Page 91 of Absolutely Pucked
“I was trying to make it easier on both of us!” Why wasn’t he getting that?
He shoved me. “Well, you made it worse. You were so busy convincing yourself that I’d make him choose between us that you didn’t take five minutes to ask if I actually would.”
It felt like all the air left the room. “You wouldn’t?”
He groaned. “Dude,no. I’m not going to make one of the best people in my life—a person I would literally kill for—unhappy because he has shitty taste in men. I don’t want to be your friend right now, Kill, but I am your brother. We literally shared a womb. Our genes are basically the same. If he loves you, I might ask him why, but I’m not going to stand in his way. If you make him happy, you make him happy.”
The words felt like a punch to the temple. I felt dizzy and entirely off-center. I looked at him for a long moment. “God, what happened to us? How did we fall so far apart?”
He burst into laughter. “I’m one hundred thousandmillionpercent blaming Mom and Dad for that.”
Yeah. So was I.
“So will you please get your head out of your ass and go fix this. He hasn’t eaten anything besides Saltines and orange Gatorade for over a week, and he’s called out almost every shift. I can’t take much more. Icannot watch him be in pain over something that can be fixed.”
My heart wanted to leap for joy, but everything else in me was terrified. “Would he even forgive me for walking out on him?”
God, what had I done? I knew all about him—all about what he’d gone through as a child. I knew that walking away like this would gut him. It was almost as bad as making him lose the family he’d created, and I was the jackass who hadn’t given my brother—once again—the benefit of the doubt.
“I hope you like rug burns on your knees because you’re gonna spend a lot of time there groveling.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Gross,” Tucker said. “Never tell me about that. Ever.”
“Deal.” Something in my chest was settled. A big, gaping wound was healing. “Tucker?—”
“Look,” he said quickly, “I’m not super ready to get all deep and shit. I’m not saying it won’t happen. I also know I owe you an apology for when we were kids?—”
“Hey, no…”
“God, please shut up for five seconds and let me do this,” he growled. My jaw snapped shut. “I was a giant dickhead, and you did not deserve to be emotionally tormented because Mom and Dad used us like game board pieces for their own amusement and I was insecure and angry about it. We should have teamed up against them, not each other.”
My throat felt hot and thick. “Yeah.”
“Don’t fuckin’ cry. Because I will cry,” he warned.
I swallowed it all back.
He took a breath. “I think we can fix it. I don’t know how. I need time to accept that everything that went down between us wasn’t what I thought.”
“I still did it,” I told him. “I still dated her. I stillmarriedher. I don’t know that I loved her, but I was going to try to spend my life with her. She was off-limits, and when she told me—” I stopped. He’d said he wasn’t ready for the details yet, and I wasn’t going to cross that line. “I should have believed you. You’re right, Tuck…er.”
“It’s okay,” he said softly. “It’s Tuck.”
My stomach did a flip, and I took a moment to compose myself. “You were right, Tuck. I think in some fucked-up idea of self-preservation, I convince myself that I know better. That I’m right, no matter who it hurts. My friends were such dickheads to you in Vegas, and I let them get away with it.”
“Kind of deserved,” he said.
“No. Not after this many years. Not after everything.” I hung my head, my gaze locked on my bare feet, which stood out stark against the dark carpet. “I should have been better, and I wasn’t. And I really am sorry.”
“If you are, go fix it with Ford,” he told me. “He opened up to you in ways he hadn’t even done with me and Boden yet. And he’s a good man. He’s probably the best of us, okay? Boden and I are really, truly epic assholes to most people, but Ford isn’t. He gives way too much of a shit about other people’s happiness, and if you can give him peace from that…if you can be the one that lets him breathe and let go, then show up. Be his person.”
I wanted that. So fucking much.
“Where do I start?”
He lifted a brow.
