Page 52 of Pucked Up

“I don’t do leaf water.”

He laughed and sank down beside me. “Me either. My former brother-in-law always tries to convince me to give it a shot. He’s English,” he said.

Former brother-in-law. Figured the man would be divorced. “Why’d you split? Your ex get sick of you?”

He turned his head and blinked slowly at me. There was fresh pain in his eyes, so shit, the divorce must have been recent. “Something like that.”

“Sorry. I’m…I didn’t mean…”

“It’s fine.” He reached forward and grabbed the remote before pulling the blanket half off my legs and tucking himself in. He was warm beside me, like a mini space heater. “Do you prefer the captions in French or English?”

My fingers hovered in front of my chest, and thenI reached up and plucked my hearing aids out of my ears. “Whatever floats your boat.”

He nodded, then flipped around his streaming services until he started a French show I vaguely recognized. Ford had gotten into it because of the hot twink—his words, not mine. Twinks were not my jam.

It was about a TV network or something like that, but the captions were busted on it. He was trying to bond with me over the language or some shit, so I pretended to care. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I could barely understand spoken Quebecois on a good hearing day. French coming out of TV speakers, it was a total loss.

My gaze fixated on the words on the screen. Hugo had turned the audio off and the captions to French. They were easy to follow, and my brain relaxed into my mother tongue as silence settled around us.

“I wanted to be an actor when I was ten,” Hugo said, turning his mouth up toward my ear. I glanced down at him, and he looked at me, and then he nestled closer. “I went on several auditions but never got a part. My father said it served me right for trying to do something so useless.”

I knew that pain a bit too well. “Fathers are shit.”

He laughed and turned his face into my side. I couldn’t hear him well after that, but I swore he was sniffing. When he looked back up, his eyes were dry but red. “They’re really shit. Mine died about six years ago. I didn’t go to the funeral.”

“Why not?”

“He hated my hus—my former husband.”

The way he refused to say ex hurt. Maybe he was using me to fill a hole in his life, but I had no right to be angry about it. I wasn’t his. He wasn’t mine. This was just a thing. We were using each other…

Weren’t we?

“Mine doesn’t think I can do any of this on my own. He doesn’t want to believe I have the skills to get picked up by the league. He wants to do it for me so I’ll be grateful to him.”

Hugo was quiet for a long beat. “He’s not my favorite person.”

I couldn’t help a small, startled laugh. “He’s not mine either.”

Heaving a breath, he slung his arm around my waist and nestled close. I had no idea what to do about him except let him tug me closer and hold me tighter. As much as the feelings in my chest were telling me to run, I decided it couldn’t hurt to just let myself have this.

Only for a moment.

A moment became a night and then the morning. I’d fully planned to sneak out as best as I could—which wasn’t my strongest skill, but I’d managed it in worse situations. All I’d have to do was wait for Hugo to fall asleep, and then I could get down on myhands and knees and drag my crutches behind me as I crawled to the front door.

I was very, very good at crawling.

That was how I got around my house for years.

It was a solid plan. And then, like an ass, I fell asleep. I hadn’t even realized it until I came to with the smell of something like bacon cooking—only not quite. Turkey bacon? I blinked, my head a little stuffy, eyes bleary, entire body feeling like I’d been run over by a truck because it did not like falling asleep on a fucking couch.

In fact, every one of my muscles were fussy little bitches that didn’t enjoy anywhere except my Tempur-Pedic bed with my wedge pillows to keep me in position all night. With the way my legs immediately began to spasm, I knew it was going to be a rough day. And fuck, I’d fallen asleep in my orthotics.

It was why I didn’t do shit like this. The pain wasn’t worth it. And I hadn’t even gotten a good orgasm out of it. I reached for my hearing aids and pushed them into my ears, grateful they weren’t dead, though they were probably close.

The moment I could hear clearly, a voice rang out from across the room. “Morning.”

My gaze darted up to find Hugo hovering in the entryway between the living room and the kitchen. Christ, I hadn’t even gotten a home tour. I’d just collapsed on the couch and called it a night. He must have thought I was such an immature shithead.

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