Troublemaker (Tabb U #2)

Prologue

LUCY

When I was seven years old, I fell in love.

He was tall—almost a giant—with dark hair, eyes so dark green they were almost black, a square jaw, and a stern, serious look on his face—even back then.

He was one of my father’s hockey players.

See, Elijah Braverman owned…well, he owned a lot of things when he was still alive.

But one of those things was The Gehenom Beasts: our city’s NHL team.

And on that day—the day I fell in love—at my seventh birthday party, the whole team had come to celebrate with me.

Supposedly. Really, it was because they had to.

My mother had left me with a somber black dress and pointy, uncomfortable black flats.

I didn’t understand why I couldn’t wear the pink dress I’d picked out, or why she wanted my birthday to feel like a funeral.

But then Anastasia Braverman always preferred when I wore black, probably because I could blend in better with the uniformed staff that way.

She never cared. If she had, she wouldn’t have ordered the chef to make a carrot cake for my birthday cake.

I was allergic to carrots.

So I was in a sad little black dress and painful shoes, sulking over not being able to have my own birthday cake, when I first saw him.

His name was Blake Samson. He was twenty-five. Based on the way the other players teased him, he took himself way too seriously. And he, of course, didn’t notice the child whose birthday it was—until I tripped over my own uncomfortable shoes and fell on the grass, scraping my knee.

I felt like a baby, but it hurt, and I was embarrassed, so I cried.

My parents were nowhere in sight—probably at some business meeting disguised as party fun—and almost everyone ignored me. Birthday girl or not, they were here to suck up to my dad, not his only child. I was an afterthought to everyone, like usual.

Except Blake. He spotted me crying, curled up on the ground, sad, lonely, and hurting. And he walked over to me and knelt down on the grass, ignoring the way it stained his pants.

“You okay, kid?” he asked gruffly.

I nodded, not wanting to show how pitiful I felt. But Blake must have seen through it, because with a small, knowing smile, he shook his head.

“No, you’re not. Let me look at that knee.”

“I didn’t know hockey players could be doctors,” I said. It probably came off rude, but I was hurting and not used to someone paying attention to my pain. I didn’t trust it.

Instead of getting defensive, he shrugged. “Nah, but I’ve seen my fair share of cuts and bruises.”

It seemed like a weird thing to say, but maybe it was because hockey was such a “violent sport,” like my mother always said. I would’ve asked Blake, but he was too busy looking at my knee, like it was a serious injury.

He glanced at me. “Tell you what, it looks like a bad scrape. I’m going to go get some stuff to clean it up. Wait here.”

He disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared with a first aid kit.

“I keep it in my car,” he said at the question in my eyes, squatting down. He still towered over me. Carefully, with the precision of a surgeon, he cleaned out the cut, apologizing for the sting, before placing a bandage over it.

“There you go, kid,” he said. “Should be all better.” Then he spotted my fingers. I always bit my nails, which my parents hated, but it was one of the few things that calmed me down when I was anxious or sad.

“Why do you bite your nails?”

“Um…” I hesitated, feeling shy.

“You know, I used to bite my nails, too. Whenever I got scared, or lonely. But instead, I came up with something that didn’t mess with them. Do you want to know what it was?”

“What?” I was curious and entranced by his kind face.

“I tell myself stories. No matter how silly, I tell myself stories with happy endings and it makes the bad feelings go away. You should try it.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling shy.

He shrugged. “Anytime. Stay out of trouble from now on, okay?”

And with that, he was gone—and I was head over heels.

After that, I always noticed Blake—at games, at dinner at my house, or when he came over and he and my father would disappear into his office.

My dad started referring to him as the “son he’d never had.

” I was never allowed to have meals with my parents because I was too loud and messy, but whenever Blake came over, I’d watch from the doorway of the kitchen.

My dad was warm with him in a way he never was with me, and if Blake had been a jerk, I would’ve hated him for it.

But Blake always made sure to visit me in the kitchen before he left, patting me on the head, calling me kid, and asking me how school was. I was too young to realize how starved I was for attention, because even those brief moments made him the kindest person I knew.

I was twelve when my parents died. Their private plane had crashed on their way to some vacation somewhere. I hadn’t been with them because they never brought me along, and I guess, in that way, I was lucky.

On the day of the funeral, I stood alone in the first row of the synagogue.

I had no aunts and uncles, no cousins, no living grandparents, leaving my father’s lawyer to plan the funeral.

The rows behind me were filled, but aside from awkward hugs from my father’s employees and work friends, no one bothered to come close to me, to offer support or comfort. I was alone.

Then someone cleared their throat. I turned and looked up.

Blake stood there in a black suit. He seemed older, gruffer, almost stiff, pulling at the tie around his neck like it didn’t belong there.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. He looked lost, himself. “I think I’m supposed to say, ‘May their memories be a blessing,’ right?”

I nodded, forcing a smile on my face, although all I wanted was a hug.

“Yeah.”

“This is a stupid question, but how are you doing?”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

But I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. I hadn’t been close to my parents, but they were all I had, and now it was just me.

The stiffness in Blake’s body softened. He opened his arms and hugged me. For the first time that I could remember, I felt safe.

“You don’t have to be okay,” he told me. “You can be however you want to be.”

He stayed near me during the service and the burial, and even though it was probably just pity, it didn’t feel that way.

He even rode with me back to the house for the shiva—when everyone came over to “mourn” with me like you do in Jewish tradition—but was pulled away by various people who wanted to talk to him.

So when my parents’ lawyer asked me to come upstairs to my dad’s office to hear about the will, what my parents had left me, and who they had left me to, I was surprised to see Blake there.

I was extra surprised when he couldn’t look me in the eye.

“Lucy, your parents left you everything in a trust—except for the team, which the estate sold, as per their instructions in the will.”

I nodded, feeling numb. I was twelve. I didn’t really care about the money, or any of it, because I was too young to understand just how rich I was. I just wanted to know where I was going to be living, and who I was going to be living with. Someone needed to take care of me.

“Lucy, you do have a guardian. Your parents trusted Blake Samson—your father specifically said he ‘loved him like a son.’ So they left you to him in their will.” Pity in his eyes, he added, “There was no one else.”

I ignored the way the words ‘loved him like a son,’ hurt. My parents had never told me they loved me. I was too busy replaying the last sentence, the shock of it…and the hope.

Maybe my parents, as much as they hadn’t cared, had cared a little…because even if there really was no one else, they still left me to someone who was kind.

I glanced over at Blake. He still wouldn’t look at me.

“Did you know?” I asked.

He jerked his head once in a nod.

The lawyer sighed. “Lucy, Blake has decided, appropriately, that you should go to boarding school until you turn eighteen, when you can go off to college.”

Boarding school.

Not with him.

Alone.

Even more alone than I’d been.

The hope I’d felt started to slip away.

“Blake,” I said, my voice small as I tried not to cry.

Blake finally looked at me.

“I’m sorry, kid,” he said. “This is the best thing for you.”

As he turned to go, any bit of hope that still lingered inside me died.

That was the last I saw of him. Blake never bothered to see me, never wrote me back when I wrote him, never returned my calls. It was like he’d never existed.

That’s when I learned there wasn’t much to be in love with, after all.

Because love was for foolish little girls who thought a small gesture of kindness meant everything.

And I wasn’t a foolish little girl.

Not anymore.