Wasted Time (The Steel City #1)

46. Declan

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

declan

It’s mid-January and life has resumed. It hasn’t returned to normal, but that was the whole goal.

I need to avoid normal like the fucking plague.

New Years passed, and unlike Christmas, I shut my phone off for the entirety of it and went out on the town with my teammates. It was another holiday spent away from my friends, but I’m used to missing New Year's Eves, depending on my schedule. This holiday was easier to stomach.

We drank, we laughed, and I kissed the rim of a shot glass when the clock struck twelve.

Happy fucking New Year.

Just as I expected, the ache hasn’t completely vanished after a couple of weeks, though I was holding onto hope that it would. I really hate this feeling, like lead in my chest, but I have to push through it. It’s the only option I have.

It still hurts. I can’t deny that. I talk to my friends every single day, just not her. Never her. It’s harder than I imagined it would be, but I’m doing it and I’m sticking to it and one day I think I'll feel okay again.

It can’t feel like this forever.

My mind’s been more at peace than it has been in the past two years this way. I can’t worry about her or pine after her if I spend every day doing everything I can to keep her out of my mind. I just have to stay busy. Then, she can only haunt me in my dreams.

Trust me, she does that often.

Thankfully, when I sat Forker and Boston down after New Years and word vomited that I’m going to need them to keep me in line, they took the job seriously. I need my head in the game, and I need to keep my mind off lips that don’t belong to me—wondering what they’re doing, waiting for them to belong to someone else.

As a result, my game has not suffered and it’s a miracle that it hasn’t. Part of the reason is because we seldomly ever stop, and if we do, we’re typically still together. It’s hockey or it’s boys time, and either way, my head remains where it needs to be.

Away from her.

We’ve started mixing in drills with just the three of us, more gym sessions as a group, and these late practices for ourselves, just to keep my game on par with where it’s got to stay. The boys get it. It alleviates some of the pressure from my shoulders and keeps me on track. I don’t have to relive what’s been going on because they don’t ask many questions.

Boston is especially great for that. He barely blinked, never mind ask what this is all about. He doesn’t need to know what’s wrong, just how to help me. And he does. Every day, he shows up without fail.

Forker would probably be all up in my business, poking and prodding me with questions if he didn’t already know the truth of it. That’s just Forker, but I trust that he’d never speak a word of what I tell him to anyone else. I’ve seen him nearly rip a guy’s skin off his bones for talking badly about me at a bar. He’s my vault.

I appreciate that. I appreciate them.

I swing my bag over my shoulder, tossing my hat onto my freshly washed hair. It’s dark out. We just finished another one of those late-night skates. We wrapped up around ten but shot the shit in the locker room for an extra forty minutes afterward. It feels a bit like college. Higher stakes, of course, but the game feels fun again. Like it’s the only thing that matters.

The parking lot is dimly lit. Forker and Boston left just a few minutes ago, so it’s only my vehicle and Coach’s left. He’ll be in there for a while yet, going over game plays. He watched from the boards for a bit tonight, and when we spotted him, he nodded like he was proud of our dedication.

The whole team can see the improvement of our line. It’s undeniable.

I toss open my car door and pull myself inside, treasuring the ache of my limbs. My whole body is sore. I respect that feeling. I bask in it. It means I'm working harder than I was last week. That’s the goal, all the way to the playoffs.

I quickly check my messages, but there’s not much apart from my dad texting me about coming down to visit soon. My phone is pretty unimportant to me lately. If it’s not the ‘Big Dogs’ chat popping off, or Seth giving me a call, I stay off it for the most part.

I head out of the arena, feeling more at ease than I have in a while.

There’s a sense of serenity in my life right now. It’s quiet. Easy. I have one goal and one purpose, and the rest of my world is calm, the waves settled. I can feel the storm brewing in the distance, but I’m certain that I can avoid it. Whatever happens next cannot be as bad as the weather I just went through .

I’m on the freeway when my phone buzzes. I glance at the screen on my dash, a knee-jerk reaction, and my heart lurches to my throat. My foot slips onto the break. The car throws my body forward against my seatbelt, sending my chest flying toward the steering wheel.

Ouch.

Lucky.

Fuck.

Fuck!

The waves aren’t calm anymore.

One glimpse of her name and the waves are thrashing against the shore, threatening to pull me out into the endless sea, to drown me. They promise to ruin every inch of progress I’ve fought this hard for.

I quickly check my mirrors and pull myself back into my lane, my heart slamming against my ribs. Her name is still there. I stare at it, wide eyed and white knuckled, until it vanishes.

What the fuck?

I… I can’t answer it. Right? Not after everything that’s happened. Not after all the progress I’ve made. If I pick up and she pulls that same bullshit she did before—sitting on the other line without speaking, making me worry sick, what will I do?

I’ll slide right back to the headspace that I was in a month ago.

It’s torture. I don’t want these half-ass interactions fucking with my head.

I can’t do it anymore. I told her that.

I’m still trying to shake off the shitty feeling in my gut when my phone rings for a second time. I freeze, my eyes narrowing. Again, it’s Penny calling. The urge to answer is a powerful one. My hand twitches toward my dash, but I pull it back just as quickly.

No.

I know where I stand. I meant what I said. I don’t want her to contact me anymore. She has the rest of them. She answers the rest of them. I’m the only one she seems to put through the ringer the way she does. Whatever she wants to say to me, I don’t think I want to hear it.

I shut my phone off before I can do something stupid, like answer and hope that she is calling to say she misses me. When I finally pull up to my building, I press my forehead to the steering wheel, trying to ignore the way I feel like spilling my lunch onto the sidewalk.

It’s been a month. Why now? Why during the best season of my life?

I want to answer her. My heart literally jolts when I see her name. I want to hear her voice; to have her apologize and tell me she wants to fix this. But odds are that’s not why she’s calling. I can’t accept anything but that. It’s not enough.

I’m not her bandage for when she feels like shit.

And even if she says exactly what I want her to, am I ready to hear it?

The answer is no. I’m not. I can’t just be expected to bow down to her schedule.

My hands are still shaking as I open the door to my condo. I want to text Forker and tell him, get his opinion maybe, but I need to give the guy some breathing room. He does enough for me. He’s had to endure more than his share of my venting about her. He needs a break as much as I do at this point.

I keep my phone off all night and leave it in my kitchen. It’s the only way I’ll sleep. It’s the only way to resist calling her back. I have a game tomorrow. I need to remain in the zone. I keep it off through morning skate the next day, too. I keep it off during the game against Chicago.

Only after we’ve won and I’m back at home, on my couch with a beer, do I find the balls to turn my phone back on.

I take a swig as it reboots, my eyes flickering to the highlights from the game. My phone begins to vibrate incessantly in my palm. Over and over. It does not relent.

Dread sprouts in my stomach. My brow furrows as my list of notifications grows, and grows, and keeps growing.

Penny called over twenty times. Twenty.

Seth called ten.

Only a few text messages.

Penny

Please answer.

Please, please answer me. Please.

I need you.

My throat goes dry. I sit upward, slowly placing my beer on the table.

Seth

Declan, call me back ASAP. I’ll keep calling.

Answer the phone.

ANSWER YOUR FUCKING PHONE!

I don’t think about it, I press the call button and dial Seth before I finish reading his last message. It barely rings twice before he answers, but he doesn’t speak right away. There’s some shuffling, and then a door shutting softly and immediately, I’m talking.

You know how sometimes you just know that something bad has happened?

Something bad has happened. I can feel it.

My whole body knows that my life is about to change. My stomach is in knots, my skin feels cold, and my clothes are hurting my body. This is it. That moment they talk about. The part where your life divides in two: before and after the moment it all went to shit.

“Seth?”

A short pause.

“Hey.”

“What’s going on?” It takes everything in me to get that question out.

He lets out a long breath and then something happens that makes my chest crack in two, right down the middle. I clutch the phone so tight that my knuckles ache.

Seth breaks down into loud, overwhelming sobs on the other end of the phone. Big, forceful cries that I have never once heard come from him before.

My eyes burn. My hands tremble. I’m going to be sick. Something terrible has happened. Something very, very terrible and oh god, what the hell do I do? I’m too far away. I’m in another fucking country.

I bury my face in my hands, holding the phone to my ear.

“Seth?” I whisper. I’m pleading with him now.

Please say something. Please tell me that everything is okay.

Oh god. My head is going fuzzy. My stomach is flipping around and around, heading up my throat as a means to escape.

I stare at the table. Waiting. Listening. He’s crying so hard that I can hear his agony—I can feel that guttural pain that he’s going through. I’m a sitting duck, so far away. I can’t help him. I can’t hug my best friend while he loses it on the other end of the line .

“Talk to me,” I beg, my voice quiet.

He sucks in a gasping, shaky breath. A sound of torment explodes from him, and he coughs to try and get it out. After a long second, he starts speaking hurriedly, like he doesn’t know how much oxygen he’s got left and he needs me to hear this.

“You have to come home. Now.”

I curl my hand into a fist, my eyes burning as I shut them. “What happened?”

“It’s Wyatt,” he says, his voice breaking. He sucks in another sharp breath, trying to calm himself and failing.

My heart stops beating, waiting for the rest of that sentence.

What about Wyatt?

Where is Wyatt?

What happened to Wyatt ?

“He… he tried to take his own life last night . ”

The world stops so abruptly that I waver in my seat. I literally feel it slam on its axis and refuse to move. I jerk forward, clutching my stomach as if to keep my own guts inside, disbelief washing over me.

No.

No, that can’t be true.

Wyatt?

Wyatt?

No, Wyatt is… I would have noticed. Someone would have. Wyatt isn’t the type of guy who would do that shit. Sure, he’s quiet, but he’s happy, like all the damn time. It’s annoying, really. He can be a little shit sometimes, but he’s always being a little shit with a smile on his face. He’s the last person I’d expect to…

This is a mistake. Has to be.

“What?” I breathe out.

“It’s bad, Dec,” Seth says. “They don’t know if he’s going to make it. Penny was his emergency contact. She called us all last night in fucking hysterics. We tried to get a hold of you. We couldn’t tell you in a text.”

Oh my god.

Yeah, I’m going to be sick.

I clutch my stomach and rush to the sink, my breathing now erratic. I feel lightheaded. I can’t see right. The whole room is fuzzy and I’m hot. I’m so fucking hot.

It’s real.

Oh fuck, it’s real, isn’t it?

I drop the phone next to the kitchen sink and I heave. Within seconds, the contents of my stomach are spilling out of me.

I clutch the counter to keep standing. If not, I’ll fall.

Wyatt.

Oh god, Wyatt .

I must groan out his name between retches, because Seth starts trying to calm me down on the other end. He calls my name repeatedly while I struggle to keep the rest of my dinner down.

“Declan,” I hear Seth say loudly through the phone. I quickly put it on speaker and try to catch my breath. He’s crying harder now, that type of cry that you never want to hear again. “I love you, buddy. I love you so much. Please, come home. We need you here.”

I suck in a breath, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I press my forehead to the cold kitchen sink and shut my eyes. I focus on my breathing, trying my hardest not to pass out.

Wyatt.

“I’m on my way.”

January 10th:

Wyatt

Just checking in. You know I love you, right? Brothers. Always.