5. Chapter 4 #2
Declan's been lying to me for seventeen years. Dad's been lying to all of us for just as long. The family I thought was rock-solid? Turns out it's been built on secrets and everyone else deciding what I could and couldn't handle.
It's hard to be the optimist when you find out the people you trust most have been distorting your reality since you were seven years old.
“For the record, Mason cheated at Mario Kart," I say, needing to talk so my thoughts don't take over.
“Mason? Really?”
“Fuck yeah. Don’t let the whole quiet, responsible thing fool you. He’s a fucking animal when he gets hold of a controller. Declan was worse. He’d make up rules halfway through and insist they’d always existed.”
“Must’ve been nice, though. Having siblings to fight with.” Darcy’s grin softens as she sips her coffee. “If I wanted a friend over, my mother scheduled a playdate between piano and French. The kitchen made tiny cucumber sandwiches and cut the crusts off for us.”
“That’s not a playdate, Darce. That’s a shareholder meeting with juice boxes.”
Her laugh slips out before she can stop it.
Here I am, thinking my whole life is some tragic underdog story—the forgotten baby brother, the afterthought—and this woman spends her childhood color-coded onto somebody’s calendar between piano and French lessons.
We grow up in completely different worlds and somehow end up in the same place.
She gets the perfect house where even fun arrives at an agreed time and leaves before the next lesson. I get a house with too many people in it, but there’s never enough room left for me.
That's the thing nobody in my family has ever realized.
Declan and Mason were always there first. First out on the ice. First on a team. First to be taken seriously. By the time I showed up with a stick in my hands, the roles were already handed out.
And then there was me, the kid chasing them with one skate half-laced, screaming at them to wait up. Eventually you stop chasing. You just get faster. You get louder. You figure out that if you can't be first, you can at least be impossible to ignore.
I glance around the café as the morning rush starts spilling out onto the boardwalk.
"You know what I think?" I point my fork at Darcy. “You would’ve been useful in our house. You’d have kept records of who won the last race."
Darcy goes strangely still. "Oh really?"
"Absolutely. You could have gathered evidence for me. Exposed Declan’s corruption.”
She takes a sip. “I could have developed a fair scoring system.”
“You’d have been drunk on power within a week," I say, laughing.
She steals a piece of my French toast without a word, and I watch her lips close around it. Her tongue darts out to catch a crumb, and I nearly groan out loud.
“So your brothers got you into hockey?” Darcy asks, licking caramel from one finger.
“Yeah, I guess.” I slide my plate closer to her, just in case she has decided my sugar loading isn’t so bad after all. “I annoyed them until they gave me a stick. What about you? Did one of the Madden hotels come with its own rink?”
“Almost.” Her mouth curves. “My mother took me to a Canucks game when I was twelve. Someone gave her tickets during a hotel opening in Vancouver.”
“And that was it?”
“For her? Yes. She hated the noise.” Darcy circles one finger around the rim of her coffee. “I loved it.”
“What part?”
“All of it. The speed. The crowd screaming words I'd never heard before.” Her smile turns almost dreamy. “I just fell in love with the fact that nobody sat straight. Nobody waited politely. It was just… complete chaos.”
I lean back. “And little Darcy Madden took one look at total chaos and thought, Yes. That’s for me.”
“Much to my mother's disgust.”
“So how do you go from one game to creating reports that get handsome, beloved men traded?”
“I watched every game I could find. Read books. Started recording plays in a notebook.” She shrugs like teaching herself an entire sport to escape her perfect world is normal. “The numbers helped me understand why the chaos worked.”
“Did your parents hire someone to teach you?”
“God, no. They didn't understand it.” Her chin lifts slightly. “Hockey was the first thing I chose before they had the chance to choose it for me.”
"Jesus, Darcy. I had to have my agent walk me through my first contract in terms that didn't make me want to lie down on the ice and stop moving. And the man charges me a percentage for that."
"Yeah, well. That's just how it was."
I nod with interest, finally starting to understand the perfect facade sitting in front of me.
Ballet, piano and French belong on Darcy’s schedule.
But hockey belongs to her.
“Look at us. Two healthy adults with absolutely no issues.” I lift my coffee between us. “Good thing I’ve got those sessions with Poppy coming up, hey? Maybe you should join me? We could double-team her?”
Her laugh bursts out of her as she smothers it with her hand. "Oh my God. Beck!"
“Oh, come on, that's not what I meant.” I hold up my hands, grinning. “Get your head out of the gutter, Madden.”
“You said we should double team Poppy.”
“I meant tag-team the conversation. Therapeutically.”
She presses her napkin to her mouth, and I can see the laugh fighting its way out from behind it. And then she loses it. Full-on loses it, head tipping back, shoulders shaking, that composed Darcy Madden mask cracking wide open right in front of me.
It's loud and real and a little bit ugly around the edges, but it might just be the best fucking sound I've heard all week.
I lean back, watching the laugh fade into something warmer that stays in her eyes. "I don't think I've seen you laugh like that before."
She swipes at her eyes and takes a breath. "That's because normally I'm surrounded by men saying idiotic things and expecting me to be impressed."
"And now?"
She considers me over the rim of her coffee cup. "Now I'm surrounded by one idiotic man. Slightly different math."
"Still an improvement?"
"Don't push your luck, Morrison." She pushes up off the table and leaves a tip for Luna. "Come on, let's go. You're due in the gym in twenty minutes."
Later that afternoon, the film room smells like sweat and Margot Lawson's chicken wraps, which is honestly the best this place has ever smelled after practice.
"Here." Coach taps the giant screen we're all staring at. "Watch Declan. Sees the lane before it exists."
A replay of the practice session we just had flashes before our eyes. I'm sprawled across three tiered seats with a wrap in one hand and a shake in the other, watching Coach rewind the same clip for the third fucking time in ten minutes.
On screen, Declan takes the puck off the boards and threads it through traffic like he's got GPS in his helmet. Spencer's already moving, already open, and he buries the one-timer so clean the net barely flinches.
"That's vision," Coach says. "And Holland, your positioning was perfect. We need that this weekend. That's where goals come from, gentlemen."
The room rumbles. Spencer gives a little bow from his seat. Declan nods along too, like being right is a burden he carries for all of us.
And me? I've leaned forward, trying to catch the play half-second earlier than Coach just showed it.
There's a defender in the corner of the frame that's paused. My guy. The one I put into the boards with a clean, hard hit two seconds before Declan even touches the puck. The hit that keeps him from recovering. The hit that opens the lane Coach just circled twice with his marker.
Nobody rewinds that part.
And worse… there's no stat for my contribution to that play.
No point, no assist.
No trace within any statistical model anyone in the country can come up with.
But that goal doesn't happen without me, and the one person in this building I'd kill to have notice has been counting everything except that.
"Alright, get out of here," Coach barks. "Recovery day tomorrow. Shakes are mandatory. Margot's words, not mine."
The team pours out and in the corridor, Mason falls into step beside me. We cut across the operations floor toward the elevators, planning whether we're eating at the mansion tonight, or heading straight to Breakers for Happy Hour.
Then I stop.
Through the glass wall of her fishbowl office, I see Darcy pacing back and forth with her phone pressed to her ear. She started her day with me at sunrise, and somehow, she's still going.
The woman is insane.
Mason follows my gaze as I step away from the elevators. "Where are you going?"
"Hm?"
He looks up and sees the direction I'm heading. "Isn't that the woman we're supposed to hate?"
"I don't hate her."
"I do. Josie does. Declan's making a strong effort."
"Then you're all being dramatic."
"She's literally trying to trade you, bro," Mason says.
"Yeah, well." I shrug. "Maybe I'm just trying to convince her not to."
Mason gives me a raised brow that looks way too much like our father, so I leave him at the elevator and cross the floor anyway.
Outside her door, I catch the end of the call.
“No, Mom, I am not bringing the son of your vineyard friend. I don’t care that he has excellent posture.”