Chapter 17
I lived at a circus. A full-on, multi-tent, traveling side acts circus. I just couldn’t tell if I was the ringleader or the poor sap that followed the elephants around scooping up the poop.
Toby had gotten yogurt all over the inside of his backpack at school, which was a freaking wild mind trip considering I didn’t even pack him yogurt today.
Emmie had given herself bangs with safety scissors in art class.
And I showed up to the pick-up line late thanks to my one afternoon class at the community college two towns over running late.
Typical Wednesday.
By the time we got home, I just wanted five minutes of silence, a hot shower, and maybe a ten-minute nap before my shift.
Instead, I got—“Oops. Mom! I locked the keys in the car.”
I turned around mid-step, holding Emmie’s backpack and a grocery bag, to stare at Toby like he’d just confessed to burning the house down.
“You what?”
“I was trying to help grab the milk,” He pointed at the back seat where I could see the last of the groceries and the ring of keys, I asked him to carry to go unlock the door. “You were frustrated, and I was being pro-tactive.”
I didn’t correct the misuse of the big-kid word and moved past it, “And now we’re locked out. Which isn’t proactive.”
He paused, “Okay, yeah. When you say it like that—”
I exhaled slowly, and Emmie watched me silently, like she was waiting to see if my head would pop off my shoulders and roll across the grass so she could hit it with her hockey stick.
“It’s fine,” I said, sitting down the heavy burden in my arms, keeping the mental burden on my shoulders and not theirs, as I counted to ten to stop myself from screaming off into the void. “I’ll go get the spare.”
Jogging around the house to the back gate, I reached for the latch when I noticed something strange.
The gate was already open.
Not just unlatched—but swinging gently with the breeze.
Weird.
I was positive I had closed it the other day after getting rock salt from the shed. It always stuck unless you yanked it hard to open it, so it hadn’t blown open. Shaking it off, I stepped into the shed, scanning the hooks inside the door.
But there were no keys hanging on the dusty wall.
I frowned and checked again. Moved the old rake, and then the random junk lying on the floor. I even checked the bucket of random screws and bolts.
Still, no key.
A slow trickle of unease worked its way down my spine.
A familiar sense of foreshadowing that used to control my life.
The keys were always there. I kept them in the same spot, hung on a hook beside the box of sidewalk chalk and broken Halloween decorations. Simply because we used them so often thanks to both kids’ insane ability to lock us out all the time.
No one else even knew about them, except for my mom, and she hadn’t stepped foot in the shed since a snake “rattled” at her once a few summers ago.
I stood there in the still silence for a second too long, chewing my bottom lip and listening to the wind.
The yard felt off.
Like it had been looked at.
Like someone had been there.
But that was ridiculous. Right?
Maybe one of the kids moved them. Maybe I grabbed them and forgot to hang them back up last time. Maybe I was just exhausted from too many shifts, too many stolen kisses in the dark, too many feelings I didn’t know how to process yet.
Still, I double-checked the gate on the way back to the front yard, closing it firmly behind me. Pulling my phone from my back pocket, I called my mom.
“Hey,” I said when she picked up. “Any chance I can drop the gremlins off a little early?”
“Of course,” she replied, “Hot date?”
I scoffed. “Yeah sure. Life’s just hectic. You know.”
I didn’t mention the keys. Or the gate. Or the way my stomach hadn’t quite unclenched since I walked out of the shed.
Because what was I even going to say?
That I got spooked by a missing key?
That I felt like someone was watching me?
No, I couldn’t say that. I couldn’t tell her that. Because then she’d zero in on the fear behind those statements.
The fear that I thought I buried years ago.
No, I’d just pretend that the chill tingling up my spine was nothing.
I wasn’t that kind of woman, anyway. I was a bartender, a single mom, a black-cat energy baddie who didn’t scare easily anymore.
Still, I glanced over my shoulder once before I left, and I swore the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I couldn’t focus.
Not on the drinks I was pouring, not on the small talk from my regulars, not even when Coach Rick made some crude joke about playing just the tip with the puck.
I laughed and shook my head, because that was what I did.
But it didn’t reach my eyes.
Ever since I found my backyard gate swinging open and the spare keys gone, something felt off. Like I’d left the door unlocked to a nightmare, and it was breathing through the cracks in my walls.
I didn’t tell anyone, not even my mom.
The fear and anger my past had caused her last time nearly gave her a heart attack. I couldn’t do it again. If I lost her—because of him—I’d never survive it.
I didn’t tell anyone else either, because I didn’t want to be the girl who jumped at shadows. I didn’t want Eli to worry. And I didn’t want Travis to go full caveman, patrolling my backyard with a sledgehammer like some kind of hot suburban vigilante.
The second they walked in for practice, I knew I wasn’t hiding it well. We were in uncharted territory too, and that didn’t help ease the feeling of being off-kilter either.
It was their first practice since we crossed every invisible boundary and got together. I had already heard whispers about my visit to the job site while I was walking around the grocery store earlier.
Some guy on the site told his wife, and she told a friend, and so on and so forth. It was big news when a new couple got together in Cedar Bluff, but the rumors were saying that it wasn’t just Travis and me together, and that people saw us leaving the rink with Eli the other night too.
I needed to get my head on straight to deal with that mess, on top of the one currently controlling my anxiety meter.
Eli came behind the bar when he got there, grabbing a bottle of water from the team cooler, sliding up behind me and kissing my temple without missing a beat.
I could feel the team’s eyes on me as he put our relationship out there in the open.
When I turned to him, his eyes locked on mine and narrowed.
“You okay?” He asked.
“Fine.” I lied.
He didn’t push it, but I could feel his penetrating gaze as he stood at the end of the bar, opening his pre-game beer with the others while I stocked the cooler.
Travis—God, he was even worse.
He leaned on the counter, looked me over like I was glass he couldn’t quite see through and asked plainly in front of everyone, “What happened?”
I swallowed, feeling my skin heat and blush at the attention. “Nothing.”
He tilted his head, “Frankie.” It felt like a dare to defy him.
“I said I’m fine.” I snapped, with more vigor than I intended and cringed when I turned my back to ring out a customer.
“You don’t lie worth a shit,” he muttered darkly, and I caught his gaze in the mirror behind the cash register and shivered involuntarily.
I didn’t reply because he was right. I was failing miserably at convincing them and myself that I was fine. The tension followed me around like smoke as they left the bar and got on the ice for their practice.
They were on the rink along the edge of the bar, and I could feel the heavy smoke every time one of them looked over. I could hear it in the short snaps of their conversation during practice. Like they were both holding back and itching to call me on my bullshit.
But I held it together.
Because that was what I did.
It’s what I had always done.
That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt a little when I realized they both left without saying goodbye after practice. I didn’t blame them; I had pushed them away after all.
And even though every part of me wanted to run after them, to say, Please stay, please help me, please see me, I just smiled instead.
When Coach Rick left, I turned the lock on the front door and turned the lights off as I went through the empty building on my way to the ice.
It was late.
The rink was empty.
Everyone was gone.
Or so I thought.
I stepped out onto the fresh sheet of ice, smooth from the Zamboni, and exhaled. It was supposed to be my quiet place to escape with my secrets and shortcomings.
But before I could take more than two strides, a voice echoed through the rafters.
“Frankie.”
A scream ripped through my lips as I stumbled, wobbling on my skates spinning towards the boards.
Eli and Travis stood there at the bench—waiting.
Eli had his hoodie pushed up to his elbows, hands in his pockets with a serious and unreadable expression on his normally easygoing face.
Travis looked like a goddamn nightmare—hat low, arms crossed, jaw tight, eyes burning a hole straight through me in the dim light.
“I thought you left,” I said as my breath caught in my throat.
“No,” Travis said, stepping onto the ice in his work boots without hesitation. “You shut down. So, we gave you space.”
“But we’re done with that now,” Eli added, walking beside his best friend toward me.
My throat tightened. “I told you I was fine.”
“You’re not,” Travis said, calm but hard. “You’re anxious. Distracted. Looking over your shoulder like a monster is breathing down your neck.”
Eli stopped in front of me and took my hand in his, blanketing it with his softness and warmth. “Tell us what’s going on, Black Cat.”
I shook my head, swallowing the lump in my throat, “I don’t want to make a big deal over nothing. I’m just tired and paranoid. It’s nothing.”
“Those are two things you’re allowed to be,” Eli said, voice soft, but I didn’t miss the steel edge to it. “But don’t shut us out.”
“I’m not—”
“You are.” Travis moved behind me, his voice in my ear, low and dark. “And I’m trying really hard not to pin you to the boards and force the truth out of you with my hand on your ass.”
My knees buckled a little at the growl in his voice, and for the first time in hours, something besides fear filled my senses.
“Tell us,” Eli said again, squeezing my fingers, “Right now. Or we’ll make you talk.”
I tried to play into the chemistry between us, “Are you going to double-team me again if I don’t?” The joke fell flat, even to me.
Travis leaned down, breath hot at my neck, “No, Shade. The opposite. We’re going to withhold any physical touch or pleasure until you give in and let us inside that head of yours.”
I shivered.
Not from fear. But because I’d never wanted someone to see through me this badly before.
I stood there, caught between both of them, and my body screamed yes, my heart whispered not yet, and that flicker of unease still coiled tight in my gut.
They didn’t know about my past.
But they were going to. They weren’t going to let me run anymore.
“I just,” I shook my head, “It’s been a long week. With work, and the kids. I haven’t had time to breathe.”
It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth either.
Eli searched my face as if he could see straight through the cracks. “You sure that’s all?”
I forced a smile. “Unless you’re volunteering to babysit and clean my house, yeah.”
Travis grunted, unimpressed. “You’re full of shit.”
“Maybe,” I said, grabbing Eli’s sweater and pulling him closer. “But I’m hot, tired, and standing between two men I can’t stop thinking about. So maybe we can deal with my hormonal emotions after one of you makes me forget my name for a while?”
They exchanged a look, one of those quiet ones.
And just like that, the air shifted again—back to that safe zone, filled with lust and lacking fear. But even as Travis bent to whisper dark promises in my ear and Eli kissed the smirk off my lips, I felt the lie sit in my chest like a stone.
And I knew I’d have to tell them, eventually. Just not today.