Page 180 of Twisted Needs

I can picture the apartment he barely spent any time in because he was constantly on the road, the overnight flights, the early morning practices, and the endless cycle of games, travel, interviews, and expectations that consumed every part of his life. Somehow, in the middle of all of that, he also had to learn how to be a parent. He had to carry the exhaustion and the responsibility of being a twenty-year-old trying to build a hockey career while raising a toddler, a kid that wasn’t supposed to be his and whose own father didn’t want him.

“Andy.” The way he says my name makes my chest tighten. “I never wanted another life.”

I look down at my hands. The words should make me feel better. Instead, they make me feel worse, because I know he means them. I know Luca well enough to recognize when he’s lying, and if there’s one thing my brother has never lied about, it’s how much he loves me.

The problem is that love and sacrifice have always been tangled together in my head. I can still remember sitting on the examination table while Luca argued with the doctor because he thought they weren’t taking my concussion seriously enough. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-three or twenty-four, and had only had me for about a year. Most people that age were worried about rent or relationships or whether they were drinking too much on weekends.

Luca was threatening medical professionals because somebody stitched my forehead crooked. How the hell am I supposed to look at a lifetime of moments like that and not see sacrifice? And now I’m thinking about every time he’s told me he loves me and every time I’ve immediately followed it up with a reason he shouldn’t. The realization makes me feel a little sick.

“I chose you.” Luca’s voice is quieter now, but somehow it lands even harder.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.” I finally look at him. “You know it up here.” He taps the side of his head. “You can repeat the facts. You can tell people I adopted you. You can tell them I fought for custody. You can tell them I raised you.” His hand drops to his chest. “But you don’t know it here.”

The lump in my throat becomes almost painful.

“I chose you,” Luca says again. The words aren’t angry as much as they’re pleading. “I chose you every day. I chose you when you were easy, and I chose you when you were a pain in my ass. I chose you when you were screaming at me, and I chose you when you wouldn’t talk to me for a week because I grounded you.”

A laugh catches in my throat and immediately breaks apart.

“You keep talking about everything I gave up, but you never talk about what I got.”

My eyebrows pull together. “What?”

“You.”

The single word hits harder than everything else combined. And suddenly, standing here beside him while the sun sinks lower over the lake, I realize how unfair that is. Not to me, but to him.

“I think…” My voice catches. “I think I stopped telling you things because I was trying to protect you.” Luca’s eyebrows pull together slightly. “I know..it sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”

“No,” he says quietly. “It doesn’t.”

“Yeah, it honestly does.”

I kept thinking that if I could just figure things out on my own, it’d make your life easier. So whenever something was wrong, I stopped talking about it. The words feel heavier than I expected. “I kept thinking that if I could just figure things out on my own, it’d make your life easier.”

Luca lets out a long breath beside me. “You don’t have to earn me.”

I close my eyes immediately. You don’t have to earn me.

A lump rises in my throat so quickly I can’t speak around it. For years, I’ve been acting like Luca’s love is something I have to repay. Something I have to deserve, or something I could lose if I became too difficult.

“I’m sorry I shut you out.” Luca doesn’t say anything. “I don’t want to do that anymore,” I continue. “I don’t want us to be those people who only talk when something explodes.”

A small smile tugs at the corner of Luca’s mouth. “That would eliminate eighty percent of our conversations.”

Despite everything, I laugh. “I mean it.” My eyes meet his. “I can’t promise I’m suddenly going to tell you everything.”

“Good,” Luca says immediately. “That sounds horrible. I personally would love to be spared the cutesy little things your boyfriend does…”

I laugh again. “But I’ll try.”

The smile disappears from his face. Emotion flickers across Luca’s expression so quickly that I almost miss it. Then he reaches over and wraps an arm around my shoulders. “I can work with that.” And finally, the realization crosses that eighteen years of misunderstandings are slowly loosening their grip.

CHAPTER 52

FRESH NEW MODEL