Series: Torn and Bound Duet Series by K. Webster
Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“You here to visit Ben?” I ask dumbly. Because really, who else would he be here to visit?
Brayden flinches as his brother’s name leaves my lips, and my heart breaks for him.
“Damn it, Bray.” I step closer to him. “How long are you going to blame yourself for his death?”
Brayden’s eyes cut into thin slits, and his back goes ramrod straight. I probably shouldn’t have brought up his brother’s death, but Jesus, he’s been blaming himself for years, when it wasn’t even his fault.
“You can’t keep carrying that guilt on your back,” I tell him. “Eventually that shit’s going to break you.”
“Maybe, but I’ll still be in better shape than Ben since he’s dead,” Brayden chokes out.
“But not because of you.” I move forward until we’re face to face. “What happened was a goddamn tragedy, but it wasn’t—”
“Don’t fucking say it,” he barks. “It was my fault, and we both know it. You were there. Mom left me in charge of looking after him. She told me to keep him inside, and instead of doing so, I let him convince me to go have a fucking snowball fight in the dead middle of winter.” He jabs his fingers into the center of his chest. “I did that. He made me promise not to tell her, and I agreed. He’s dead and it’s my fault.”
“You couldn’t have known he was sick,” I say, wishing like hell he would stop blaming himself. After all these years, I’m surprised the stress from the guilt hasn’t eaten him alive. “He had no symptoms. And you don’t even know if taking him outside is what caused the pneumonia. And you’ll never know. Maybe if you talk to your parents…”
“I don’t want to discuss this.” His eyes are rimmed with unshed tears. “I just came by to drop off the puck from the game.”
The promise he made to Ben during their last conversation at the hospital. I shouldn’t have been listening in, but I was thirteen and worried for my best friend and his brother.
“Am I gonna die?” Ben asks as Brayden sits next to him on the bed.
“No,” Brayden tells him, even though only minutes before the doctor told his parents Ben’s pneumonia is critical and they should consider saying their goodbyes just in case.
“If I do, do you think I can see you play hockey from heaven?”
“I don’t know, Ben, but I’ll raise my stick high after every goal just in case,” Brayden promises.
I peek in, and Ben is frowning. “Who will you give your winning puck to?”
“You’re not dying, Ben,” Brayden chokes out. “You’ll get it like always.”
“But if I do…”
“I’ll make sure you still get them.”
Ben died a couple hours later, taking a large piece of Brayden with him.
“I gotta get going,” Brayden says, snapping me back to the now. He stalks off down the sidewalk and I chase after him, not wanting our conversation to end like this.
“Wait,” I yell after him. He doesn’t stop, but he does slow down enough that I’m able to quickly catch up to him. “I know you hate me, but—”
Brayden stops short, and I damn near run into him. “I don’t hate you,” he says. “In order to hate you I would have to give a shit about you, and I stopped doing that the second time you ran away.”
“You know that’s not true,” I say, determined not let him push me away. “I know I fucked up.” I step closer to him. “But we’re both here at the same school, playing for the same team…”
“I’m playing… You quit, remember?” He crosses his arms over his chest. “Care to explain why?”
I open my mouth to tell him what I haven’t been able to tell anyone but my dad, but I can’t make the words come out. Because once they do, it’ll make it all too fucking real. As long as nobody knows, I can pretend a little longer that my hockey career isn’t over. That I’ll never play another sixty-minute game in front of thousands of fans. That everything I worked for my entire life hasn’t been destroyed.
When I don’t speak up quick enough, Brayden laughs humorlessly. “Didn’t think so.”
He takes off toward the parking lot, and again, I follow after him. “Wait, please.”
“What?” he barks, stopping and facing me again.
“Can we please just start over?”
“And what, go back to before my brother died? Before you left me? Sorry, I can’t do that,” he says. “My brother isn’t coming back, and I can’t pretend like you didn’t run away… twice.”
“Then how about a truce?” I ask, trying a different angle. “The fact is you play for the team I coach, and yeah, we have a past, but if we don’t do something, call some sort of truce, it’s going to be one long ass season. And it’s not fair to the other guys on the team who are left having to pick sides.”