Page 85 of Pucked Up

TWENTY-ONE

HUGO

My reactionto seeing the footage of Reid had been unexpected, mostly because it had felt a little too similar to the first time I’d seen it. The thing I didn’t tell people—the thing I barely told my therapist and never myself—was that was how I found out Reid had been hit by a car in the first place.

He was with the team. He was supposed to be safe. Life was just…normal. And then I flicked past ESPN, and Reid’s face was plastered all over the screen. And just like that, my life turned upside down, and it would never go back to the way it was, no matter how normal we eventually felt.

I thought, for a moment, I was going to lose it in the hotel hallway. Then Boden was there, and he’d held me. And he’d whispered things to me I’d wanted him to say for so long. I was struggling to believe them, even as I could feel the warmth of his presence just a few feet behind me.

“I hated myself for a long time after Reid’s accident,” I said once we were inside the room.

Boden cleared his throat. “Can you turn around so I can see your mouth?”

Fuck. How could I forget? I spun slowly. “Sorry, I?—”

“No. It’s okay,” he said, the truth showing all over his face. “It’s okay. Just repeat yourself, please.”

My breath shook in my chest, but his request was an easy one. “I hated myself after Reid’s accident because even when he started accepting his reality, I would go to bed every night hoping to wake up to some miracle that his spine had healed itself.”

Boden chuckled and shook his head. “You don’t think he wanted the same thing?”

“I know he did. But it was my job to lethimhave those feelings. I was supposed to be supportive.”

Boden took a step closer. “You’re saying you weren’t?”

With a heavy sigh, I lifted my hands and set them on his waist now that he was close enough and now that I knew I was welcome. He leaned into me just slightly. “You sound like my old therapist. And yes, I was supportive. But I felt like a bastard because I don’t think I ever totally accepted our life as it was. Every time I talked to my parents after, I felt like I’d betrayed them for the way they raised me.”

Boden shook his head. “It’s not the same. Being born with and losing are two totally different things. Just ask Micah about the guys on his team. He and Jonah don’t give their teammates shit who weren’tborn blind. They give them grace. And not just temporary grace. You were allowed to mourn what you’d lost.”

My therapist had said that too. So had Reid, the couple of times I was drunk enough to confess the truth. He’d laughed and put his curled fingers against my jaw and asked me to lie on top of him because he could still—every now and again—feel pressure so long as it was heavy.

He’d kissed me silly and told me I could be as sad and as angry as I wanted. That he was worried because I wasn’t as sad and angry as he would have been if our situations were reversed. “Right before he died, he told me he’d been afraid I was going to get tired of it all and leave him.”

“Were you?”

I bowed my head, but not too far so Boden could still make out my lips. “No. It hadn’t even occurred to me. But I went to a support group once, and it was full of people who had left their spouses and were trying to deal with the guilt of it all. The group leader was validating their choices because, well, I suppose it was their job. I wanted to dive across the room and hit them and ask them how they could do it.”

Boden let one crutch go and tipped my chin up. “But you still feel like a villain?”

“No. I feel like a man who maybe isn’t as strong as he needs to be sometimes.”

“So…” He bit his lip, and I could see he was trying to hide a smile. What the hell? “You’re a person, then?”

I blinked. “Well…euh. That’s…”

“Hugo.” He shook his head and sighed. “You need a nickname. You have all these sweet ones for me, and I have nothing. Just your name.”

Something in me cracked and released tension like slow fizz. My hand touched the side of his jaw, and I met his gaze. “I love the sound of my name when you say it.”

“Hugo,” he said again.

A shiver ran up my spine, and I realized then I was done talking about Reid. I was done living in the past. I wanted to exist for him. For this.

For us.

“I didn’t think you’d be here with me like this again.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” he admitted. “Along with a hockey stick, my pride, and my ego, I had my head shoved deep inside my ass.”

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