Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 82888 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82888 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
I reach out, take him by the wrist, and I have to push my fingers against his to get him to open his hand. I put my palm against his and squeeze tight.
He looks down at our union, a muscle in his jaw indicating the tight clench of his teeth. When his gaze lifts to mine, he looks defiant. “I let one of my teammates’ girlfriends give me a blow job.”
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t shocked, not by the crude nature of what he said but by the absolute dishonest phrasing of his confession.
“That’s not all there is to that story. You’re not telling me all of it.”
“There’s no more to tell. All that matters is I let her do it. I wanted her to do it. I let it happen, knowing it was wrong.”
“No,” I say adamantly, shaking my head. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“You don’t know me,” he growls.
I squeeze his hand harder. “I know you wouldn’t do that to a friend. There’s more to the story. Were you drunk?”
Coen blinks at me.
“That’s it, isn’t it? You were drunk.”
“Yes, but I knew what I was doing.”
“Then there’s still more to the story,” I assert. “Tell me.”
“There’s not.”
“Tell me,” I demand. “You’ve come this far. Might as well tell it all and let me decide how to judge you.”
Coen huffs in frustration and tries to pull his hand away. I don’t let go, so he takes his other hand and scrubs it through his hair. “I thought they’d broken up. She told me they had, and they hadn’t been dating long, anyway. It wasn’t serious, so—”
“I knew it,” I say triumphantly. “I knew you couldn’t betray a friend.”
“They weren’t broken up, though,” he says, and the pain in his voice hurts my heart.
“She lied to you?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s not your fault. That’s on her.”
Coen shakes his head. “No, Tillie. When a man is with a woman, his friends don’t go there, not ever. It was wrong, even if they had been truly broken up.”
I consider that a moment, and I see his point. “And that’s what’s bothering you? That’s the reason why you think you’re undeserving of good things? Why you think you’re a bad person?”
“Yes, and the fact that I couldn’t make it right. The worst is that I couldn’t apologize.”
Coen proceeds to tell me in detail how that night went down. I don’t really want the details of him being intimate with another woman, but it is some balm to know it wasn’t a great experience for him. That he committed a disloyal act for something that was decidedly lacking in reward. He shares how he resolved to tell his friend Kyle what happened, only to find out before the flight left that they were not in fact broken up. That the woman—Darcy—talked Coen into waiting to tell Kyle until after the team returned so as not to mess up his game. How Coen couldn’t get on the plane because he had a fever, so he agreed to wait.
“I knew he might hate me,” Coen says as he winds down, his shoulders sagging as if exhausted. “But I knew it would ease my conscience if I told him the truth and apologized. It never happened, though. That fucking plane went down and with it, my chance to make things right.”
I don’t know what to say. It’s an untenable situation for anyone.
“I’m not sure I can really describe it, Tillie, but my survivor’s guilt is all mixed up with this guilt over doing that to Kyle and not being able to rectify it. They’re so entwined and with each of them eating away at me, I don’t know where one starts and the other ends. It’s like, if I just had to live with the fact that they all died, I could be okay, but knowing I did something so low and dirty to Kyle tears me up. I think about it every goddamn day, and it’s killing me. It’s why I can’t be with the team. It’s why I’m quitting hockey, because I don’t deserve to be a part of that family anymore.”
My heart cracks wide open at the pain in his voice. “Coen…”
“You don’t understand,” he continues, the words pouring out as his breathing becomes erratic. “Hockey was my salvation from a cold and unloving home. Hockey led me to a new family. It kept me together growing up, and in my adult life, there were no greater friends than the men who died on that plane. They were my family, and I fucking betrayed one of them.
“And then they wanted to rebuild the team, and I’m supposed to build new bonds with these players, and I can’t. I can’t put myself out there. I can’t let them think I’d ever be a good friend or that they could trust me, because they can’t. I don’t fucking deserve it at all.”