"Shit, Cam. I’m sorry,” I say, my throat tight. I knew he had it rough financially, but I never asked about his family. I guess it was because I never liked talking about mine and didn’t want to answer questions, especially questions from people I didn’t trust.
And I didn’t trust Cam for a long while.
But I do now. And I want to tell him. I want him to understand me, just like I want to understand him.
"My dad was a mean drunk," he says, drumming his fingers on the side of the glass. "The kind who used his fists to make his point. He left my mom and me on our own with no money. We lived in a shitty town in upstate New York. She worked all the time, trying to make ends meet, and failing pretty miserably. Then one day, she checked out too. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and away from that hell. We didn’t always have heat or food. I spent my time alone or on the ice. When I made it to the juniors, I hightailed it out of there. Never looked back. And nobody cared.”
"Jesus," I mutter.
"My dad was an evil bastard. An alcoholic junkie who usedme as a punching bag for most of my childhood." His voice cracks. "He burned me with cigarette butts while I slept, sometimes when I was awake. If I didn't follow his orders, he'd lash me with his belt or throw bottles at me. Sometimes both. Hockey was going to be my out. The only hope I had for something somewhat normal. It was hard because you know how expensive it is. But I got help and I had talent. Then…" His shoulders hunch. “Well, you know what happened next.”
I reach for him without thinking and pull him close. "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."
"He's dead now. I heard he overdosed three years ago." Cam's voice is muffled against my shoulder. "Good fucking riddance."
We sit in silence, wrapped in one another, silently commiserating about all the pain we suffered, all the ways we've learned to survive.
"I've never told anyone any of that," Cam mumbles. "About my dad, about my mom. Never."
"Neither have I. About raising Tessa, about my parents." I shake my head. “Nobody worth it enough to know the truth. Until now.”
His hand comes up to touch the side of my face, his fingers gently trace my jaw. "We're pretty fucked up, aren't we?"
"Yeah." I lean into his touch. "We are."
"Good thing we found each other then."
My lips find his, capturing them in a desperate, hungry kiss that is full of everything I can't say. He runs his hands up and down my back, fisting in my shirt, pressing hard against me.
"Logan," he breathes against my mouth, and the way he says my name makes something inside me crack wide open, letting go of all the things I’ve tried to keep protected over the years.
