Page 39 of Brace and Chase

Seriously, what the fuck?

“Uncle Enzo,”I croak out as soon as the call connects.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, clearly alarmed. He obviously heard the desperation in my voice.

My younger brothers know me better than anyone in the world—even better than my mom, no matter what she thinks—but the only person who can claim to know me as well as them is my uncle Enzo.

“I fucked up,” I tell him, knowing it’s the truth, and that it’s the only way to really start this conversation. He has to know where the story ends before he hears all of it.

“How? What happened?” I hear him close a door then open another and I can picture him leaving his office to go outside. He’s always said that the cold air helps him think. And back home it’s a lot colder than it is in Vegas.

Crushville is forty minutes away from Chicago, and though it thankfully doesn’t have anything close to the winds that blow the frost into the city, it’s still freezing in the middle of the fucking winter.

“Okay, let me just start from the beginning,” I tell him, then take a deep breath.

Through fits and starts, I somehow get through it, and by some miracle, he doesn’t interrupt at all. It’s especially concerning when he doesn’t say anything for a few seconds after I’m done.

“Enzo?” I demand, worried the call got cut off and I’ve been talking to no one, and worse, that I’m going to have to tell the story again.

“I’m here, just wondering where I should start.”

“That doesn’t bode well for me,” I mutter.

“No shit,” he says and chuckles weakly. Then I hear along sigh. “Charlie, you’ve been going through all of that alone. Why didn’t you call me? Your brothers? Anyone?”

“I did tell my brothers,” I admit. “Only about how annoying he was and about the first fight,” I admit.

“But the whole team?” he asks, clearly unhappy with everything I just told him.

I squirm in my seat. I’ve never been one to call and complain to my family—about anything. There were a lot ofeventsgrowing up that made me have real perspective over my life, and calling to complain about being tired, about my team not making it into the playoffs again, or about anything, just never felt right.

I’m a millionaire doing what I love most in the world for a career. I really have shit all to complain about.

Only reason I told my brothers is because they were here when the whole slamming-me-against-a-wall thing happened and I was rattled. It takes a lot for me to reach out and lean on my brothers, so I haven’t done it since.

“Charlie,” Enzo says, somehow able to stuff the one word with love, reprimand, and sadness. He’s very good at that.

“Well, we’re all busy, and when I call I want to hear about your life, you know?” I try to defend myself.

“Don’t you think we want to know aboutyourlife too?” he asks, killing my one argument.

“I don’t think I have any right to complain,” I tell him honestly.

“You do have a right to complain. About any and allthings. Just because you like your job and you get paid well for it doesn’t mean your life is perfect. And it clearly fucking isn’t.” He shouts the last part, clearly frustrated with me. “They’ve been awful to you. Yes, Brotnik most of all, but we gotta assume he has a reason, right? So let’s table the subject of him for a second and focus on every other player on that godforsaken team. What the fuck is their problem? You’re fucking delightful. They should count themselves lucky you deemed them worthy of your awesomeness and not be slighting you all the fucking time.”

“Enzo,” I say, tired to my bones. “Nikolay is like their big brother. From what I’ve gathered since I’ve been here, they all have his back through and through. Right or not, that’s how it is.”

He only grumbles at that and I think of a way to get him to understand—because I’m really not mad about that part and don’t want him to focus on it. It’s not the most pressing problem after all.

“Imagine Uncle Ric comes home with a boyfriend one day, and it’s someone Aunt Brenda or Mom know. Now imagine they tell us they hate this man with a passion, and though they won’t tell us why, we can see how much they hate him. You wouldn’t be super welcoming to this imaginary man, would you?”

“What do you mean boyfriend?” he screeches, making me pull the phone away. “What have you heard?” he demands, and I roll my eyes. If there’s one thing that defines the Hearts besides pasta it’s our hunger for gossip, it’singrained in us, so I can’t blame him too much for how quickly his focus shifted just then. Also, it’s his little brother—by more than twenty years—and we all know that as the baby of the family Ric will always be protected by all his siblings and their partners.

“It’s a hypothetical situation,” I snap, losing my damn cool.

“Well, all right then, why didn’t you say so?” he whines. How a man of fifty-five can whine like a teenager and not feel any shame in doing so is beyond me, but that’s Uncle Enzo for you.

“I did say so! I started the whole damn sentence with the wordimagine. Now, can we focus? The team isn’t the problem.”

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