Page 82 of Absolutely Pucked
“Really? You’d find a way to deal with me humping your twin brother?”
“Don’t say it like that, Jesus Christ!” He passed a hand down his face. “But…I guess? I mean, it sucks. He fucking sucks, and I don’t know what you see in him. I mean, he’s a narcissistic bastard who?—”
“Tucker.”
“Please don’t defend him right now,” Tucker said.
I swallowed back my protests.
“I get it that…I don’t know…he and I were never really nice to each other. I own my part of that shit-show. But what he did sucked.”
“Would you believe him if he said it didn’t happen the way you thought?”
He laughed. “No.”
“Would you believe me?”
“No. You weren’t even there!”
“Would you believe a PI who got a bunch of information and texts and shit that your ex sent proving that your timeline was wrong?”
He went dead silent, then cleared his throat. “You saw everything?”
“No. I’m not a—” Okay, I kind ofwasa dick, so I couldn’t say that. “It wasn’t for me to see. Killian offered it when he was, like, pleading his case or whatever. And for the record, I didn’t start humping him the second I knew who he was. I made him work for it.”
Tucker grimaced. “I want to punch you in the mouth.”
I would have deserved it.
After a long moment of silence, he sighed. “I don’t even think it matters anymore.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. “He’s gone anyway.”
“Ford,” Tucker said, warning in his tone.
“No, I’m serious. He’s gone. He blocked me on his phone. I tried to call him and text him after he left, but he cut me off. So maybe he really is a dickhead.”
Tucker groaned. “Don’t make me defend him, you asshole! He’s not cutting you off. He’s trying to save you. He’s such a fucking martyr,God.”
I stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“He thinks I’m a monster. And maybe for a good portion of our lives, I gave him a reason to think that.” Tucker’s voice cracked. “Maybe he thought stealing myshitty ex was a good way to say fuck you to me after the way I treated him for so long.”
Another, heavier silence fell between us.
“No one would deserve that, Tuck.”
His face was full of pain. “I guess, yeah. I mean, he sure as fuck picked a dark moment to kick me in the balls.”
Also not a lie. But it wasn’t the truth either. Tucker had been so absorbed in his own pain—and rightfully so—he couldn’t see how his accident had affected Killian. How the survivor’s guilt was eating at him. How he felt responsible for the whole thing because he’d picked a fight with Tucker right before he left.
And they’d never talked about it. Tucker shut him out, and by the time he was ready to let Killian back in, things had gone upside down. But I believed Killian when he told me things with Delia had happened so far after Tucker thought.
“Do you love him?” Tucker asked.
The question was a goddamn sucker punch. It took all the breath out of my lungs, and I had to take a moment to recover before I could speak again.
“No.”
