Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 73002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
“No, I was raised to love women, my mom wants grandbabies… I can’t come out to her, not yet.”
“Matty, my best friends love you, my sister can’t wait to meet you. We can be together because it’s what we want. They’ll understand that. Maybe not at first, but in time.”
He scoffed. “Wells, no one knows I’m gay. My sister suspects it, but I never admitted it. Even so, she hates me—”
“She hates you for other reasons,” he interjected, and Matty shook his head violently.
“Even so, if I tell my brothers, or even my parents, they’ll hate me too. I can’t risk that. My sister already hates me. I can’t have the rest of them hate me too.”
Rolling his eyes, Wells threw his hands up. “You can fix that. If you’d go and apologize to her, it could be fixed. She’s your sister, your twin, she loves you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Because you won’t let me know her, or hell, them!” he said, shifting his hand toward the house behind him. “Jesus, Matty, you’re living a fucking lie.”
But Matty shook his head. “And it will stay like that until I know I can tell them.”
“Why?”
“I’ve told you, they wouldn’t understand it,” he said, clearly upset and at his wit’s end. “Us. I just can’t, not yet.”
“So, when?”
“I don’t know!”
Silence fell between the two men. Their breathing was labored, little air clouds appearing with each breath they took. Tears threatened to fall and Wells almost let them, but he wasn’t ready to let this go. To lose the one person he knew he’d love his whole life. “Matty, I can’t live like this.”
Panic filled Matty’s face. “Wells, I love you, but I need more time.”
“I don’t have it.”
He eyed Wells, his gaze full of alarm and confusion. “But you love me.”
Wells nodded. “I do, and I fucking always will. But if you can’t tell them, I can’t keep doing this.”
“Wells! We’re fine!”
“No, we’re not.” He looked away, the hurt in Matty’s eyes gutting him. Wells knew he was a broken record, but this time was different. Wells wouldn’t accept the “soon” answer this time, but he also wouldn’t go over all the reasons why he wasn’t willing to put up with it anymore. “I’m not happy.”
“Wells, you are… You jus—”
“I want to be able to go on vacations together, to go to events together—not as friends, but as a couple. I want to touch you in public, kiss you, feel you against me.” He took a step toward Matty, placing his hands on his chest. When Matty looked past him to the house, Wells knew he was going to have to walk away. Unwilling to accept that yet, he whispered, “Matty, please, I want more. I want it all. All of you.”
Taking a step back, Matty looked away, shaking his head. “I can’t.”
“So you’re gonna let me walk away?”
Matty’s head shot up, his eyes wide. “Are you giving me an ultimatum?”
Swallowing hard, his lips twitching with a sob, Wells looked away. “Do I have to?”
“Wells, I love you. I do, but I’m not telling them.”
Wells’s eyes drifted shut as he inhaled deeply. “And I love you, Matthew Haverbrooke, more than I could ever fathom, but I won’t be someone’s secret.”
When he looked up, Matty’s eyes were stony, his mouth in a thin line. Tears burned Wells’s eyes as he started past Matty, and when he didn’t stop him, the tears started to fall. Not even when Matty’s words hit his back did Wells stop. Because if he did, he’d never leave.
“So just like that?”
Wiping his hand along his cheek as he went around the car, Wells looked over at Matty, who had turned to watch him go, and nodded his head. “Just like that.”
“So we’re over?”
His throat felt as if it were closing up. “Are you going to walk up those stairs and tell your family that you’re gay? That I’m yours?”
Matty looked over his shoulder at the house, not for a long, thoughtful pause, though. No, it was more to make sure no one had heard Wells.
That was his answer.
Getting in the car, Wells drove off with his heart in a billion pieces.
And that was why Wells Lemiere would always hate New Jersey.
Two
A few months later…
Moving his fingers along the label of his beer bottle, Matty Haverbrooke looked up at the screen, watching as the Penguins took on the Hawks on the TV in the large hotel bar where he was staying. The team he played for, the Rangers, were in town for a game against the Panthers, something he wasn’t really looking forward to. He should, though. His family was in town for the game, and he guessed he was excited for that. He hadn’t seen his mom or his brothers since Christmas, but he hated playing the Panthers.
His sister’s husband didn’t really like him, and since Jace Sinclair played for the Panthers, he continued to remind Matty of his hatred with cheap shots and hard slams into the boards. It was well deserved, Matty understood that, but it still sucked. All Matty wanted to do was play the game, but lately, even that wasn’t satisfying.