Page 56 of Blind Spot
“To protect you—“
“The garage door.” He pointed at it through the wall. “You taught me to lower it before I was all the way inside. You taught me that, Rook, like it was a hockey drill, edge work at home. I’ve used the front door of my own house exactly twice. We have two separate Christmases—five years of that. My mother cooking for a son who has nothing to say about his life—“ His voice cracked. “And I let it all mean love. Every piece. I told myself, this is what love from a careful man looks like.”
I sat there, and the worst part was that under every item he listed, I felt the original reason glowing like a coal. I had him set up the apartment because a beat writer in our first year had asked around about who lived where. The NDA happenedbecause I heard about a cleaner who sold a story about a player on another team. Every brick had a reason, and that reason was love, but it still built a wall.
“This isn’t about Kovac and Toronto,” he said. “Don’t reach for that. We’ve covered it.” He put his knuckles on the table and leaned on them. “This is the thing under Toronto. You’d rather handle me than trust me, and you’ve been doing it ever since.”
I scoured my brain for a counterexample.
He watched me searching. He knew exactly what I was doing.
“Yeah,” he said, softer. “That’s what I thought.”
“I was protecting you,” I said.
“From what?” He spread his arms. “Name it. Heath has known for three seasons. Pratt’s known longer, you can see it in him, and don’t tell me you can’t. Kovac sat across a table from you and asked if you really thought nobody could see. The league has Heath and Kieran sitting on a bench with rings on, Rook, so name it. Name the thing. What are you protecting me from?”
And I reached for it. I reached all the way down, but I couldn’t quite get there. It was a room inside me with no handle on my side of the door. What came out instead was:
“From what happens, and what the league does to—“ I stopped. “From what happens.”
“You don’t know,” Varga said. “You built all of this, and you don’t actually know why.”
“I know enough.”
“Többet akarok ennél.”
I looked back at him. It couldn’t mean what he’d said it did.
“Buffalo,” he said. “We were lying in bed with the snow coming down. You asked me what it meant, and I told you it meant go to sleep.” His voice flattened. “It meansI want more than this.I said it to your face, Rook. I said the truest thing I’ve ever said to you, out loud, in the room with you, and I put it in a language you couldn’t read because that was the only place it was safe.You’re not the only one who built a locked room. Mine’s just smaller. Mine’s in Hungarian.”
I stood. I reached toward him and the back of his head, the place my hand had landed a thousand times. It would be the cue, thecome here, you’ve been loud enough.It was the only language I had left in my body.
He stepped back from me.
“Don’t.” His eyes were glistening with unshed tears. “That’s the thing. That’s the exact thing. You put your hand there and I go quiet, and the quiet feels like peace, but you’ve been mistaking it for agreement. I go quiet because I love you, not because we settled anything. We have never settled anything together. You decide, and then you touch me, and I stop talking.”
I put my hand down.
“I’m sorry about Kovac,” I said. “I should have asked you first.”
He exhaled as he opened and closed his hands. “You’re sorry about the smallest thing in the room. You’re apologizing for the one thing I can point to. Okay.” He nodded slowly. “I’ve let you do this. That’s on me. I know that. I let you run all of it and never pushed or asked because asking felt like—“
He stopped. I watched him swallow the end of the sentence.
The chowder went cold on the table between us, both bowls full.
“Luki.” I said it the way I’d said it a hundred times; the way it worked.
“Don’t.” He didn’t raise his voice this time. “Not that. Not tonight.”
“Lucas—“
“That’s no better. There’s no name that fixes this. You’ve had five years of nights to talk about this, and now you’re acting like the problem is which name you use.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Then what are you doing?”
