Page 153 of Triple Pucked
I turn to look at him. “Do you want me to save you?”
“W-w-what?”
“Do you want me to protect you from Blythe?”
Something shatters in Heine’s eyes.
When a tear runs down his cheek, he wipes it away with the back of his sleeve.
Heine gives a disbelieving laugh. “I thought that you’d be happy to see me like this. Do you know, I’ve waited all my life to hear someone say that. I waited so long to hearJudesay it. But he never did. He just sent me home back to my dad. And now, you’re offering to be my white knight when you’re the one in fucking danger.”
I give him an intense look. “Yes.”
Heine pushes himself to his feet, pacing the kitchen. “I don’t deserve it. I’m weak. Unlovable. A little shit. Ask anyone. Blythe. Jude. My dad.”
“I’m not them. I’m the freak, loser,psycho twin.”
Heine falters, staring at me.
“I wish that I had met you when we were both kids. We could have been friends.”
“Unlikely.”
He sniffs. “Highly unlikely. Still, isn’t offering to protect me what friends do?”
When he stares at me, I realize that he’s really asking me.
He doesn’t understand emotions, friendship, or love any more than I do. Did he ever or has it become too twisted in his mind?
“I don’t think so.” I tilt my head. “I don’t like you but I still want to save you.”
Heine hunches his shoulders. “Of course you don’t like me. People only ever pretend that they do because of my dad’s money. I tried everything but I couldn’t get Jude to love me. It didn’t matter how much I studied to be a perfect sub or howgoodI was. I would have let him hurt me anyway he wanted. But none of that was enough.”
“You’re the one who hurt Jude.”
“I only wanted him to notice me,” Heine whispers. “I wish that I hadn’t?—”
“He still has nightmares,” I growl, and Heine flinches. “Can’t touch a flogger. Couldn’t go back in the playroom until we’d gutted it.”
Heine wraps his arms around himself. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“Because I never wanted to hurt him; I wanted him to fucking love me.” Heine’s voice is becoming dangerously loud, as he loses control. I glance behind him at the door that leads deeper into the cottage. He’s going to wake Blythe if he’s not careful. “I have learned this little truth from the useless therapy that Dad threw me into since I was a kid, however, I often confuse pain and love. It’s hard not to, when as a kid I went to bed each night with bruises around my throat and tear tracks on my cheeks, swearing to myself that I would be a good enough boy not to get myself beat the next day. Good enough not to feel his hands at my throat.”
My stomach lurches, as Heine raises his hands to touch his reddened throat.
His dad would strangle him…?
Heine appears lost in the past.
Shay gets the same look sometimes when he’s skating.
“Charles,” I try softly, attempting to snap him out of it.
Heine stares unseeingly at the wall, still clutching desperately to his collar. “I still feel his hands. I can’t…I won’t… So, I thought that if I was going to have bruises here…feel something here…why not have something that I chose myself? Why not…?”
“Be quiet,” I order, sternly.
