“He’s a smart kid then, eh?” I ask, and when I glance at the camera, he’s grinning. The perfect image of Kane as a kid. A smile that takes up his whole damn face.
“Don’t be a prick. You can’t be a heartthrobandarrogant. That’s unbecoming.”
“Big word for a small brain.”
He lets out a big, booming laugh. “I’ve missed you, man. Badly.”
Well, fuck.
“Me too. Even Miller, that sack of shit.”
He nods, his face serious. “Even Miller.”
We study each other, and then his boys start screaming in the background. He yells at them to quiet down, trying to diffuse the argument, but it only escalates. With a curse under his breath, he glances back at me with an apologetic smile.
“I’ll call you soon, alright? If you want.”
I dip my chin. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good.”
“Alright, let me go wrangle these demons.”
He hangs up.
I lower my phone to the table, swallowing the lump in my throat. A weird, guttural pain washes over me. Bennett, the miniature me, talked to me as if I were present throughout his childhood. He acted like these calls were a regular thing. What he said about Kane being sad that I live so far—it caught me off guard. I thought my brothers preferred the distance. I always preferred the distance from home, but not from them. It was just easier to let it all go than to cling to any scraps.
We talked on the phone just like brothers would. It was a normal conversation, not about missing parents or rehab centers. It was about his kids and our relationship. He said he misses me, and fuck, I miss having brothers, too. We were thick as thieves as kids, the four of us, and then we just…weren’t.
Sometimes when you grow up with siblings, and suddenly the number of you drops in a permanent, unchangeable way, it’s hard to fill the space where the one who left used to stand. It’s even harder to acknowledge that a space shaped like them exists at all. Sometimes, it’s just easier to let go. To refuse to remember all of them, even the ones who are still here.
Why did our parents have to fuck us up this badly? When Ryan died, Miller shut himself off emotionally. I was determined to get the fuck away from my parents, so I found something I was good at and worked my ass off. I didn’t have a backup plan. It was always hockey. The only other option was running the farm, and I didn’t want to do that, no matter how badly Kane wantedme to do it with him. I cut ties with my family sometime around then.
And Kane tried his best. He called both Miller and me frequently for the first few years. He tried to plan trips for us to come home and stay with him. He invited us to his wedding. We both went and stood beside him at the altar, but it felt like a sham. I didn’t even recognize the man who was described in his best man’s speech. I didn’t know him anymore. He invited us home when each of his kids were born. Sent pictures when neither of us showed up. He tried to include us. I don’t think either of us reciprocated that energy.
Eventually, he gave up.
A shaky breath leaves my chest, and then I’m crying. Really crying. I bury my face in my hands, wondering how different things would be if Ryan were here. Would my dad be sober? Would my mom eventually have gotten clean? Would I have still gone pro? Would I have a morsel of a relationship with my brothers? Would I want a family? Kids?
Who would I be?
Who would still be around to care about me?
I know things have gotten bad with my family, and I don’t pretend to want to go home, hold hands, and sing campfire songs, but I have a nephew who wants to be just like me. I have two more that I wouldn’t even recognize without social media. I want toknowthem. I want to know Kane. I want to fix whatever was broken so badly in Miller.
I want my brothers in my life.
I wipe my eyes, hating the ache in my chest. My instinct is to call Lemmy, ask her to come over, and let her sit with me while I get this out. Eventually, I’ll kiss her. She’ll kiss me back. Our clothes will come off and I’ll feel wanted and satiated by the time we’re finished. She’ll spend the night, and I’ll send her home with a coffee and a kiss in the morning.
We’re each other’s therapists. I don’t know how it happened, or when, but we fuck each other to feel better about our misery. We both have no interest in settling down, and neither of us is ever going to bring a kid into the world with our genetics, so it works. It’s medicine for us. We’re friends the other ninety-five percent of the time.
If you ever wondered why I am the way I am, why I don’t share my personal shit with anyone, it’s because of this. If I let myself think about it for too long, nevermind talk about it, a hole opens up in my chest that threatens to eat me alive. It’s a dark fucking head to live in. I wake up to nightmares of my dead baby brother. I refuse to have kids because I’m afraid that what my parents have is hereditary. I don’t want to get married because I don’t want a family that could ever wind up like my own, and who's to say I don’t end up like my mom as a parent? Or my dad?
I don’t want to feel this. I choose not to. I hate feelinganyof it. It fucking kills me. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to be Boston Black, the son of two people who destroyed him. I want to be Boston Black, the professional hockey player who nobody will ever know on a deeper level than what I show them.
I dial Lemmy. She’s over within the hour. By the time I’m finished venting, we’re stumbling up the stairs and leaving a trail of clothes behind us, and then she’s on top of me and my head shuts off. Just for a blink. Just enough for me to keep breathing.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
boston
