Chapter 18
Cade
By the time I finished taking Luke apart in the street, every man in that neighborhood knew exactly what had happened.
Not because I said it. I didn’t need to.
Hockey was honest that way, even on pavement with cheap sticks, a scuffed plastic ball, and kids screaming from the curb with popsicle-stained mouths.
The score didn’t matter as much as the rhythm did.
The control. The humiliation. The way he kept trying to force his way through me and I kept shutting every lane down before he could build speed.
The way he shoved harder every time I stripped the ball from him clean, and the way I smiled like I hadn’t even noticed him getting pissed.
But, I did notice.
Luke played like a man who needed everyone to remember he used to be something.
Every swing of his stick had ego in it. Every shoulder check came late enough to be petty and sloppy enough to be stupid.
He wanted me angry. Wanted me reckless. Wanted me to turn this into something obvious so he could grin at Daniel and Ryker and every other Bennett in that driveway like I was the problem.
I didn’t give him that, would never give him that. I let him burn himself down in front of the whole block instead.
“Mercer is cooking him,” Kellen announced from the curb like he was doing commentary for national television instead of holding a paper plate full of ribs.
Knox pointed his stick toward Luke. “Dempsey, you want a chair? Maybe a little orange slice? You look emotionally dehydrated.”
The kids lost their minds laughing.
Luke smiled with his mouth and murder with his eyes.
I looked past him to where Pip stood near the cooler with Aura, arms folded loosely over her stomach, her hair still down around her neck.
She was trying to look amused. She was even doing a decent job of it for everyone else.
But I knew her tells now. I knew the stiffness in her shoulders when Luke moved too close.
I knew the way her fingers pressed into her own arm when she was forcing her body not to react.
I knew that every time his eyes cut toward her, she went still in ways no one who loved her had learned to read yet.
That pissed me off worse than anything he had done on the makeshift court.
Because today had been a good fucking day.
It had started with her in my hoodie and sunlight in her apartment, trying to sell me on benefits like I didn’t already know she was scared shitless of how real this felt.
It had turned into her mouth under mine, her legs around me, her body giving me every honest answer her words kept trying to hide.
Then the drive over, her hand in mine, her telling me I made her feel safe, her smiling at me like maybe I could have a place in all that loud family warmth if I wanted one.
Then Glory Days showed up and dragged the light right out of her.
I wasn’t having it. Not today.
Ryker tossed the ball back into the middle of the street. “Next point wins.”
Luke rolled his shoulders, breathing hard, sweat darkening the collar of his shirt. “Finally giving me a chance, Mercer?”
I let my stick rest loosely in one hand. “You’ve had chances.”
Knox made a wounded noise. “Oh, that was mean.”
“It was accurate,” Emitt said.
Luke’s jaw clicked. “You talk a lot of shit for a kid who thinks college hockey means something.”
There it was, the old-guy angle.
Cute.
I glanced at him, calm enough that his nostrils flared. “And you talk a lot for a guy whose best season happened before the iPad was invented.”
The street erupted.
Daniel choked on his beer. Ryker turned away laughing under his breath, trying and failing to act like a responsible adult. Even Aura’s mouth twitched from beside Pip, though her eyes stayed sharp on Luke like she was waiting for him to finally show everybody what lived under the charm.
Luke took one step toward me. “Careful.”
I smiled., fucking finally. He has stamina I give him that, but I knew he would unravel at some point. Now it was about getting the mask to drop.
“Or what?”
The noise around us thinned. Not stopped because the Bennetts never fully stopped making noise unless someone required stitches, but the air changed enough that every adult male in the driveway noticed.
Knox cop switch flipped on. Ryker’s posture straightened.
Daniel lowered his beer. Pip’s head came up fast.
Fear first followed by panic. Then that devastating, automatic need to protect everyone else from an obvious truth they refused to see.
It was time someone showed them.
She stepped off the curb. “Okay, I think street hockey has reached peak testosterone poisoning—”
My eyes cut to her. “Stay there, Pip.”
Her mouth opened but I cut her a look, not harsh. Not cruel. Just direct enough to make her understand I was not asking because I thought she was fragile. I was telling her because Luke had shifted toward her the second she moved, and I didn’t fucking like that.
Her chin lifted, stubborn as ever. “Do not boss me in front of my family.”
“I’ll boss you wherever you need it.”
Kellen coughed. “Oh, they are absolutely dating.”
“We are not,” she snapped.
I didn’t look away from Luke. “Pip has labels she’s emotionally attached to.”
The entire driveway went up again.
Pip made a strangled sound. “Cade.”
Luke’s eyes moved between us, and the mask slipped another inch. “That what she’s calling it now?”
There was something in his voice I didn’t like. Not jealousy. Jealousy, I understood. Jealousy was normal, ugly, manageable. This was sharper. Older. Like he thought her mouth belonged to him in some way and the rest of us were trespassing on property.
I stepped closer to him before I even decided to and fucking Pip moved too.
I saw it from the corner of my eye and snapped my hand out, catching her waist before she could put herself between us.
Not hard. Not even close. Just enough to stop her from thinking she had any right to take this fuckers shit.
To protect him out of fear. To think for one second I would ever let her step into my fight, because that’s what this was. My fight now.
Her eyes flew to mine and I looked right at her. “No.” The word landed clean and her breath caught. “Do not step between me and him. He is a grown man and no man needs a woman protecting him.”
Her face changed.
I felt it immediately, the way her pulse jumped beneath my fingers, the way her eyes flicked once toward Luke and back. Not because I scared her. Because I had named the thing she’d been about to do and dragged it into the light before she could hide behind habit.
Luke laughed softly. “You always let guys order you around now, Pip?”
She flinched when he called her that, it was tiny but with my arm at her waist I felt it.
That was it.
I let go of her, slowly, pushing her behind me until she finally stepped back. It was only then when I turned fully toward him.
“What did you call her?”
Luke’s smile widened because he thought he had found something to push. “Pip. Inside joke? I just wanted to join the fun.”
“You aren’t man enough to have her name in your mouth.”
My words cut across the driveway and Daniel straightened from the grill. “Everything okay?”
Pip moved fast, too fast, her smile snapping into place like armor. “Yeah. They’re being stupid. It’s fine.”
“No.” I didn’t take my eyes off Luke. “It’s not.”
The silence that followed felt like the first drop in a storm.
Pip’s hand brushed my forearm. “Cade.”
Not warning this time but pleading with me to stop and I hated that.
I hated that she looked at me like the only way to survive him was to make me smaller. Quieter. Easier to manage. Like if I just let his little digs slide, if I smiled and played along, if I didn’t make a scene, then maybe the rest of the day wouldn’t rot around her.
Fuck that.
I turned my hand and caught hers, threading our fingers together in front of everybody. Public. Obvious. Not hidden behind a cooler. Not half-accidental under a table. I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed her knuckles while looking straight at Luke.
Pip went perfectly still as Luke’s face emptied.
Beautiful.
“Cade,” she whispered.
I looked at her then, and whatever fight sat in my chest shifted just enough to let her feel the point of it. “Fuck him.”
Her lips parted.
“That’s enough,” Luke said, voice low.
I smiled without looking at him. “For you maybe.”
Pip stared up at me like she wanted to be furious and couldn’t get her body to cooperate.
She was flushed, anxious, too beautiful with her wild hair and that stubborn mouth trying to hold back the truth.
I could see the lie forming already. I’m fine.
It’s nothing. Luke’s just Luke. Every phrase designed to keep the peace while it ate her alive from the inside.
I wasn’t letting her have it.
This shit stopped here.
My hand slid to the side of her face, thumb brushing her jaw, and I bent down and kissed her right there in front of every Bennett, every neighbor, every kid with a popsicle, every pair of eyes in that driveway.
It was not soft so much as a promise.
Her breath broke against my mouth, and for half a second she froze, probably from shock, probably from the absolute disaster of being kissed in front of her entire family by the man she kept insisting she wasn’t dating. Then her fingers fisted in the front of my shirt, and she kissed me back.
Not enough for anyone else to understand what had happened this morning but enough for me to know she wanted to. Enough for Luke to know it too.
I broke the kiss before it turned into something her father would have to address with grill tongs in hand, but I stayed close enough that my mouth brushed hers when I spoke.
“You do not lie to me about him again.” She swallowed hard.