I Want You Back (Want You #1)(35)

“Yes.” He stuck out his lower lip in an exaggerated pout and gave me puppy dog eyes.

“Pathetic.” I flicked a piece of popcorn at him. “Is that hangdog look something that works with the ladies to get you laid?”

“Depends. Lately, though, I need more of a challenge.”

“A potential conquest resisting your charms?”

He shrugged. “I had drinks with this woman Tuesday night. Testing the waters to see whether I wanted to spend time with her over the weekend. Everything was going fine. I excused myself to use the restroom . . . and she followed me. She got on her knees and blew me. Right there in the bathroom. Then afterward, she wandered over to the mirror and touched up her lipstick. She smiled and said it was still early in the week and she hoped when I was choosing a playmate for the weekend that her pregame preview would move her to the top of the list.”

“And . . . did it?”

“God, Jax, that’s not the point. The point is I’ve gotten into such a predictable routine with women that even the ones I’m going out with for the first time know what to expect. Makes me feel sleazy.” He tossed a piece of popcorn in the air and caught it in his mouth. “So sleazy begets easy and I want to be done with it.”

I snagged a handful of popcorn. “I don’t know how you do the dating thing anyway.”

“Like you have room to talk.”

“I didn’t date. I fucked. You wine and dine them. You bring them to family functions. Some of them you even see more than one time. That gives them a false sense of hope that they might be the one to get you to finally settle down.” I pointed at him. “I never did that. Just sex, pure and simple. A drink in the hotel bar. A trip to my room. And if they really knocked my socks off, I’d order them room service the next morning before I hopped on the team bus and got the hell out of town.”

My little brother didn’t respond for several long moments, so I knew the bastard was stalling and whatever he wanted to ask me wouldn’t be nice.

“What?”

“Was that how it played out when you were cheating on Lucy? You needed a warm body, she wasn’t there, so any female would do?”

I stood and paced . . . Guilty feet couldn’t sit still or something. “I never cheated on Lucy the first year we were together. Never. I couldn’t wait to get back to her, even when I hated that she refused to move to Chicago during the season. So yeah, that was a point of contention between us. Then she was pregnant with my child, but she didn’t want to be with me in the city where I was based. She needed her family, which totally bit her in the ass because both her mom and her sister moved out of the Cities within six months of Mimi’s birth. She couldn’t work because she had to care for our baby. The married guys on the team . . . their wives would’ve rallied around her and helped had she and Mimi been in Chicago. But no, she wouldn’t even ask Mom and Dad for help here. And I know you offered, but she sent you away too.” I faced him. “I’m not making excuses for fucking around on her. That is all on me. All of it.”

“But?” he supplied casually.

“But nothing. Lucy shut me out from being with her and Mimi. Was it a reaction on her part to me cheating on her? Probably. If I never would’ve cheated would she have still shut me out? Probably. That is just how Lucy is.”

“And you loved her anyway?”

“Yes.” I sighed. “Christ. I think I was in love with her by our third date. The stupid thing? We didn’t even know each other’s last names at that point.”

Nolan frowned. “Why didn’t I know any of this?”

“Because it was our funny backstory. Our secret. And it . . . she . . .” I jammed a hand through my hair in frustration. “She liked me for me, Nolan. Not Jaxson, the pro hockey player. Not Jaxson, heir to the Lund empire. It was the first—and still might be the only—time I can say with certainty that the attraction was honest. Then I betrayed her and did the worst possible thing to her; the same thing her dad had done to her mother. That reinforced her belief men are incapable of monogamy and everything that had been good between us was just a lie.”

A pause stretched for several long moments until Nolan spoke again. “Sounds like Lucy has always had some issues, bro.”

“Yeah, well, don’t we all? Mine has always been entitlement. And make fun of me or whatever, but Lucy giving me her heart, choosing to love me, wasn’t an entitlement. It was something I’d earned. But instead of holding her heart like it was something precious? I treated that fucker like I could stomp on it, shred it, break it because it belonged to me.”

“Jax. Man. Calm down.”

I continued to pace. “This eats at me. If a man ever treated Mimi the way I treated Lucy? They’d never find his fucking body. How am I supposed to retain hope that Lucy could ever forget? Or forgive me? Am I just an idiot to think she’d ever want to get—” I snapped my mouth shut.

“Whoa. Are you saying that you want to get back together with her?” Nolan said.

“Yes. If she gives me the tiniest sign, I’d be all in with her again in a fucking heartbeat.” I finally looked at my brother. “Why does that surprise you?”

“Because you’re setting yourself up for failure with her again.”

“So I’m doomed to want with her what we once had and to never get it back? Even if it’d be better this time because I know what we’re—what she’s—worth?”