4 #2
“Your game starts at seven oh five, but warmups start before that.”
“Warmups at six thirty.”
“You have to tape your stick.”
“I already did one.”
“You need two.”
“I have two.”
She nodded once, satisfied. “Good.”
Something in my chest loosened as Skylar pushed past us, dragging a small overnight bag that looked too expensive for me not to recognize the hit to my bank account.
“This house smells like hospital, lemons, and boy.”
Briggs appeared at the end of the hall, visibly trying to arrange his face into a non-overwhelming expression. It was like watching a marching band remember it was inside a library.
Skylar stopped and stared at him. “You’re the goalie.”
Briggs placed one hand over his heart and bowed with disturbing dignity. “Briggs Lawson, emotional backbone of the Fury and victim of your brother’s cleaning regime.”
Skylar looked at me. “He talks like that on purpose?”
“Unfortunately.”
“I like him.”
Briggs’s face lit up. “I have been perceived and accepted.”
“Bring it down,” Ryan called from the kitchen.
Briggs lowered his voice to a theatrical whisper. “I have been perceived and accepted.”
Vivi’s gaze shifted toward him, her hands still tucked inside her sleeves. “Goalies are statistically different.”
Briggs went completely still. The effort it took him not to explode with joy should have earned him community-service credit.
“That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
Vivi looked at me. “Is he loud?”
“Yes,” I said. “But he’s trying not to be.”
Briggs nodded solemnly. “My volume is under construction.”
“Okay,” Vivi said, and stepped inside.
That one word changed the room. The guys softened without making a show of it, quietly adjusting around her instead.
Cade stepped away from the banister to leave a clear path, Rider moved the coffee table farther from the couch, and Ryan collected the empty cups from the island.
Briggs remained exactly where he was, vibrating with friendliness without moving closer.
Mom watched all of it.
Nothing got past her. Exhausted or not, she saw the world for what it was and smiled anyway, which was a survival skill and a warning. Her gaze moved from Cade to Rider to Ryan to Briggs before returning to me with one brow raised.
“Well,” she said. “Look at you, training feral athletes into housebroken pets.”
Cade’s mouth twitched. “We prefer domesticated predators.”
Mom’s eyes landed on him, and her whole expression changed with recognition. “Cade Mercer in the flesh.”
He straightened without meaning to, but people did that around her. “Yes, ma’am.”
“So handsome and polite. Unnerving, but in a good way.” She stepped directly into his space like she had decided months ago that he belonged to her in whatever distant, FaceTime-adopted way my friends did. “Come here, honey.”
Before Cade could decide whether old-money emotional repression had a formal response to being called honey by my mother, she wrapped him in a hug.
For half a second, Cade looked like every wealthy defense mechanism in his body had filed a formal complaint. Then his arms came around her carefully, one hand hovering before settling against her back like he wasn’t sure what the rules were but knew refusing would be rude.
Mom patted him once, firm and warm, then pulled back and looked him over the way she had been waiting to do since the first time I lied through FaceTime and told her he was fine.
“I’m glad to finally see you standing in front of me after everything. My son tried to act calm for months, but he worried so hard I started worrying secondhand.”
Cade blinked, something quieter moving through his face. “I’m okay now.”
“I can see that.” Mom cupped his cheek for half a second because she had never met a boundary she couldn’t mother her way across. “And I’m keeping the right to be relieved about it.”
Cade’s mouth barely curved. “You’ve earned it.”
I muttered, “Mom.”
She glanced at me. “What? I loved him through a phone screen while he recovered. Let me have my moment. He survived, and I’m allowed to hug him about it.”
Cade recovered, his eyes faintly amused. “I know when not to argue.”
Mom smiled wider. “Good. I like men who know when not to argue with a tired woman.”
“That should be all men, if they’re smart.”
Ryan leaned against the counter with his coffee, his tattoos dark against warm brown skin and his dark eyes watchful beneath the brim of his Flint Frost hat.
He had his mom’s Hispanic coloring, his white dad’s sharper features, and the kind of hard life that made people see the threat before they saw the loyalty.
Mom had clocked all of that through FaceTime three years ago and immediately decided Ryan Decker was dangerous-looking and precious, which meant she flirted with him every time he appeared on my screen or came to town just to make me regret having friends.
The second she spotted him, her whole face lit up. “There’s my boyfriend.”
Ryan’s mouth barely moved, but his eyes warmed as he set down his coffee and let my mother hug him. “Hey, senora.”
“Don’t ‘hey, senora’ me like you didn’t break my heart by graduating and running off to Flint.”
“I play hockey there. I didn’t flee your affection.”
“You play on the Frozen Lake team, right?”
“Flint Frost,” Ryan corrected, hugging her back carefully.
“That’s the one. I knew it involved suffering weather.” She pulled back and looked him over with shameless approval. “I bet you have girls lining up from here to Flint, Ryan Decker. All handsome and tattooed, still looking like you scare the piss out of people in parking lots.”
Ryan glanced at me, saw my jaw tighten, and winked at my mother like the traitorous bastard he was. “Sí, senora. Only when necessary.”
Mom fanned herself with one hand. “Useful skill. Handsome and practical.”
I pointed at him. “Shut the fuck up and stop flirting with my mom to annoy me.”
Ryan lifted his coffee, his eyes warm with the kind of amusement that made me want to take his skates and hide them somewhere inconvenient. “She started it.”
“I’m finishing it.”
Mom patted Ryan’s chest once. “Ignore him. He’s been bossy since birth.”
Ryan turned those dark eyes on her and spoke in Spanish, low and smooth enough for the whole kitchen to notice even if half the room didn’t understand a damn word.
“Su hijo es un buen hombre, senora.”
My head snapped toward him. “What did you say?”
Ryan smiled into his coffee. “You’ll never know.”
I looked at my mom because she spoke Spanish as a second language after too many years of hospital work, half her favorite coworkers, and a stubborn belief that patients deserved to be understood when they were scared.
She was already grinning.
“Mom.”
She cupped Ryan’s cheeks like he had handed her flowers instead of a sentence designed to make my skin crawl. “Gracias por ayudarme a poner incómodo a mi hijo. Eres un regalo, Ryan.”
Briggs appeared from the hallway with his rubber gloves still on. “I don’t know what happened, but I would like to be included emotionally.”
Cade leaned against the banister, his mouth barely curved. “Ryan is speaking Spanish to Gayle and making it sound obscene.”
Ryan lifted his mug. “Not my fault the language is romantic.”
“It is your fault you looked at my mom while saying it,” I said.
Mom released his face and turned toward me, still smiling. “He said my son is a good man.”
The kitchen went quiet for half a beat, the kind that would have been uncomfortable if Briggs had not immediately pressed a gloved hand to his chest.
“Beautiful,” Briggs whispered. “We are healing in multiple languages.”
Ryan winked at my mom again.
I pointed toward the hallway. “Both of you are on thin fucking ice.”
Briggs leaned toward Rider and whispered loudly, “I am in love with Easton’s mom.”
Mom pointed at him without looking. “Don’t make it weird, Goalie.”
Briggs straightened. “Understood.”
Skylar was already on the couch, looking around the living room with the careful nonchalance of a girl trying not to seem impressed.
Rider sat near the far end, leaving enough space not to crowd her while still being included.
Somehow, within two minutes, he had her talking about the music on her phone because Rider had the unfair ability to make silence feel like an invitation instead of a test.
Cade crouched beside the ottoman where Vivi had paused to inspect the framed team photo, his voice low and even. “You know all the numbers?”
Vivi nodded without looking at him. “Easton is thirteen. You are fifty-five. Briggs is seventy-two. Rider is nineteen, but his position changes too much because Coach Little trusts him to be flexible.”
Cade looked impressed in a way he did not soften for adults. “That’s right.”
“Your face was on the news,” Vivi said.
Cade’s expression flickered.
I took one step forward, but Mom’s hand caught my wrist with quiet force before I could move too fast. Bliss wasn’t here to step in, but Cade answered before I could.
“It was.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice steady. “It hurt.”
Vivi processed that, her fingers tapping once inside her sleeve. “You skate again, though, right?”
“I do.”
“Good,” she said, and returned to the photo like the matter had been handled.
Cade remained crouched for another second, then looked up at me. Something passed between us that neither of us would name in front of my sisters.
Mom’s grip slid from my wrist to my hand. She turned my palm over and frowned at the red line across my knuckle where I had split it again while cleaning beneath the sink.
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You boys always say it’s nothing when it is visibly something.” She clicked her tongue and looked toward the kitchen. “Where’s your first-aid kit, or do you all pour beer on wounds and call it team bonding?”
Ryan pointed. “Cabinet by the fridge.”
“See, that one’s useful,” Mom said, then dragged me toward the kitchen like I was still twelve and had come home with gravel in my knee.
“I can clean it myself.”
“Congratulations. I can also clean it, and I outrank you.”
“You don’t outrank me in Hockey House.”