Chapter 5 #3
“Barbecue warfare.” I typed back quickly, telling Dad I would bring potatoes and that I would field complaints today, then set the phone down.
“My dad wants potatoes. Which means he forgot he already bought potatoes. Which means there will be enough potatoes to feed a minor league baseball team. Extra side dishes save us every Sunday when we all usually throw the barbecue in the garbage when he isn’t looking. ”
“He’s really that bad?”
“Oh, its awful. The sides are everything, trust me.”
“So we need the potatoes?”
“If I don’t bring them, he’ll say he didn’t ask me to bring them while staring at the empty potato spot like I personally failed the family.”
Cade’s mouth curved. “Want help?”
“With potatoes?”
“With whatever needs doing.”
I stared at him for one second too long. “You want to help me prep for family dinner?”
“You invited me to survive it. I’m preparing for impact.”
“That’s oddly strategic.”
“I’m a captain.”
“You’re a menace.”
“Also true.”
I should have said no.
Instead, because my sense of self-preservation had apparently clocked out for the morning, I stood and carried my coffee into the kitchen.
Cade followed, bringing the cronuts with him like he had already decided pastry belonged wherever I was.
The kitchen was barely big enough for two people, which became immediately clear when he stepped in behind me and took up almost all available oxygen.
I opened the pantry because looking at food was safer than looking at him. “Okay, we need potatoes, baking pans, and probably the good seasoning if Charm didn’t steal it.”
“Charm steals seasoning?”
“Charm steals everything she decides I don’t appreciate enough.”
“Smart woman.”
“Don’t encourage her. She’s already perfect.”
I lifted onto my toes to reach the top shelf where I kept the baking pans, but my fingers only brushed the edge. Before I could try again, Cade moved behind me, close enough that heat rolled down my spine, and reached over my head with entirely too much ease.
His chest did not touch my back. But for half a second, the almost of it was worse.
He pulled down the pans and set them on the counter beside me, his voice low near my ear. “This what you wanted?”
Every rational thought I had ever had abandoned me like rats off a sinking ship.
I turned slightly, and because the kitchen was tiny and Cade was Cade, that put us closer than I expected. Too close. Close enough to see the blue in his eyes shift darker when they dropped to my mouth for one reckless second before lifting again.
I swallowed. “The pans?”
His mouth twitched. “Sure.”
Oh, absolutely not.
I grabbed the pans and stepped around him with as much dignity as I could manage. “You’re very helpful for someone I distrust on principle.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain hockey player.”
“That too.” He leaned one hip against the counter, watching me pull a bag of baby potatoes from the lower cabinet. “Want me to wash those?”
I looked at the potatoes, then at him. “You know how?”
His eyebrows lifted. “You think I can’t wash potatoes?”
“I think rich people have complicated relationships with manual tasks.”
Something moved across his face too quickly for me to catch. Not offense exactly. Not even irritation. Just this subtle tightening around his eyes that made the joke land differently than I had meant it to.
“I always helped our chef, Miss Heeley, cook,” he said.
The words should have been ridiculous. Chef.
Miss Heeley. Of course Cade Mercer had grown up in a house where people had names attached to food preparation, because apparently old money came with staff and childhood memories that sounded like they belonged inside a magazine spread.
But there was something about the way he said her name that made it softer than that. Familiar. Almost fond.
“The fact that you had a chef to teach you tells me you might know more about potatoes than me.”
“Probably.”
I stared at him. “Do not expose yourself like this before meeting my family.”
He laughed and took the bag from me, his fingers brushing mine just long enough to light a fuse I had no business acknowledging. “I’ll recover.”
“From poor-people ignorance?”
His smile faded a little. Not gone. Not dramatic. Just enough that my stomach dipped before he even spoke.
“From whatever else you decide to judge me for today.”
The sentence landed quietly between us, heavier than it should have in my tiny kitchen with coffee cooling on the counter and barbecue potatoes waiting to be washed.
I looked at him, really looked, and saw the tension he was trying not to make obvious.
His jaw had gone tight, his shoulders still loose but not relaxed anymore, one hand curled lightly around the bag of potatoes like he needed somewhere to put the reaction.
“I’m not judging you,” I said, but even as the words left my mouth, they sounded thin.
His eyes stayed on mine. Serious now. Frustratingly calm. “It’s like every joke is intended to remind me of my place.”
My lips parted, but nothing clever came out. Because he was right. Holy shit, he was right. I realized I was being that girl. The one who tried so hard not to flirt that she overcorrected straight into cunty behavior.
My cheeks warmed, and this time it had nothing to do with the way his fingers had brushed mine.
“You’re right,” I said quietly.
Cade’s expression shifted, like he hadn’t expected me to give him that.
I exhaled and leaned back against the counter, suddenly too aware of the small space between us, the potatoes, the coffee, the stupid baking pans, and the fact that this man had shown up to help me with a project and Sunday dinner, and I had been pelting him with every stereotype I claimed to hate.
“I’m sorry. I’m asking you to do this huge favor for me. I’m asking you to be vulnerable, to let me into your life for an entire year, and I’m putting my hockey-player-athlete loathing on you like you personally earned all of it.”
His eyes softened, but his voice stayed careful. “Loathing?”
“I don’t hate athletes.”
“You’ve made a very passionate case against that.”
“I distrust them,” I corrected, then winced because that was not exactly better. “Which sounds awful when I say it out loud.”
“It sounds honest.”
That was worse somehow.
I looked down at the potatoes because eye contact had become a public safety hazard. “I want to work with athletes because I think maybe one day I can do both things. Protect them from becoming products and protect everyone else from forgetting they’re human. I know that sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t.”
“It kind of does.”
“No,” he said, quieter now. “It doesn’t.”
The steadiness in his voice made my throat tighten in a way I did not appreciate.
I picked at the edge of the plastic potato bag, needing something to do with my hands.
“The public sees the stats, the jerseys, the fights, the interviews, the viral clips, the hot guys with god complexes, and they either worship them or wait for them to fall apart. I don’t want to do that.
I want to humanize them. I want to show the person underneath the performance. ”
Cade watched me for a beat. “But you still distrust them.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
The question was simple.
My chest pulled tight. I could have joked. I almost did. Every instinct I had reached for sarcasm like a weapon, but Cade had already called me on that, and suddenly another jab felt cheap. Lazy. Cowardly.
I swallowed and forced myself to look at him. “Because I dated one.”
His face changed. Barely, but it changed. “A hockey player?” he asked.
I nodded once. “A big deal. Not like you, not future-NHL big, but around here? In his day? He was everything. Local legend. Charming. Talented. Everyone loved him. Everyone trusted him.” My laugh came out quiet and ugly. “And he destroyed me in a very textbook kind of way.”
Cade went still. Not cold. Not detached. Still like the room had narrowed around that sentence and every part of him was listening now.
I hated how much that made me want to keep talking.
“It wasn’t just him,” I said quickly, because if I left the sentence there, it felt too close to a confession I was not ready to make.
“I see it with my brothers too. Their friends. The guys at The Sin Bin. The athletes who walk through like the room should thank them for showing up. I see the egos, the attention, the new girl every night, the way some of them get treated like they’re above consequences because they can score or fight or skate fast enough to make people forgive anything. And maybe that made me unfair to you.”
“Maybe?”
I huffed out a laugh, but it was smaller this time. “Fine. Definitely.”
Cade stepped closer, slow enough that it didn’t feel like a threat, but enough that the air between us warmed anyway. His eyes stayed on mine, serious and frustrated and something else I did not want to name.
“We aren’t dating, though,” he said. “So why fling your shit at me?”
The bluntness startled a laugh out of me before I could stop it. Not because it was funny. Because it was true.
“Okay,” I said, pressing my lips together as embarrassment crawled up my neck. “Fair.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I forced myself to hold his stare even though every part of me wanted to hide behind the potatoes. “Look, you’re hot and you know it.”
His brows lifted.
“Do not look pleased yet. I’m not finished.”
“I would never.”
“You absolutely would.” I pointed at him because I needed the distance of accusation or I was going to start noticing his mouth again.
“Every move you make is filled with some kind of sexual promise, and you don’t even have to try.
You lean against counters like a threat.
You look at people too long. You say things in that low voice like you’re not aware it should come with a warning label.
So yes, my guard went up because I don’t want that vibe in this. ”