Page 68 of Pucked Up

“How?” His voice came out an almost whisper, like he was afraid to ask.

“Pneumonia,” I told him. I walked over to the bed and sank down.

Boden seemed frozen to the spot, and then after several breaths, he set his crutches against the wall and dropped into the chair by the rickety hotel desk. He rested his forearms over his thighs and met my gaze. “Move to the second bed so I can hear you better.”

The second bed was clearly Ford’s from the way it was already a mess, but I settled on the corner, where the blanket had been pulled back, close enough to Boden that if I’d stretched my leg, our knees would have bumped together.

“How long have you been fucking Micah?”

I fought not to choke. “We haven’t fucked.”

“I know him?—”

“No,” I interrupted sharply, “actually, I don’t think you know him as well as you think you do.” I was well aware my tone was harsh. Boden flinched, but I wasn’t going to let this one go. “He also knows that. He knows that everyone assumes he fucks anything that walks. No one believes him when he says he didn’t. And he’s afraid no one will believe him if he’s ever hurt because they’ll assume he was asking for it.”

Boden paled. “I would never—I have never?—”

“I know,” I told him quickly. “But you assumed that because he and I were up all night, it had to be because we were having sex.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it slowly. He took a deep inhale through his nose. “You’re right.” I was also not expecting such quick acquiescence, but that told me how much he loved his friend. “Micah deserves better than that.”

“And me?” I chanced.

He stared at me in a considering silence. “How long has your husband been dead again? I missed when you said it before.”

“Seven years. His name is Reid Martin.”

His eyes widened, and he cleared his throat. “The?—”

“Yes,” I said before he could finish that sentence. I really didn’t want to hear it from him. “TheReid Martin of the PPHL. The Reid Martin who is responsible for why we’ve all been dragged here this weekend.” My voice was ragged now, my throat tense. Ifelt a wave of grief—not for my dead husband. I would always love and miss him, but this was grief for not talking to Boden about this sooner.

He stared at me for a long time. “Isit a disability fetish? I know I asked you before, but considering your history, I’m not sure I trust you.”

I blinked, then burst into laughter. “Fair. But no. It’s not.”

“Right, because your former husband and I were a little bit alike in that regard.”

I bowed my head and took a steadying breath. “We were together when he was drafted into the NHL. He begged me to leave him after his accident. He didn’t want a caregiver. He wanted a husband. There was no way for me not to be both.” Closing my eyes, I smiled at the image my memory dragged up. His fiery gaze locked on me, and the moment he gave in when he realized I wasn’t going anywhere. “I drew up divorce papers to make him happy, but I could never bring myself to file them. He wanted me to sleep around—to open our marriage. I couldn’t get hard with anyone else, even with Viagra, so we didn’t do that either.”

When I was brave enough to open my eyes, I looked at Boden, who was staring at my mouth.

“We eventually moved past all the hard parts and fell back in love. Then he got sick, and he died, and it was kind of expected because when he was injured, all of his doctors in rehab told us that was probably how he was going to go. That, or a UTI that got left untreated. He planned his funeral two years beforehe was gone. I thought he’d be the smaller statistic who lived until he was a wrinkled old man, but he never liked it when I was right.”

Boden swallowed heavily. “So was I just a way to pass the time?”

“Wasn’t that all I was to you?”

He blinked, and then his lips twitched. “You were a guy in a bar, and I wanted to have an orgasm.”

“Exactly.”

His smile widened. “So…youdoknow about sled hockey.”

The question gave me whiplash, but I appreciated he didn’t want to know more about Reid tonight. With a sigh, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and went into one of my desktop folders. They were old photos I rarely looked at, but I had one—my first PPHL game as Reid’s pusher. “I wore his number, obviously.”

Boden took the phone with trembling hands and stared at it for a long, long time. “Why didn’t you tell me? When I was accusing you of…well, everything I accused you of, why didn’t you just say something?”

“Because I didn’t want to be Reid’s husband in front of the man who had given me one of the best nights of my life,” I confessed.

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