Part of the reason I don’t believe Rhett is that it seems awfully convenient that he didn’t have a fucking clue and then suddenly a light bulb seems to have gone on for him at the end of the season, right when he said he’d be coming to take Jack from me.
Jack exhales. “Shit.” He’s bending his brim extra hard now—it might finally split in half—and then he’s reaching for me.
I stop him. I can’t touch him right now. My gut churns as it sinks, and I put it together based on the guilt coloring his cheeks. “You.”
“Merc, I’m sorry. You’ve been busy. I didn’t want to bother you with my problems.”
“So you went to Rhett instead.” I turn away. I don’t want him to see what my face is saying about that because if my face is anything like how I’m feeling, it’ll give him something else to keep him up at night.
“No! It wasn’t like that.”
Taking a breath, I force myself to relax and face him again. “It was. It was just like that. We’re not where I thought we were.”
Not on the same page, the same planet, the same Merc and Jack universe I thought we’d moved to and had begun floating around in.
Anger flares in his green eyes. “Fuck that. We are too. You’re blowing this up to places it doesn’t need to go.”
Maybe I am fixated on that one little detail that says Rhett can come to Jack’s rescue, but I can’t. It’s pretty damn important to me though.
“Remember that time I forgave you—twice—for adopting people into our lives while forgetting to run it by me? I see that I fucked up here and I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
I want to scream because that’s frustrating. He’s right and I know what he’s saying. They’re similar because in both instances we were running on patterns that have been habituated into our subconscious. Rhett’s comfortable for him and there’s no denying that. He’s used to giving all his problems to Rhett and having him fix them.
He may not have realized what he was doing, but the result is the same.
He’s not ready to do that with me yet, I guess, which is allowed, but it still hurts that he isn’t. I have too many emotions about the whole thing to let it go easily.
“I want to let it go, Jack. Idolet a lot about Rhett go, but this one’s harder.”
And this is why relationships are messy. I’d love to just move on from this so that we can both stop feeling like shit, but this whole fight began in the first place because I wanted to be involved in his solution. I can’t stop the echo from repeating across the canyon in my head that I’m just a placeholder until Jack and Rhett find their way back to each other.
I might have been okay with that before, but things have changed.
His face is wet with tears leaking silently from his eyes. He sniffles. “Look, I’m not in a space to handle this and neither are you. I’m going to go before this leads to us saying awful things we don’t mean because I don’t think either of us can handle that.”
I clench my fists and jaw and nod.
He opens his mouth to say something else but thinks better of it and then turns without a word, walking straight out of my life.
Chapter28
Meyer Instruction Manual
On The Ice
JACK
All right, I’m willing to admit that maybe we were a tad delusional in thinking we could sweep Boston. They’re a good team. I’ll never utter those words aloud, but I can’t deny it. Not when we’re brutally getting our asses kicked in game five. The tiny bright side is that our no-sex theory ended when we lost game three.
Or it would have been a bright side if Merc and I were talking to each other.
In fact, our losing streak began sometime around our ridiculous fight. I’m trying not to put too much stock into it for the moment because I can’t see him right now even though being apart from him’s killing me. I thought it would be best. My parents take timeouts all the time. Not even necessarily for disagreements or arguing. One of them having a bad day can call for one so that they can get their head on right.
Fuck. I didn’t expect him to react like he did. I didn’t expect him to be any more than a tad annoyed about the Rhett thing. Basically, there were a lot of things I didn’t expect and now I don’t know how to fix any of it.
Beating on Boston sounds like a good start.
Lukkovnov slams me into the boards and I’m not willing to skate away. I slash my stick at him, which isn’t even intentional, it just happens to be what’s in my hands. I don’t make contact with his stone body, but the refs are quick to call the penalty due to the brutality called This Game.
