Page 13 of Rowdy Hearts

“So you can see your new girlfriend?”

Kane snorted as I rolled my eyes and consciously unclenched my hands.

“Rebel, you are going to lose your fucking teeth. Get in the damn car with Kane. I’ll see you back there.”

Climbing in, I shut the door in Reb’s face. It took me a couple seconds to realize the damn car started with the push of a button, which for some reason just pissed me off. Why the fuck didn’t cars have keys anymore? Why did people have to fuck with everything?

Shit.

Maybe Rebel and Kane had picked up on more than theyshould have. Which just meant I needed to be sure I kept my mouth shut. Or maybe I just needed the fucking season to start so I felt like I had a purpose.

Because I had more trouble keeping a smile on my face lately. Probably best to keep that thought from getting out there. My parents and siblings would be all over me. And I definitely didn’t need that on my shoulders, too.

The car purred and dinged after I pushed the button, engine noise nonexistant. Niceexpensivecar. Shaking my head, I got the car back on the road and was halfway back to the bar when I got a text from my mom.

Mom

Heading back to our place with Tressy and Krista. Bring the car here.

Yep.That’s what I’d figured would happen. Not only because there were no open hotel rooms anywhere near St. David because the season opened tomorrow, but because that was the kind of person my mom was. Raffi Lawrence gathered people like they were stray cats, and she was the Humane Society. My dad grumbled, but he rarely ever said no to his wife, and he wasn’t quite the hard ass he pretended to be. Actually, no one ever said no to Raffi. She was just as much a force of nature as her husband. She just didn’t do it as loudly.

But when she had an opinion, she let you know. I loved my mom, but she sometimes got a little too invested in her children’s lives. And if I told her about the phone call I couldn’t stop thinking about, she’d tell me exactly what I needed to do.

And I wasn’t sure I wanted her to be right.

Coward.

Maybe. Or maybe I was a thirty-year-old who didn’t need mymom to solve my problems and didn’t need any more shit floating around my head before the game tomorrow.

A game that doesn’t mean shit. It’s not like you’re playing for the Stanley Cup.

Hell, it wasn’t like we were playing for any cup. Our league was barely professional and made up of the same teams every damn year. Sometimes a start-up joined, but they usually failed in a few years or moved up to the ECHL if they brought in enough money.

There were always new players every year, and some of them stuck around long enough to get their nicknames in their second season.

But, for the most part, if you started in this league, you stayed in this league. The guys who came to us from other leagues, like the ECHL and the WHL, usually went back after they got their shit together. That’s what Pop was good at. Helping these guys get their shit together.

And you’re gonna turn down a legit offer to advance? Maybe the only one you’ll ever get? Why is that?

Jesus, I needed my brain to just shut the fuck up.

I cut through Main Street, the one traffic light blinking yellow, only a couple of cars on the road. If you were out driving now, you were late for your third-shift job at one of the two factories in the county or you were heading home from the bar.

No lights shone through any of the businesses’ windows at this hour. Gerhart’s Hardware. Maggie Mae’s Beans and Leaves. Levengood’s Funeral Home. Steinbeck’s Flowers.

St. David also boasted a CPA, a tiny bookstore, a thrift store, a Subway and a couple of diners, one on either end of the main drag, which consisted of about five blocks.

If you blinked, you’d miss half the town. Most people traveling through never knew they were in St. David. Not that a lot of people ever drove through.

At the end of the last block, I pulled into the half-circle driveway in front of my parents’ home, parked the car by the front steps and ran up the flight of stairs to the wide front porch. I walked through the door and into the entrance hall that’d been a lobby when this place had been a bed and breakfast. Turning left, I headed for the great room, where the family typically hung out. When I didn’t find anyone there, I headed for the kitchen at the back of the house.

I couldn’t get over how quiet the house was. How empty it felt with my parents living here alone. No wonder my mom wanted us to visit so much. I made a mental note to remember this when she asked me to stop by the next time.

No one in the dining room or kitchen, either.

Which left the bedrooms. Knowing my mom, she already had her guests tucked into the suite on the first floor. My parents’ home had been built by an iron magnate in the 1910s who had promised the local farming community that his factory would provide for them for the rest of their lives. And it had, until the early ’60s when his last remaining descendent sold the plant to some huge corporation, which had kept it running for a few years then shut it down, putting a third of the town’s adults out of work and crippling most of the other businesses in town.

Some enterprising young couple had turned the house into an inn in the ’70s, but by then, the town had had one foot in the grave, with little to attract visitors. My parents had moved here after getting married. Pop had just resigned his commission from the Army and my mom had recently graduated from college. Between my parents’ almost twenty-year age gap, their purchase of the biggest house in town, my dad’s ownership of a multimillion-dollar business, and his crazy dream of building a hockey dynasty from scratch, the residents of St. David had thought they were either insane or arrogant, or both, and maybe delusional, as well.

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