9. Family
Chapter nine
Family
Luke
T here’s a psychology term for what I’m doing right now. Sitting in my truck in the Cole family driveway, engine running, hands at ten and two like I’m about to parallel park instead of walk into a house I’ve spent Thanksgiving in since I was nineteen.
I think the term is self-destructive idiocy.
Or maybe that’s just what Sienna would call it. She’d use a more clinical phrase. Something about avoidant attachment patterns and fear of intimacy manifesting as reluctance to enter residential spaces containing women you’re in love with.
I’m not in love with Emma Cole.
That’s the lie I’m going with today. I’ve ranked my lies by plausibility, and “I’m not in love with Emma Cole” sits comfortably at number four, right behind “I took this job for professional development” and “I don’t think about her when I’m alone.”
Number one is the unshakeable, load-bearing lie that holds the entire architecture of my sanity together: “I have this under control.”
Three Volvo's in the driveway (because Grayson loved it and decided to get one for the people he loved, too). The spot next to Emma’s red one might as well have a neon sign flashing LUKE, PARK HERE AND RUIN YOUR LIFE.
I’d parked. Turned off the engine. Sat .
The casserole dish on my passenger seat is still warm. Jeanette’s sweet potato recipe, the one she taught me to make junior year when I spent winter break here because my mom was in Cabo with whatever boyfriend she was on, and my dad forgot I existed.
This is normal. I’m bringing a casserole to a family dinner. Families do this. People who are basically adopted sons of wonderful women named Jeanette do this.
People who are secretly obsessed with the wonderful woman’s daughter and can still feel the phantom warmth of her jaw under their fingertips from five days ago in a parking lot do this less frequently, but here we are.
My phone flashes.
Gray
Dude are you outside? Mom's been watching the window for 10 min. Get in here.
That neon sign is flashing. Brightly. Danger .
I grab the casserole. Lock the truck. Walk toward the front door like a man approaching his own sentencing hearing.
Jeanette opens the door before I knock.
“Lucas Anderson.” She says my full name the way only she and my mother do. Except when Jeanette says it, it sounds like a homecoming instead of a disappointment. “You’re late.”
“I’m seven minutes early.”
“For a guest, maybe. For my kids, seven minutes early is late.” She takes the casserole from my hands and replaces it with a hug that smells like vanilla and rosemary and home.
The real kind of home—not an apartment you sleep in, but the place that rewires your nervous system back to something approaching calm.
I hold on longer than I should. She lets me.
“Thank you for coming,” she murmurs against my shoulder. “I know it’s been a lot this season. Coaching Emma, being back here—”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
She pulls back, studies my face with those dark eyes that Emma inherited along with the ability to see straight through my bullshit. “You look tired, sweetheart.”
“It’s coaching. Comes with the territory.”
I leave out the fact that my mother is indeed engaged. And apparently wants to build a family with Dakota. At forty-five. That she’s getting married on some island. New Year’s Eve. That I have to be there because my ticket is already bought.
“Mmhm.” She doesn’t believe me. Jeanette Cole has never once believed a lie I’ve told her, which is both comforting and deeply inconvenient given the other lie I’m currently maintaining. “Well, come in. Gray’s been bouncing off the walls since he got here. And Emma—”
“LUKE!”
Grayson’s voice hits me before his body does. He rounds the corner from the kitchen at full speed—six-three, two-twenty of NHL center moving like he’s about to check me through the drywall—and wraps me in a hug that cracks at least two ribs.
“Missed you, man. It’s been too long.”
“Gray, we FaceTimed after your game Tuesday.”
“Not the same.” He pulls back, hands on my shoulders, grinning with that uncomplicated joy that makes him the best person I know. “You look good. Coaching agrees with you.”
“Coaching is destroying me.”
“In a good way, though. You guys are leading the freaking conference.” He steers me into the living room. “Sie! Luke’s here!”
Sienna appears from the kitchen, and she’s doing that thing where she looks effortlessly perfect while holding a glass of wine and a cheese knife like they’re accessories at a gallery opening. “Luke. Welcome.”
“Sienna.”
She kisses my cheek. Then, quieter: “You doing okay?”
God, what the hell is my face showing?
“Great,” I manage. “Happy to be here.”
Her smile says I don’t believe you but I’ll allow it . “Emma’s upstairs. She’ll be down in a minute.”
Good. I need a minute. Need to calibrate. Need to remember how to be Luke-who-is-basically-Emma’s-brother instead of Luke-who-told-her-his-hands-shake-when-he-touches-her.
Different Lukes. Very different Lukes .
The living room hasn’t changed. Same overstuffed couch where Emma’s feet have lived in my lap during every Christmas movie marathon since she was seventeen.
Same mantel with photos of Grayson’s junior hockey days and Emma’s high school team.
Same armchair where Jeanette sits with her wine and her quiet, omniscient smile.
There are new additions: Grayson’s Grizzlies jersey framed next to the TV. A photo from last month’s home opener, the one where Emma scored the first goal in program history that ended up front page of the Silver Pine Gazette.
I study the image. Emma mid-celebration, arms raised, pure joy on her face.
I was twenty feet away when she turned toward the bench.
Toward me. That smile in this photo was for me first, before anyone else.
Before Grayson in the stands. Before Jeanette or Sloane or the thousands of fans losing their minds.
For me.
And I’d smiled back like a coach. Nodded once.
While every atom in my body screamed that’s my girl and I bit down so hard on the inside of my cheek I tasted blood.
“She’s doing great at Silver Pine.”
I flinch. Grayson’s beside me, following my gaze to the photo.
“She is,” I say carefully. “Team needs her.”
“She needed the team. Seems to have really found her place—her people—there. Just like we did.” He shakes his head, looks over at me. “Can’t believe you’re part of that, too. That she has you there for her.”
The guilt is a physical sensation. Dense. Gravitational. The kind that bends light and warps time and makes you wonder how the best person you’ve ever known would look at you if he could see inside your head for thirty seconds.
He wouldn’t look at you at all. He’d look away. And then he’d break your jaw.
“I’m just trying not to get in her way,” I tell him honestly. “Hoping all those highlights I’ve shared get noticed by the scouts as we head into the stretch.”
“That’s why you two are good for each other.” Grayson claps my shoulder and I want to tell him not to. “Beer?”
“God, yes.”
He laughs, heads for the kitchen, and I’m left staring at the photo of his sister and trying to remember what breathing normally feels like.
Eventually, Grayson and I fall into the easy, shorthand conversation of two people who’ve known each other long enough that silence is comfortable and insults are affection.
We talk about the Grizzlies’ trip to Minnesota.
His frustration with their new defensive scheme.
His left wing who reminds him too much of Chase Morgan before he met Sky.
“Kid’s got talent but zero impulse control,” Gray’s saying, leaning against the kitchen counter while I help Jeanette chop vegetables because she taught me that men who don’t help in the kitchen are men who eat last. “Took a penalty last week because a guy from Calgary looked at him wrong .”
I glance at him. “Sounds more like this other guy I knew. One that cross-checked a guy for chirping his sister during warm-ups.”
“That was justified .”
“You got a game misconduct.”
“And I’d do it again.” He grins, unrepentant. “Nobody talks about my family.”
Family. Like I’m part of this family.
“Everything okay, Luke?” Jeanette’s watching me from the stove. “You went quiet.”
“Just grateful,” I answer. “Being here. With you all.”
She smiles. Squeezes my arm. “You’re always welcome, sweetheart. Always.”
I am not going to survive this dinner.
That’s when I hear footsteps on the stairs.
Yep, I’m dead.
I don’t turn around. Don’t need to. My body has developed a sixth sense to Emma that operates independently and outside my control. Also, I smell that breezy ocean shampoo. I could track her down in a crowded stadium by scent alone, which is either poetic or diagnosable. Possibly both.
“Hey, stranger.” Her voice comes from behind me. Warm. Casual. Just greeting a friend at a family dinner. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
I turn.
Damn it .
She’s in a black sweater that falls off one shoulder, dark jeans, hair down in loose curls. Minimal makeup. Those dark eyes that look brown until you get close enough to see the amber undertones that catch light like—
Stop checking her out. You’re in her mother’s house.
“Hey, Cole.” The last name is my armor. My barricade. The four-letter word standing between me and complete self-destruction.
Emma’s mouth quirks. She knows what I’m doing. Doesn’t care.
“Mom, do you need help with anything?” she asks, drifting past me toward the counter. Close enough that her arm brushes mine. The touch lasts long enough for my entire nervous system to misfire and reboot.
Accidental .
Like every other touch has been accidental.
Like the way her knee found my shoulder at my apartment after the opener was accidental.
Like the chapstick was accidental. Like the way our rooms were mysteriously next to one another during our away trip the other weekend.
Like the parking lot five days ago was accidental.
We’re having a lot of accidents.