Page 71 of Sin Bin

“Of course. I should have known.” Meadow flopped back down on the couch and cupped her hand to her flushed cheek.

Chuckling, her father sat beside her and draped his arm over the back of the couch. “What’s the score?”

“Four to two. Rebels are up.”

Her dad scanned the ice. “Where’s Logan?”

“Penalty box.” She made a sour face. “He was fighting.”

Harris chuckled warmly. “Long live Bruiser.”

Meadow sighed, snuggling under her father’s arm with her head tucked beneath his chin as they watched the game.

During a break in play, the camera showed a close-up of Logan cooling his heels in the sin bin. He was aggressively chewing his mouthguard, black brows slashing low over his eyes as he watched the game proceed without him.

“Why didn’t you tell me you ran into him while you were in Denver?”

Meadow went still for a long moment. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?”

She bit her lip, then sighed. “I guess I didn’t want you to make a big deal over it.”

“You don’t think it’s a big deal?”

She didn’t answer.

Her father chuckled and kissed the top of her head. “You don’t start your new job until April eleventh, yet you’re going back to Denver ten whole days before you have to. I knew there had to be a reason.”

Meadow said nothing, watching as Logan burst out of the penalty box like a bull released from its pen. His raw physicality was something to behold. He was so intense, so ruthlessly competitive. It excited her and made her nervous at the same time.

Her father waited for the next commercial break to speak again. “You may not remember this, but the day you were adopted, your caseworker was supposed to bring you to us. We weren’t supposed to pick you up at the group home. It was against protocol, as you know from your days at DFS. But we persuaded your caseworker to make an exception for us, to bend the rules just once.”

Meadow drew back to stare at her father. “Why?”

“We wanted to see where you had been living, where you’d spent the past five months of your young life. We wanted to see your living conditions to help us better understand how it had affected you, shaped you.” His eyes softened on her face. “I’m glad we were there that day. If we hadn’t been, we wouldn’t have been able to observe you with Logan. We wouldn’t have seen how much he obviously meant to you.”

Meadow’s heart was pounding in her ears, and her throat felt so tight she could barely swallow.

“I don’t think he meant as much to me as you and Mom thought. I mean, he was just a boy…” She trailed off, the words tasting dishonest on her tongue.

“Just a boy, huh?” Her father’s eyes gleamed with the preternatural wisdom of a soothsayer. “I guess time will tell.”

His words echoed around the room and reverberated through her heart.

Without responding, she resettled her head on his shoulder. He gently kissed the crown of her hair and hugged her close.

In the last two minutes of the game, Logan scored another goal. Meadow and her father cheered boisterously as the home crowd erupted in celebration while Logan dropped to one knee and pumped his fist.

When the final horn sounded, the Rebels had won 5-2.

Meadow’s euphoric bubble burst as Wendi walked into the room with a peevish expression. She was followed by Trish.

“So this is where the two of you snuck off to,” Wendi scolded.

Meadow and her father exchanged guilty grins.

“People have been looking for you, Meadow. It was rude of you to disappear in the middle of your party.”

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