Chapter 2
Chapter Two
- @RebelsInsider
Hatch
Groomsman by default wasn’t a very promising start to a marriage.
Not that my “friendship” with the groom said anything substantial about his impending nuptials, but it did say something about him. Dash Carter and I had not become particularly close in the last year. I didn’t even want to be in his wedding party, but he’d pissed off someone and a spot opened.
It would’ve been churlish to refuse. The guy was a teammate, and professional hockey franchises tended to operate better when the players got along.
No one wanted a repeat of the drama of last season when my dad and his partner on the defensive line demonstrated that there were limits to team friendships.
Nyquist’s nose wasn’t the only thing fractured.
They made up, but games were lost in the process.
The team dynamic was upended and all because of what?
A woman. Worse, my sister. These days Nyquist and Adeline were sickeningly in love, he and my dad were pals again, and the Rebels had made it to the Finals.
Winning the whole shebang would have been the perfect send-off for my father, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
Sometimes I wondered how much his blow-up with Nyquist contributed to our failure at the last hurdle.
By the time the Finals rolled around, they were back to being the Defense Dream Team, but had that breakdown in the earlier part of the season taken its toll?
I’d rather think that than reckon with my own mistakes.
How I flubbed the shot that could have won Game 7.
I checked my phone. Ten minutes to go. Groomsmen were supposed to dawdle at the church entrance, handing out programs and directing people to their seats.
I’d told my teammate and fellow wedding party member, Peyton Bell, that I needed to slip away for a moment, so here I was, back against the wall below the church’s gable as I scrolled through the hockey news.
The muggy July air was making my underarms damp, or maybe it was the post-playoffs sports gossip.
More of the same flashed from the screen, some sports journo making digs at me because I was Theo Kershaw’s son, and how I’d only made the team because the legend wanted to play with me before he retired.
This summer my dad would consider whether he wanted to stay with the Rebels.
While I would consider how best to leave them.
“What are you doing skulking out here?”
I lifted my gaze to our tender, Noah Boden.
“The church is still filling up. Figured I’d get some air before the show starts.”
NoBo smirked. “Kind of weird that Carter put you in.”
“That’s what happens when you fuck off one too many people, and your mom demands you have an even number on both sides.”
“Yeah, he’s kind of a momma’s boy, that’s for sure.” Words you rarely heard uttered about a hockey player. “Thought you were going to crack his head at the bachelor party.”
“I said I’d be a groomsman. Didn’t think I had to attend the groom’s bridal shower.”
But NoBo wasn’t referring to my reluctant attendance.
I had no problem hanging with the guys in social situations, getting into rowdy messes, and waking up with killer hangovers.
I just didn’t enjoy the forced camaraderie of a bachelor party—and I didn’t need to bear witness to the groom’s bad behavior as he slobbered all over the hired stripper.
Just seeing him play the asshole I knew him to be had me itching to beat him to a pulp.
NoBo laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever thrown up so much. Carter’s looking a little green around the gills in there, though it was two nights ago. But he drank a ton at the rehearsal dinner, too. Poor Summer won’t have much of a wedding night.”
Yeah, poor Summer.
The thought of standing there, watching her slow-walk down the aisle, was starting to piss me off, so I changed the subject, which I usually did whenever Carter’s fiancée was mentioned.
“You bring a date or are all the strippers taking naps around about now?”
We chitchatted for a while, but eventually NoBo looked at his Rolex.
“You coming?”
“Soon. See you in there.”
I checked my phone. Five minutes to lift off, so I really should head inside. Pin on a smile and show the world I’m a good teammate. I took a step toward the front courtyard, but didn’t get far as my attention was snagged by a noise behind me.
Someone was opening a window.
A shoe emerged above the frame. A white high-heeled shoe with tiny pearls dotting the strap. Inside the shoe was a tiny foot with a shapely ankle giving way to the pale curve of a calf. If I hadn’t been standing there, I didn’t think I’d have believed what came next.
The sight gave new meaning to “Here Comes the Bride.”
She straddled the sill, her veiled head bent so she could clear the top of the frame. With each jerked movement, my pulse rate notched a few beats higher. She seemed completely unaware of my presence, or of the fact she was a good six feet off the ground.
She recognized both problems in the same instant, and two seconds later, the fact that one of those problems could be solved by the other.
“A little help here?”
I looked up.
She looked down.
“The church is the other way,” I said.
“Well, I know that, don’t I?” She sounded different, more … country. Of course, she barely spoke to me, and I usually avoided her like the plague, so I probably hadn’t picked up on that before.
This should have been my cue to ask her why she was choosing to leave the church by a side window instead of through a door like a normal person. Either way, she appeared to be hightailing it out of her wedding.
I wasn’t the hero of this tale, so I made no move to help her.
At which point she jumped.
Summer Landry, all five foot three inches and 110 pounds even with a shit-ton of bridal fabric, landed on my chest, a hard-core check that took me down.
“Oh God, Hatch, are you okay?”
She stared down at me with those violet-blue eyes, her blonde hair falling like a wispy waterfall over my face. Splashes of color washed her cheeks, blushing through her bridal make-up. Her rouged lips parted in concern.
But not so much that she thought to climb off me. No, she remained where she was, her dress ridden up as she straddled me. All I could feel was the heat of her against my stomach. That, and the pain in my hip where it had hit the ground as I collapsed to break her fall.
“Maybe get off me so I can see.”
“Oh, right!” She clambered to her feet, pulling her dress down but not before I caught sight of her thigh, gift-wrapped with a garter. The bodice of the dress had slipped a little, giving hints of tempting cleavage while the floral garland holding the veil had been knocked askew.
She offered her hand. I ignored it and scrambled to a stand, mentally checking my body for injury. Other than what would likely be a bruise to my hip, I was in good shape.
My mind, however, was still reeling from what had just occurred.
A million questions duked it out, and the winner was, “Are you hurt?” I might have taken the brunt of that fall, but it didn’t mean she hadn’t sustained an injury.
“No, I-I’m fine.” She chewed on her lip, stepped forward, and looked around for the shoe she’d lost in her unorthodox exit.
Spotting it a few feet off, I moved to retrieve it. Before I could hand it off, she closed the gap and grasped my arm.
“I need your help.”
“I’ve got your shoe right here.” Though I knew that wasn’t what she meant.
“Hatch, I’m not getting married today.”