Page 3 of Making the Save

Fuck. This was complicated.

I wasn’t great at complicated. I was great at hockey and that was about it.

Now, I was nervous.

“Nick Steffens?” Liam said.

“Name is Renard now. Nick Renard.”

“Please sit,” Liam said, gesturing to the side of the booth he’d just gotten out of. Nick sat and Liam scooched in next to me. Elbowing me so I would give him more room, but there wasn’t any. We were two professional hockey players wedged into a booth.

This was getting worse by the minute.

Liam was looking at me like he wanted me to say something, but I had nothing, really. Nothing that was going to make this any easier. I’m sorry, I could say. She hurt us too. But then I realized he didn’t know she was gone.

We hadn’t wanted to write that in a letter.

Liam smiled, the same smile that had been on last month’s cover of GQ. Crooked. Cocky as fuck. Easy. “You a hockey fan, Nick?”

“Our mom is dead,” I said without any hesitation or preamble. Rip off the band-aid style.

“Jesus, Wy,” Liam groaned, hanging his head.

“What?” I asked.

“You could… I don’t know, ease him into it?”

I scowled, because yeah, probably. But we were here now and we just had to deal with things. “There’s nothing to ease. He’s a grown man, not a child.”

Nick sat there like the news didn’t even affect him.

“We didn’t know about you,” Liam jumped in to fill the void. “Until after the funeral. She left a letter.” Nick nodded. Still silent. “We hired an investigator to find you. That’s why it took so long for us to get ahold of you.”

Liam was doing this wrong. We didn’t need excuses. We needed to get him talking so we could get to know him.

“You grew up with your father?” I asked.

“Until I was fourteen,” Nick said. “Look, I get why maybe you thought you should contact me. And obviously, I was curious enough to come meet you both, but I think this was a mistake.”

He shifted, about to pull himself out of the booth. Then my brother did something smart for once, and stuck out his leg, blocking his way.

“Come on,” Liam said. “One beer. It’s not every day you find out you have a secret brother.” He caught the bartender’s eye and lifted three fingers.

“Stop,” Nick said, shaking his head. “This isn’t going to be a thing. I have my life. I have my family. It’s all I need.”

“We’re brothers,” I declared.

The word brother clearly affected the guy. It was like he’d gotten blown back for a second. Mouth open and a little dazed. I imagined there’d been times in Nick’s life when all he wanted was a brother. Someone to share the load. I remembered all those days when it was my brother and me against the world. Holding each other up in the storm our mom created.

It was – no exaggeration – the most important relationship in my life.

And Nick didn’t have it when he needed it most.

Broke my fucking heart.

“You’re not my brother,” Nick said, his voice low, his emotions raw. “We share DNA. That’s all.”

“Don’t you want to know about her?” I asked.

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