8. Brynn
brYNN
Get information for Mom. You have his attention. Now’s your chance to learn about him.
I wouldn’t fuck this up. These two were perfect for one another.
It didn’t matter that I enjoyed the way his brown eyes policed me behind the bar.
It didn’t matter that his gruff exterior made my skin tingle.
It didn’t matter that I felt safe, blanketed by his shadow and tucked beneath his wandering stare.
My mother deserved someone who made her feel this way.
So I shoved my own feelings aside and got to work. “You know, Mom took Dad’s death really hard. It took her so long to pull herself out of her grief.”
Colton nodded slowly, his gaze studying me. “I can only imagine.”
“Oh, I’m sure you watched it with your own mother. You know, the absent glances out the window. The monotonous routine she autopilots on her bad days.”
He nodded slowly. “Still happens sometimes.”
I snapped my head toward him. “Really?”
He nodded. “Yep. Been thirty-something years since his death. I don’t think she’s ever even dated.”
I refused to let my mother be like that. End up like that. She deserved more. She deserved better. She deserved her happiness. And I wasn’t going to be the one to take it from her when the perfect man sat right at my bar.
“Well,” I said as I mindlessly took someone’s order and walked to the beer fridge to get them a glass bottle.
I popped the top off against the inner edge of the bar before handing the glass bottle to one of my regulars, Cherrie, who gave me the sweetest smile.
I gave her a head nod before I turned my attention back to Colton.
“Mom’s done a really good job for herself since Dad’s death.
I mean, she built the team into what it is now.
Works out of our home. She pours everything she has into that arena and the team. It’s her whole world.”
“So, the office I found her in earlier isn’t her actual office?”
I shook my head softly. “It’s Dad’s old office.”
“Ah.”
I nodded. “It all started with Dad. Even after he retired from playing he never stopped loving the game. They’d pick up food and go sit in the empty stands to just watch practice sometimes.
It was their thing. I think that’s part of why she can’t let go of it now.
It’s not just a business to her. It never was. ”
His grin made my heart go whump-whump, but I ignored the feeling. “Sounds like they were really good together.”
My voice is softer than I wanted it to be by the time I spoke. “The best.”
I felt myself getting lost in the memories. The way Mom used to smile and laugh all the time. She doesn’t do that nearly as much as she used to. Not since…
Well…
“Hey! Coach!” Rhett exclaimed as he came buzzing over, only to slide to a stop at Colton’s side. “Here’s your money back.”
I watched him slap a wad of cash into Colton’s hand and he pocketed it without even looking at it. “Thanks.”
Rhett balked, just like I wanted to. “Aren’t you gonna see how much you won? Everyone put their money on Jett once you put your money there. It must’ve—”
Colton grinned. “Given him the confidence to do his best?”
The two men looked at one another before Rhett’s head fell back in boisterous laughter.
He clapped Colton’s upper arm, guffawing as if the funniest joke was just told to him.
And as Rhett walked away, laughing his head off for reasons we’d probably never know, Colton turned his attention back to me.
I must’ve had a look on my face, because all he did was smirk. “What? Chirpers are always at their best when they’ve got an audience. Just had to give him one.”
I shook my head as a smile spread across my face. “You’re something else, you know that?”
His eyes darted down my body before sliding back up to my face. “I’m sure you do, yes.”
The way his lips curled around the edge of his glass without that stare ever wavering from my face did something to me.
My toes physically curled in my work shoes, and I had to force my gaze away from him just so I could concentrate on work.
A few people flocked to the bar, pulling my attention away from Colton long enough to watch him go strolling over to the pool tables.
Maybe it was for the best that he’d left.
After all, I enjoyed conversation with him way too much.
Yet, all too soon…
“Yep,” Colton said with a grunt as he eased himself back down into his seat directly in front of me at the bar, “let’s go ahead and cash these boys out before I have to roll them all home. Just tally it all up onto one bill.”
I giggled as I walked over to the cash register, but the more I tallied, the more I peered over my shoulder.
While Colton inched his hip up to get at his wallet, I wondered if he was going to be able to pay this kind of tab.
I mean, sure, I enjoyed hockey, but it wasn’t like I knew what coaches made for a living or anything like that.
I printed out the receipt, slipping it into a little cushioned black folder, and walked it back to him.
“There you go,” I said as I slid him the tab for just over eight hundred big ones, “we take cash, credit, and debit. Just no—”
He slipped out a card and handed it to me. “There you go. Tip whatever you need on the card.”
I took the credit card from him and forced myself to scoop the check back up.
The man didn’t even open the top of the cushioned folder to see how much it was.
Finally, someone who wouldn’t use my mother for her money.
Not that my mother did a hell of a lot of dating or anything like that.
Hell, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her take an interest in the idea since we buried Dad.
But my mother was loaded. And that was an easy thing to take advantage of, if someone wasn’t careful.
“So, English lit,” Colton said, pulling me out of my trance. “Community relations for a hockey team. How’s that square with the degree?”
But all I did was stare at the screen as I rang him out. I swiped his card, but when I was met with the tip screen, I thought back on his words.
Tip whatever you need.
Did he mean that? No, surely, he couldn’t have meant that. Why would he have said it if he didn’t mean it? My fingers grew itchy. Despite the fact that Mom was loaded down, I never took a shred of her money. So why was it so tempting to test this theory with Colton?
I typed in a regular 18% tip. It was still a hell of a lot of money on an $812.32 bill, but when I cashed him out, I let out a breath I’d been holding since he walked in.
Why did I get the feeling he tested me?
“Here you go,” I said as I slipped the new receipt into the black cushioned folder with the bar’s logo on the front of it in various shades of blue.
“Thanks,” he muttered as he flipped the notepad open and glanced at the total for exactly half a second before he signed it. I watched him slide his card back into his wallet without checking the receipt I left in the folder. Most people at least looked. He didn’t even reach for it.
“There we go,” I said as I took it back from him. “You guys are all set. Though, feel free to stick around and play some more pool.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Huh?”
He pinned me with a look. “You didn’t answer my question.”
I couldn’t pull my eyes away from his. “I wrote a novel.”
He blinked. “You want to be a writer.”
I shrugged. “I’ve been working on it for six years. I’m not sure want is the right word anymore. It’s more like something I can’t put down even when I try.”
“You speak as if it’s complicated.”
I lowered my gaze to the bar and cleaned things up a bit during the lull of patrons. “Life chooses differently for us sometimes.”
“You can’t be more than twenty-six or so,” he said without hesitation, “you’ve got plenty of time to do what you want with your life.”
I topped off a patron’s drink before turning back. “I like what I do for the team, and I enjoy being home for Mom.”
“I don’t buy it.”
“Doesn’t shock me, seeing as you just spent eight hundred dollars on a tab.”
He looked at me for a second. "Your mother owns a professional hockey franchise."
"She does."
"And eight hundred dollars surprises you." He turned his glass slowly. "I don't coach because I need the money, Brynn."
I stared at him.
He picked his glass back up. "Finish your novel."
I kept my face even but something shifted in my head.
Mom came from money too, old family money that she never talked about and never leaned on any harder than she had to.
But even she had fought for every piece of what she built.
Every dollar she put into this team had a decision behind it, a sacrifice, a reason.
Colton talked about money the way people talked about the weather.
Like it was just there. Like it had always been there and always would be and the idea of it meaning something had simply never occurred to him.
I didn't know if that was impressive or lonely.
I swallowed hard. He’d be so good for Mom. So incredible. So lovely. With those large, callused hands of his, and his own money, and the way he licks his lips…
Stop it, Brynn. You’re on a mission.
Though, I did pull my phone out on my break that night and type his name into the search bar. Not because I was interested. Just because I was curious about the man I was supposed to be matchmaking for my mother.
The first result was the scandal. I already knew about that.
The second result was a Forbes sidebar from three years ago. Not a profile. Just a mention in a list. I had to read the line twice before it actually registered.
I put my phone face-down on the bar and went back to work.
A mission I tried to convince myself not to fuck up. “Mom.”
He paused. “What about her?”
I turned back to the cash register, printing out more receipts for patrons that raised their hands just beyond the horizon of Colton’s broad shoulders.
I’d bet my paycheck he’d be able to toss me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing.
“Mom just… needs help sometimes,” I said.
Colton tilted his head. “She seems like a more than self-sufficient woman.”
“Not what I meant,” I muttered as I slotted the receipts into the little black booklets with the logo emblazoned across the front.
“What did you mean, then?”
Suddenly, I didn’t like this line of questioning. Was he trying to find imperfections in my mother? Why did I care about that? No one was perfect, but that didn’t stop two people from being perfect for one another.
Would they really be perfect together, though?
I divvied out the checks to hands that reached out to the bar before I turned my attention back to the conversation.
“So, does practice start up in the morning?” I asked.
Colton stared me down for a while, but eventually relinquished himself to the line of questioning, for which I was quite thankful. “Yep. Bright and early in the morning.”
“The guys are going to hate the fact that they came here.”
“That’s the point,” he said flatly.
I giggled as a grin spread across my face. “Dad would’ve liked you.”
I wasn’t sure where the hell those words came from, but the way Colton studied me as he finished his watered-down Coke made my knees clack together behind the bar.
“I think I would’ve liked him, too,” he said so lowly that I wasn’t sure if anyone else heard him but me.
And when my eyes met his, my heart whump-whumped against my chest again.
I am so fucked.
“Did Mom get you a set of keys to open up Caldwell Arena tomorrow morning?” I asked.
Colton nodded. “Yep. Got everything squared away. That mother of yours is very on top of things.”
I snickered. “She’s nothing if not efficient.”
“It’s a good trait for someone to have, especially in this kind of world we live in.”
I registered the compliment to my mother, but it didn’t make me feel giddy or excited. I figured I’d feel happy. Ready to get home and tell Mom all about the new hockey coach that’s said such nice things about her. But instead, all I felt was… jealousy.
I wanted his compliments.
All of them.
For myself.
“Well,” he grunted as he pushed himself up from his bar stool, “duty calls.” Then his voice bellowed over the patrons of the The Hideout. “Vipers!”
The entire team over at the pool tables snapped to attention. “Yes, Coach!?”
My heart surged with… something… as Colton turned toward the boys. “Evening’s done! We’ve got practice bright and early. Clean up the pool tables, pick up your trash, and let’s move out!”
And as the men rushed around, cleaning up after themselves in a blurred flurry of moving bodies and limbs, Colton’s mahogany stare returned to me. “Have a good night, Brynn.”
He slid that dark stare of his down my body one last time.
Leaving me breathless as him and the team exited the bar, making their way out into the night.