Page 61 of Blind Spot
If I went, he’d rush to put himself back together. Staying where I was gave him room to let Heath and Kieran inside for once.
It didn’t last long. The shudders slowed, and he straightened. Heath and Kieran stepped back.
“Okay,” Heath said.
Rook nodded. His face was wrecked, and nobody in the room pretended otherwise.
They didn’t stay. I’d expected something else. Maybe stay for coffee, or conduct a summit, a planning session with bullet points. Instead, Kieran picked up his jacket and said, “You know where we live.”
Heath passed me on his way to the door and put a hand on my shoulder. He didn’t say anything.
They let themselves out the front door, like it was nothing. The latch clicked.
Rook stood by the couch, wiping his face with the heel of his hand. He looked at me, eyes wet, and he was more visible than ever.
I set the glasses down on the bookshelf and crossed the room to him.
Chapter sixteen
Rook
Varga reached one arm around me while he put his free hand flat on my chest. I held on.
He was quiet. It was the version of him that only I got to see. He pulled back an inch to look at me. “We’re still here.”
We ended up at the kitchen table. Varga held one of my hands on the surface, weaving his fingers together with mine.
“I should have told you,” I said. “I’m sorry, and I’m going to change and be better at this.”
That was all. I meant to say more, but I didn’t have more.
I watched him process it. His jaw moved once. He gripped my hand tighter. There was nookayorthank you.He waited.
“There’s a name,” I said. “I haven’t told you. In fact, I’ve never told anyone. I should have given it to you a long time ago because it’s part of every wall I’ve built around us.”
He didn’t move.
“Alan Easton,” I said.
I hadn’t said his name out loud since he left the team, back when I was a longshot kid from Maine who knew every morning he was one awful month from a bus to the minors.
“Who is he?” Varga asked.
“He was a veteran on my first NHL team, over a decade in, near retirement. I was a terrified rookie, Mikkelsen pumped up to eleven. One morning he told the room I deserved to be there.” I rubbed my thumb on the back of his hand. “That one line meant so much. He kept me in the league. He didn’t have to say it, but he did.”
“Okay,” Varga said.
“And then something got out about him. Someone said they’d seen him with a man. I never heard the details. I’m not sure it was true.” I kept my eyes on Varga’s face. “It went through the room in three days. By February, he was a healthy scratch. By the deadline he had been traded somewhere that traded him somewhere else. In less than two years, he was out of hockey. I never heard his name again.”
Varga leaned back slightly.
“I didn’t say a word against him,” I said. “I said nothing for him either. Just stopped sitting in the stall next to his. He was the most decent man on the team, and the only thing I did about it was move three feet down the bench.” I kept my voice level while my heart pounded. “And I decided that February that nobody was ever going to see the same thing in me. It worked. I got to stay. He didn’t.”
The kitchen was silent. The refrigerator hummed.
“Five years ago,” I said, “you got hurt, and I started showing up. Soon, I had something I thought I needed to protect. I followed my instincts and bought this house for us, and I made our cleaner sign the NDA. Then I taught you to assume someone was watching.” I swallowed hard. “Two nights ago you asked me what I was protecting you from, and I couldn’t answer because the answer was my first team—what a locker room could do to a man in three days—and I couldn’t dig down deep enough to show it to you.”
Varga didn’t say anything for a long moment. We sat in silence. Then he pulled his hand back, got up, and walked around behind me. He wrapped his arms around me and pressed his lips to the top of my head.
