Page 79 of Absolutely Pucked
“It was always the plan to be honest,” Ford said, speaking for the first time, “but…”
Tucker’s glare had him silenced again. “I will deal with you in a minute. Killian, seriously, why? Why him? Why are you here? Why don’t you go home and back to your sweet little lawyer job and your wife, your big house?—”
“My wife is in bed with my former boss,” I said again, feeling utterly helpless. “And I don’t have a job. I don’t have a home. She took my car while I was at a job interview down the street from here.”
“I found him soaking wet and damn near hypothermic, sitting on my doorstep,” Ford said. “I wasn’t going to let him die.”
Tucker scoffed. “So instead of calling me to deal with it, you warmed him with your penis?”
Ford spluttered, so I cut in. “Would you have actually taken me in?”
Tucker’s eyes went wide, his sighted one fixed hard on my face. “Yes, you fucking asshole! God, that’s…fuck. That issolike you. You’ve decided for me—without even knowing who I am anymore—that I would just let you what? Rot on the side of the street? All because you saved me from getting married to a monster?”
My limbs felt weak, and it took everything in me notto drop my coffee all over the floor. I had fantasized about every scenario on the planet about what would happen when Tucker and I came face-to-face again, and never once did I imagine he’d help me.
I wanted to be sick.
“God. I just…I can’t.” He turned to Ford. “Tell me this isn’t an actual thing between you two. Tell me you’re not in love or something equally fucking foolish.”
Ford looked like he wanted to cry. I shook my head and mouthed, ‘No.’ It wasn’t worth it. This pain wasnotworth it.
“No,” Ford whispered.
Tucker looked back at me. “So you were just leaving, then?”
It was a question, but it also wasn’t. It was a threat. And it was time for me to go. I still had the job at the supermarket, but in all reality, I should head out of town. I could find a little something somewhere to hunker down in. I could get a hotel or a little apartment somewhere. I could work at another grocery store.
Or a café.
I could wait tables.
Tend bar.
It didn’t matter.
“I was just leaving.”
Ford looked like he was being crushed to death. He didn’t look at me now. He turned his head away and wrapped his arms around his middle. I was profoundly aware of Boden looking between me and him, but if there was anyone who was going to come to our rescue, it wouldn’t be anyone in this room.
“For what it’s worth,” I started, and Tucker scoffed, “I am sorry.”
Tucker was quiet for a long moment, and then he said, “I forgive you. It’s not worth holding on to that anger.” But I knew what the price was for that forgiveness.
It wasn’t hatred. It wasn’t acceptance.
It was indifference.
I was nothing to him now.
Still, I would take it. What choice did I have? “If you ever want to know the details, call me. They don’t…they don’t matter. Not really. But I have them if you want.”
He took a breath, then turned his back on me. And that was that. The conversation was over. There was nothing more to be said.
“Tea?”
I blinked. Everything felt foggy and strange. Jonah was being overly kind to me, which I wasn’t sure I deserved. Ford had called him without my knowledge, and thirty minutes after getting packed up, an Uber showed up with Jonah in the back seat.
He came in, swept up Athena and her things, then bustled me into the car with him, and without any real conversation, we were on our way. It was like walking through a nightmare. Ford wouldn’t look at me, Tucker had locked himself in Ford’s bedroom, and Boden washovering in the corner of the living room, watching like he had something to say, but steadfastly remained silent.
