Chapter Four
Leo
After a night spent tossing and turning, I’m embarrassingly early to whatever it is the team is doing this morning in Old Port, the downtown section of Portland that hugs the Casco Bay.
Twenty-year-old Leo would’ve been late to this and hungover after a night well spent. Now I live in a coastal town that looks like a retiree’s wet dream and can’t comfortably sleep on any of the mattresses I’ve tried in the last four months. Life comes at you fast.
To kill time, I park a mile away from where we’re meeting and return one of the five missed calls from my kid sister as I meander toward my destination.
“I want to see the view.” Nola holds her iPhone too close to her face, as if it’ll make my surroundings more clear to her. “Is it prettier than home?”
I flip the camera so she can see what I see. Fishing boats and fancy yachts dot the expanse of water, gently swaying in the swell. The sunlight glints off the rippling surface, decorating the long stretch of blue that leads to distant islands with flecks of gold. “You tell me. Better than L.A.?”
“Whoa. That’s a lot of boats,” she remarks. “Are you going to become a yacht bro?”
Reverting my camera phone back to forward facing, I dodge other walkers on Commercial Street. “What do you know about yacht bros?” I swear, some days I think she’s thirteen going on twenty-three.
A couple slows down, recognition dawning on their faces.
I pull the brim of my hat lower and tug my hoodie into place atop it for good measure, avoiding eye contact.
“That Mom told me to stay away from them,” Nola explains, “and anyone else who can be described as a something bro. Finance bros, especially.”
“Wise words.”
“If my hockey career doesn’t work out, I think I’ll be a finance bro when I grow up,” Milo, her twin, declares off camera. He’s in a phase where he pretends he’s above FaceTiming me but will blow up my phone with a hundred texts a day.
Compared to me, the twins look like they swam in the opposite end of the gene pool with Dad’s light hair and Mom’s brown eyes. Between that and the nineteen-year age difference, we’re not the most conventional siblings in the world. I changed diapers in the NHL offseason for Chrissake.
“Good on you, Milo.” Finance might serve him better than this fickle fucking sport that has exiled me to Maine, of all places.
“This is my call, Milo. And hockey won’t work out for you if you keep half-assing it,” Nola quips.
Milo scoffs. “The hell do you know about it—”
“I know I can take you on the ice, which is pretty sad for you—”
“Oye, pipe down, you two.” My voice startles some nearby seagulls.
“Do you have an extra room for when we come visit?” Nola asks brightly, not at all fazed by my tone. “Mom will be in Portugal shooting sometime around Thanksgiving, and Dad will be busy as usual, so we could—”
“You talking about your old man?” Our dad’s voice carries across the living room. I imagine he’s walking from his bedroom to the kitchen to grab his daily protein shake, catching his name in passing.
“I’m talking to Leo.” Nola flips the camera, so I have a view of him.
He’s suited up as though he’s on his way out the door to film his show, because he’s always on his way out the door to film his show. “If it isn’t the Fury’s finest player! Shouldn’t you be training?”
Considering Dad thinks 90 percent of the Fury’s roster are “slack-ass amateurs,” as he so eloquently put it after I received the call that I’d been acquired, being the finest player in his eyes should be an easy feat. “On my way to practice, yeah.”
“You may make an appointment to speak with him,” Nola informs our father. “I had to work for my turn.”
“Spam calling is not work,” Milo says.
Dad adjusts the cuffs of his sport coat.
“Understood. Leo’s a busy man. But while I have you, your team’s owner, Andy Callahan, reached out.
Something about a fundraiser, inviting me to come out.
You need me to show face? I’m up to my eyeballs in events and work commitments through January, but if it’ll help you—”
“No need. I’m fine. Thanks for the offer.” Since my injury, he’s all but begged me to leverage his reputation any way I can to remain competitive in this league—his words, not mine.
Fucking demoralizing. And with my team’s owner reaching out personally to my father, it all but confirms my suspicion that he had something to do with my acquisition.
All the more reason to win some games—to prove to myself and everyone else I’m the reason I’m here.
I held my own for thirteen years in this league. Did better than that, according to my stats. And I am still that player, injury be damned.
“Are you gelling with your teammates?” Dad presses. “Feeling that alchemy? Hey, what do you think about—”
“Your ride’s here, Dad.” Nola jabs a thumb toward the front door.
My siblings, mother, and I have an understanding that we cannot let Dad get an inch when it comes to talking hockey or he’ll take far more than a mile.
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” Footsteps precede the creaking of a door.
“So, when can we come see you?” my sister continues as if never interrupted.
“Leo doesn’t want us there cramping his style,” Milo insists, still off camera. “Like me, he’s got hella babes to juggle—”
“Oh my God, shut up.” Nola chucks a couch pillow at him. “You do not have even a single girl interested in you. And I know that because guess who is friends with every single girl in our grade? Me.”
“Guess who wouldn’t tell you, my sister, that they want me? Anyone.”
Their bickering intensifies.
“You two need homeschooling. Or a shift in the mines,” I say flatly. “May I be released from this call now? I’ve got things to do.”
Nola sits up. “What kind of things? Practice?”
“The team is meeting at a warehouse.” For some fucking reason.
Nola cocks her head to the side. “To do what?”
“Coach’s orders. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Nola lights up like a Christmas tree. “Sadie’s orders, you mean? Did you get her autograph for me yet?”
A little part of me inexplicably dies inside. “We’ve discussed this. I’m not asking my coach for an autograph for my little sister.”
“Please, Leo?” She looks cartoonish, her eyes wide and pleading. “Do you know how much social capital that will give me? Sadie is it. She is her.”
My coach is something all right—something I’d rather not discuss. “Why don’t you keep spending dad’s ‘social capital’? That ought to buy you whatever you want in the hockey world.”
“Sadie is bigger than hockey. All of my friends are obsessed with her. Even the ones who don’t play sports. Like, have you seen her?”
Yeah, I’ve seen her. I’ve seen the hell out of her, as I’ll continue to do all season.
And I’ve heard her voice around the clock for a week and a half, either hollering orders, playing power tug-of-war with Cruz and Dom—who are, admittedly, sexist assholes—chatting with Vivi in her sugar-sweet default tone, or attempting to make conversation with players hell bent on ignoring her.
The cadence of her voice has started echoing in my mind when my head hits the pillow at night. Maddening.
“I’ll take an autograph, too. I guess. If you’re handing them out.” Milo tries and fails to sound nonchalant. “Have you seen her pictures in Overtime?”
I narrow my eyes. The absolute last thing I want to think about are photos from two years ago of my coach in skimpy workout clothing and premier skates for an online magazine that only pretends to give a shit about hockey.
Yet they’ve been all over my feed since she got hired by the Fury.
I glower into the phone. “You have no business following Overtime, Milo. In fact, stay off the internet entirely. It’s not good for your teenage brain. Or any aged brain, for that matter.”
“She’s so pretty.” Milo’s face gets that dumb glazed look every teen boy wears when thinking about an attractive girl.
“Don’t be gross,” Nola says bossily. “She’s twenty-nine. Way too old for you.”
“Yeah, but in ten years when I’m twenty-three and she’s thirty-nine—”
“Ew, Milo, shut up.” Nola turns back to me after manhandling her brother, her expression all business. “So you’ll get just me Sadie’s autograph, right? And if you could get me Vivian Starling’s, too, that’d be great—”
“Goodbye, children,” I grumble. “Stay in school.”
“Fine. I love you!” Nola chirps.
“Miss you,” Milo adds, shoving his face in the frame for a few seconds. “Maine sucks for stealing you.”
Begrudgingly, I warm at their affection. “Love you guys, too.”
I hang up and tuck my phone into my pocket.
“Wow, they’re adorable, Leo.”
That voice. Alluring rhythm, warm, and playful. Combine that with the familiar way my name rolls off her tongue, and I know exactly who it is before I even bother to check.
Sadie.
I turn around, and my thoughts briefly scramble at how close she’s standing. My human shadow is wearing blue yoga pants, a matching tight shirt, and a puffy vest that does little to distract from her admittedly great shape. Her thick, long ponytail pokes through the back of a Fury hat.
“Christ, you scared me,” I grumble, my gaze snapping back up to her face. “Is eavesdropping that blatantly even legal?”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “You were having a conversation on Portland’s most public street. A FaceTime, no less.”
“And that makes walking two feet behind me and listening okay?”
“Kind of, yeah.” She pulls up beside me. “And I wasn’t listening. Not totally.”
I lift my brows.
“Autographs, eh?”
I groan. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“I’ll try and stay humble.” A pair of dimples pop as she grins wryly. Her lips are too plum colored, too full and easy to notice. Nice lips and legs get my attention every last time, and unfortunately she’s got the best of both. Her legs are distracting and her mouth—
“So those are your siblings?”
I drag my gaze from her profile. “Well spotted.”
“Nola is already making waves in her league, right? And your brother, too. Both of them have been top scorers every year since their first year playing.”