Chapter 6
Wearing a pair of leggings and an oversized hoodie, Jules tapped a keyfob on her brother’s condo door and let herself in.
An hour earlier she’d been standing in the elevator with Frankie, watching her push the button for the same floor her brother lived on and now she was walking into Cam’s space, met by loud shouts as he played what she assumed to be an NHL game on his Playstation.
Because apparently he didn’t have enough hockey in his life already.
“Fuck you, bud. That was a wicked play,” he yelled into his headset.
Jules rolled her eyes and helped herself to some of the meal prepped food in his fridge. She popped some kind of chicken pasta dish into the microwave and cracked open a cold can of Diet Coke then slid onto a barstool at the kitchen island.
She had been able to keep her composure in the elevator with Frankie, not wanting to let it slip yet who her brother was. Her acting skills were more impressive than she thought but she had to feign ignorance. She didn’t want to be pulled into Frankie’s orbit because of Cam.
No, she wanted to be pulled into Frankie’s orbit because Frankie was so gorgeous it made her heart skip a beat, because she felt a…sparkle between them.
A goddamned sparkle.
She wanted to be pulled into Frankie’s orbit because Frankie wanted it too. But Frankie was her brother’s COACH. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.
“No fucking way! How did that not go in!”
Jules glanced at Cam and rolled her eyes. It didn’t matter that they were in their late 20’s, her brother would always be the same little kid and as frustrating as it could be sometimes, Jules knew that if he were any different, their relationship might not be the same.
“Sounds good dude,” Cam said from his spot on the couch.
“I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow.
I really hope Stevens doesn’t have bag skating on her to-do list because I almost hurled last time.
” He gagged then laughed. “Who knew a chick would be one of the toughest coaches we’ve ever had?
But yeah, it’ll be a rough one. Take it easy, man. ”
Cam slid his headset off and tossed it onto the couch beside him then leaned back against the couch cushions and stretched his arms above his head.
“So…she’s tough? Coach Stevens?” Jules asked, eyeing her brother out of the corner of her eye, unable to keep her curiosity at bay. She ate a bite of her sweet potato with chicken and rice then took a long sip from her sweating can of Diet Coke.
“You have no idea,” Cam groaned then shifted on his couch so he was laying down and facing Jules. “And she yells. It’s a little scary to be honest.”
The image of Frankie on the ice, voice firm, presence commanding but with the easy confident way she carried herself, giving directions to a bunch of men who had never been led by a woman in that capacity before? Yeah, that did something to Jules.
“She sounds like a good coach to me,” Jules said, filling her mouth with another forkful of food.
“Hey, you should totally come with me tomorrow! Some of the guys have brought their spouses and kids to come watch a skate.” Cam sat up and pointed at her.
“And you’re always one of the first people to come check out the practice facilities when I settle into a new place and with this being a brand new team and me being the face of the franchise…
or whatever they’re saying on Sportsnet, you have to come.
I want you to come and meet Frankie Stevens.
It’s got to be cool for you to know there’s a woman coaching, right? You’d like her.”
Jules coughed, almost choking on her food as she tried to swallow a bite of sweet potato.
Cam jumped up and was at her side in a second, patting her on the back with more force than necessary and when the food finally made it down and she was able to take a long gulp of fizzy pop, she pushed his arm away.
“I’m fine,” she croaked, waiving him off.
“You don’t sound fine.”
“Cam, I’m good.”
“I don’t believe you. You almost died, Jules.”
“Oh my god, stop.” She coughed and playfully shoved him away. “I did not almost die. My food just went down the wrong way.”
“And people can die from that.”
“You’re so dramatic, has anyone ever told you that?”
Cam smirked then slid onto the stool next to her at the kitchen island. “Yeah, my twin sister, at least once a day.”
Jules rolled her eyes but smiled at her brother, her own features reflecting back at her as he brushed his shaggy bangs out of his eyes. “You really want me to come tomorrow?”
With a firm nod, he took the fork out of her hand and helped himself to the food that she’d been eating. He gathered a generous helping of rice on the fork then brought it to his lips and shoved it into his mouth. “I really, really do,” he mumbled while chewing.
What would it have been like to have a twin sister, instead? She thought as her brother batted his eyelashes, swallowed his food and grinned.
“You’re disgusting. You know that, right?" He simply stared back at her until her shoulders relaxed and she let out a long exhale. She nodded, giving in to his request. “Fine, I will come to practice tomorrow if you really want me there that badly.”
“It's not the start of a season if you're not there, Jules. You know that. And besides, maybe Stevens will go easy on us knowing another woman might be watching…” Cam said, his expression hopeful as he stared off into space while shovelling another forkful of what was Jules' dinner into his mouth.
Right…another woman watching. A woman that might actually be okay with Frankie going hard on her…but Jules would keep that thought to herself.
When Jules got back to her apartment, she took a quick shower and chose the outfit she was going to wear to the rink, settling on her favourite pair of boyfriend cut jeans, a go to pair of trendy running shoes that went well with everything and a yellow short sleeve workwear shirt stitched with the name of an auto body shop she’d never heard of across the back.
She’d found it at a thrift store a few months earlier in a city she’d had a layover in and had cropped and shortened the sleeves herself.
Her brother was right, she did typically spend a lot of time at the practice rink with him and no one ever questioned it given their upbringing.
It was common knowledge within the hockey world that Cameron Clarke and his twin sister Juliette had lost their parents in a car accident when they were young.
They were kind of a package deal and people knew they were close, the best of friends, so Jules being around was normal but she hadn’t made the trip to his new facility yet, hadn't wanted to dive in alongside Cam the way she was so used to doing.
Unbeknownst to her brother, Jules had slowly been trying to put a little distance between herself and hockey, if it were even possible given who Cam was, and she'd even considered taking on other athletes or rehab clients as a physiotherapist.
The conversation she knew she wanted to have with Cam about what she was feeling hadn’t happened yet but she knew when it did, he would look at her with sympathy filling his baby blues and say some line about needing her in his life more than anyone else needed her.
As much as she loved her brother, as much as she needed him right back, she also needed…more. She wanted her own life, she wanted to fall in love, she wanted be more than just Jules Clarke but with her life so aligned with Cam's, she didn't feel like that were possible.
But she would go to the rink tomorrow, she would show her face and meet the staff and say hi to bunch of hockey players she’d come to know in passing over the years all thanks to her brother's career.
And she would meet Coach Stevens, though they'd already met.
Weeks ago.
How was she going to play this if Cam asked?
Should she pretend like they didn’t know one another?
Should she act like they were old friends?
Or, and this would be the smartest option, just be honest and admit that they actually lived in the same building and had first encountered one another in the gym?
With her phone in hand, Jules flopped onto her bed and opened Instagram.
She couldn’t keep herself from searching for Frankie Stevens and the first account that popped up was exactly the woman she was looking for because the feeling Jules got in her chest, the tug of undeniable attraction she got as she looked at the photos, was the same thing she'd felt when they'd crossed paths in the gym.
Frankie had over 100,000 followers, which didn’t surprise Jules in the slightest given the public nature of her new coaching job and the follower count was definitely bound to grow once the season officially began. Being one of two women in a male centric league gave you celebrity status.
Jules scrolled through the posts, finding herself smiling at the videos of Frankie doing drills, at the photos of her with the team coached to junior championships with, but it was the candid photos Frankie had posted of herself that made Jules smile the most.
Before she knew it, Jules had scrolled back four years on the timeline and as she tried to quickly scroll back to the top of the profile feed, she accidentally liked a photo posted three years earlier.
“Fuck,” she muttered, quickly unliking the post.
It was a lakeside photo of Frankie in a t-shirt and denim cutoff shorts standing on a dock with a golden hour sunset behind her. The caption “perfect summer vibes at the cottage with friends but always missing the ice” accompanied the photo and damn did Frankie look good.
Her toned legs from her consistent years of heavy skating and her strong arms were drool worthy and maybe if it were a recent post, Jules liking it wouldn’t be so bad but something from three years earlier?
How embarrassing. Surely having hundreds of thousands of followers meant Frankie wouldn’t even notice a one off notification of a random person liking an old photo…
With a dramatic sigh, Jules tossed her phone aside and closed her eyes.
Tomorrow she was going to see the woman who had occupied more space in her mind over the last few days than she would admit.
She wanted to see Frankie again, wanted to know her, but seeing her at the rink?
Seeing her in her hockey element? That meant that Jules would no longer get to be her own person anymore when it came to Frankie.
She was going to be Cameron Clarke's sister and for most of her life, that was the only person she'd ever gotten to be. The disappointment she felt in that weighed heavily on her and she reached for a pillow, burying her face in it.