Rough Love (Tannen Boys 1)

Confusion swirls through my brain, seeds of hope wanting what he’s saying to be true. But there’s no way. Nikki said, and Bruce even admitted, that he was studying with her.

Studying?

Oh, my God. Could I have been this stupid?

“Tutoring. Not dating? Not going to parties with her? Not kissing her, fucking her, falling in love with her?” I need clarity, a big dose of it, from Bruce right the fuck now.

“Tutoring. That’s it. She might’ve been at some of the parties, I don’t know. We weren’t even friends, didn’t run in the same circles. I never kissed her, certainly sure as hell never fucked her, and I’ve only loved three women in my life. Mom, Shay, and you. Naomi? Just tutoring.”

The foundational axis of my world shifts helter-skelter, making me nauseous. I press my hands to my belly, trying to stop the rolling. “What the fuck? Why would Nikki . . .? Why didn’t you tell me all that? I would’ve believed you!”

He stands up, pacing and running his fingers through his dark hair, making it stand up wildly. “Because I was fucking embarrassed, Al. You were so damn smart, with all these big dreams. Meanwhile, for all I could do on the football field, I was barely making it in the classroom. And I didn’t want to hold you back, didn’t want to be the dumb jock who couldn’t even carry on a conversation with your smart-ass friends. I didn’t want you to know that I was failing English so badly, I had to get a tutor just so I could pass and play. Because football was my only way out, my only way to become something besides a farmer, my only way to keep you.”

I stand up too, pointing at him accusingly. “You are a stupid son of a bitch, you know that?” His lips curl. “Not because of some damn English class but because I was never embarrassed by you. Damn it, I loved you!”

I push at his chest, but he doesn’t move in the slightest.

“I would’ve loved you as a football player, as a farmer, as a fucking frog in a swampy pond. Don’t put your own insecurities on me. You pushed me away, made me doubt you. And you have no idea how much that hurt me . . . no idea what you did.”

It was a pivotal moment for me.

The loss of everything I thought I was going to have, going to do, with Bruce by my side. Breaking up with him had been an attempt at self-preservation, but it’d been a one-eighty turn that sent things on a roller coaster ride that routinely went off track. It had utterly destroyed me, and I wasn’t the one who picked up my shattered pieces. No, that’d been Jeremy. He’d picked up the Humpty Dumpty mess of me and glued me together in a Frankenstein I couldn’t even recognize anymore.

Hateful indignation makes him sneer at me, hostile and ugly. “Yeah, you seemed really torn up about it when I came to see you.” He dismisses me with a wave of his thick-fingered hand.

“You didn’t come to see me!” I argue, working to keep my voice down. We’re getting louder the madder we get, our hurt and pain amping up our heart rates and volume. But I don’t want the boys to hear any of this. I glance toward the pond where they’re playing, happily oblivious to the turmoil going on so nearby.

Bruce follows my gaze and steps closer to me, keeping his voice low and gravelly. “I came to see you at school, thought maybe I could do some stupid grand gesture to get you back. It was Bobby’s idea, but when I got there, you were sitting with another guy, Allyson. Pressed up against him from knee to hip, his arm around you playing with your hair, and you were holding his hand. You looked at him like you looked at me back then, like he was your everything.”

“Jeremy,” I breathe out, the name sticking in my throat. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I knew what I was seeing, Allyson. You broke up with me and you were falling in love with him. I didn’t want to get in your way, never wanted to hold you back. I wanted you to be happy, even if it wasn’t me, even if it was some asshole in fucking . . . khakis.”

He says khakis like it’s the world’s worst curse, his breathing jagged and rough. It killed him to feel that way back then and still hurt him to say it even now.

“I wish you had said something—” I start, but he interrupts me.

“So you could cut me down in front of your fancy-schmancy new guy? Fuck that.”

He turns away, grabbing his bag. I want to stop him. I want to tell him everything. But he’s not listening, too caught up in his feelings and what he thinks he saw so long ago. Just like I was when Nikki told me all that stuff. All those lies.