Page 6 of Puck & Make Up

Annie shakes her head.

“Mom.”

Annie jumps, but then the words rush out of her. “Your father arranged the trade in exchange for the contract to the rink.”

Fox jerks again.

“I love watching you play,” she whispers. “You’re big and strong. So much like Billie”—her deceased son, a loss we’d always thought was responsible for her mental breakdown in the first place—“would have been.” That fog creeps in further, the grief that had broken her so much clearer now.

She’d lost not just one son.

Buttwo.

And because of that…

She lost a daughter.

Rosie’s shaking and I wrap my arm around her waist.

But she’s tough. She keeps it together.

“Secrets,” she whispers. “It’s always fucking secrets with you. Why couldn’t you ever just have a conversation with me? With us?” she adds, glancing at Fox.

And my insides twist again.

Because that’s our Rosie—generous and sweet with a huge heart. Fox has already been part of her family, but this…

Well, the news may have thrown her, but she won’t hold it against him.

I know that with complete certainty.

And even though Fox pushes every button of mine—forreasons—I know I can’t hold this against him either.

Not with the pain in his eyes and the worry etched into his face.

“We don’t talk about it,” Annie whispers. “N-not ever. We move f-forward a-and—” Her voice breaks. “We don’t look back.”

“Except, the past has a funny way of showing back up,” Joel mutters.

But Annie’s expression has smoothed out, and I know she doesn’t process the jab at all, same as she barely processes Fox saying, “That’s all of it—at least from me.”

Rosie exhales shakily.

“And it’s late, we should finish this conversation somewhere else.”

“Right,” Joel says. “You take that one. I’ll get these two.”

Three

Fox, Two Weeks Later

“That’s not how you do it,” the beautiful goddess next to me says, yanking the spoon from my hands and elbowing me out of the way.

I smother a sigh, but allow the woman, who’s tall and strong, but nowhere near as tall and strong as I am, to shove me to the side, knowing that this is just Dessie.

Or maybe, this is just Dessie withme.

She’s beautiful, full of lean curves and lithe muscles that give hint to her former career—a firefighter battling blazes, at least before she up and quit for some reason that she won’t share with anyone. And she’s got height, towering over her friends.

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