Chapter 2
. . .
Silas
Will scrolls through his phone, sprawled on his hotel bed with his lips twisted into a mischievous grin.
“Do you think over thirty thousand dollars on a wedding dress is excessive?”
I stand from my own bed in the hotel room in Boston that we’ve been sharing for the past couple of nights and grab my phone charger from my bag.
“Excessive to everyone else? Absolutely.” I plug my cell into the charger and make my way back to the bed, sighing as I take a seat on the edge of the mattress.
“For you, however, I’d say it was an entirely appropriate budget. ”
Will turns his phone so I can see, a floor-length Vera Wang lace wedding gown, priced at $31,000, staring back at me on the screen.
“Did Drew send you that?” I ask, confident that she didn’t.
Despite being my coach’s daughter and coming from money, Will’s fiancée is probably shopping for her dress in a thrift store. She’s that kind of humble.
Will zooms in on the dress, studying its detailing more carefully.
“Nah. She sent a couple of options, like we needed to keep the wedding below one hundred thousand dollars or something.” He scoffs at the notion, and I pick up my water glass from the nightstand set between our beds.
“I expect to drop at least five hundred thousand dollars on the day alone.”
Forcing myself to swallow and not spray my drink in his face, I finally open my mouth. “Half a million dollars? You want to spend that kind of money on a twenty-four-hour period in your life?”
He just shrugs like it’s no big deal. I guess to the Jones family, it really isn’t.
Will and his twin sister, June, were born to parents who basically shit money during their careers.
His mom, Kate, co-owns one of the largest legal practices in the US, and his dad, Jensen, earned even more money than our coach did during his career.
I, on the other hand? Well, I’m not from money. I’m a Detroit boy through and through, and I’m fucking proud of my roots, even if my home life was more than questionable.
I miss my mom, Elaine. Her demise to cancer is something I make a point of burying deep in the depths of my brain.
I can’t say the same for my dad, Derek, who was incarcerated in Detroit for over a decade.
I visited him there once, and that was a time too many.
The guy is a living reminder of the life I could’ve spiraled into if it wasn’t for my mom getting out of their marriage when I was a toddler and hockey keeping me on the right track despite a criminal record I’m not proud of.
College was a struggle but also a necessity, even though I almost managed to fuck that up too.
Fifth in the draft and struggling through a biology degree I didn’t want to complete.
I somehow managed to land on my feet after three years of bad behavior in the NCAA with a signing bonus that gave me the financial head start that wasn’t going to come from my parents.
My forward and I couldn’t have had more different starts in life, but somehow, Will and I grew a mutual understanding and respect, and we have been good friends since he joined the Rogues straight out of college last season.
He pretty much runs the forward line these days and is already one of the most valuable players in the league.
“Drew deserves it. She’ll tell me that it’s wasted money when nothing could ever be considered wasted on her.”
I pull in a breath and puff out my cheeks, holding up a hand in surrender. “Sorry,” I blow out. “I was on the cusp of puking but managed to hold it in.”
He deadpans at me, “I’m young and in love. Sue me.”
My attention lands on my cell on the far side of the room. I haven’t heard from Kane in nearly a week, which is unusual. He normally reaches out around this time each month, asking for money to pay the bills he’s ignored in favor of spending it on bullshit.
“I need to make a phone call,” I say to Will when I reach my phone and disconnect the charger.
Ten percent battery should be enough since I don’t make a habit of having prolonged conversations with my brother.
Will’s eyes move from his phone screen to me, a question in them. “Do you want me to make myself scarce?”
I shake my head and open the bedroom door. “No need. I won’t be long.”
Stepping into the hallway, which is decorated in a similar dark gray wallpaper to our hotel room, I scroll to Kane’s contact and hit Call, debating if he’ll be awake at eight a.m. in Seattle.
He frequently doesn’t wake up before midday.
Something that used to drive me fucking wild when we lived together for a short while.
He still lives in the place he and Vesper shared before they finally split and he wasn’t gentlemanly enough to do the right thing and move out himself.
“What?” Kane’s comatose voice groans down the line, and I lean back against the wall, closing my eyes and thinking of Mom.
You made her a promise to be there for him.
“I haven’t heard from you in, like, a week.”
He grumbles something inaudible and shifts around before the familiar sound of him lighting a cigarette pisses me off.
I fucking hate smoking and especially when I’m paying for his habit.
“It’s been a rough time, all right?” He yawns, taking a long drag from his cigarette.
I hang my head between my shoulders. “Tell me you didn’t get fired from this job.”
“No.” He blows out another breath. “I fucking hate my job, but I still have it. Being a gas station attendant isn’t exactly difficult. It’s way easier than a car mechanic,” he remarks. “I fucking hated the long hours in that job.”
“Then what’s the problem?” I ask, loathing that he doesn’t value his job when there’s a ton of people who are desperate for the opportunity to earn a reliable wage. The guy is twenty-six but acts like a fucking preteen.
He scoffs, followed by a sadistic laugh. “Vesper.”
My head darts up, every sense on full alert. “What about her?”
He takes another pull on his cigarette. “I banged her last week, and now she isn’t answering my calls.”
I feel sick. Nausea crippling my insides.
She went back to him. Again.
Nausea gives way to despair. How many more times, Ves?
“Anyway, I actually think she might be done with me this time. She threatened to call the cops if I showed up at her place or tried to call her one more time.”
“You shouldn’t be calling her at all,” I bite.
He just laughs like it’s all a game to his narcissistic ass.
My stepdad, Jude, was just like Kane, and I swear to God, if cancer hadn’t taken Mom, that abusive prick probably would’ve killed her himself.
The years Mom and I spent alone together between her leaving Dad and meeting Jude were the best of my childhood, even if my memories of that time are limited and largely of her working every hour available to put food on the table. At least she was happy and safe.
“Oh, don’t worry!” he exclaims. “I’m done with the bitch.”
My blood boils.
“I told her the sex was shit—which it was—and kicked her out of the apartment.” He laughs again, and I’m mentally calculating ways I can bury my brother and never get caught.
“It was like fucking a sack of potatoes. She just lay there while I did all the work.” He takes another drag of that goddamn cigarette.
“So, yeah, I came—no thanks to her—and told her to get the hell out. It was an insult to me.”
I can’t speak, my teeth grinding together.
“Si?” Kane checks I’m still on the call after maybe ten seconds of silence. “This piece-of-shit cell,” he grumbles to himself. “Are you still there or—”
“You did what?” I grit out.
He groans again, only this one is more impatient than pissed.
“What is it with you and Vesper, huh?” Kane’s question is rhetorical and a baseless accusation.
He knows nothing has ever gone down between me and his ex-girlfriend.
Not unless he’s tuned in to my fantasies.
“You act like you’re some kind of angel and judge my relationship when we both know you’ve treated women badly in the past.”
He’s right; I have. But never like he treated Vesper.
I wasn’t an abusive, manipulative dick, for one.
I messed around with multiple women at the same time because I didn’t have a moral compass, but I was never in a serious relationship, like Kane was with Vesper.
In fact, I’ve never had a serious girlfriend, period.
The only woman who’s made my heart beat at a wild rate has been fucked over by the guy who shares my DNA, but couldn’t be more different from me if he tried.
“Don’t even try to compare us. I’m nothing like you.” My voice sounds dark, laced with vitriol.
“Hate to break this to you, bro, but we share a parent, so we probably do have similarities. Even if I am the better-looking brother.”
The way he can joke around straight after telling me what he did to Vesper? His audacity disgusts me.
I can’t fucking look at this guy again, let alone laugh at his sick jokes.
“I need to go,” I say, somehow finding it in myself to keep calm. All the years of anger management therapy I had when I was playing in the NCAA are definitely paying off right now. “I have a game later, and you need to get the fuck out of bed.”
He inhales deeply on his cigarette. “Let me guess. You’re going to call Vesper and check that she’s okay, even though you’re my brother and you should be supporting me.”
I go to reply, but he gets there first.
“You preach about me leaving her alone. Ever think that you’re the fucking weirdo, Si?
You’ve been obsessed with her since the day you met her—and don’t think I didn’t notice.
She isn’t going to fuck you, bro, and I’d advise you to not waste your time either.
I’m sure there’s plenty of puck bunnies—”
My thumb hits End on the call so fucking fast; I’m done with hearing any more.
And then it’s just me, a dark gray hotel hallway, and Vesper’s contact staring right back at me.
“Fuck,” I hiss at myself. “What the fuck are you doing, Silas?”
One ring, two rings, three, and then her prerecorded voicemail.
At this point, I should probably hang up and take my rage out on the ice. But making good decisions has never been my strong suit, especially not when it comes to Vesper.
The tone sounds, and I take a second before speaking.
“Hey, Ves. It’s me, Si. Listen …” I pause, praying that my brother was right when he said that she was truly done with him this time.
“Kane just told me that you guys are finished. He said that you two hooked up a week ago and things didn’t end well.
” I swallow hard, trying to summon the right words.
“I know I sound like a broken record, but I want you to know I’m here if you need to talk.
I know you have Drew and your sister, but …
don’t shut me out, okay? I care about you. ”
My clenched fist finds the wall, the impact soft enough so I won’t cause any damage but hard enough so the pain drowns out the feelings I should never have developed for my brother’s girl.
“I don’t want Kane to be the reason why you cut contact with me completely because I’m on your side. And I always have been.”
When my teammate and fellow defenseman Mason James appears at the end of the hallway, I know I need to wrap this up fast. Aside from Will, who probably knows more about my feelings for his fiancée’s best friend than he actually lets on, no one else has any idea what’s going on in my head.
And that’s probably for the best.
“I know the last thing you need is another guy blowing up your phone when you don’t want to speak to him, so I’m going to put this out into the universe one last time: he doesn’t deserve you, and you know that.
Just …” I wave at Mason when all I want to do is headbutt the wall.
“Just call me back and tell me that you’re okay and you’re really fucking done with him this time. ”