Page 37 of Brace and Chase

I stand at that and walk out. He hurries after me.

“Why won’t you tell me where you live?” I keep walking and ignore him—that more than anything seems to aggravate him the easiest. “Brotnik, what the fuck?”

I keep walking until we enter the still-deserted locker room and go to pick up my shit.

“I suggest you get changed because we are leaving in five minutes.”

“You can’t fucking tell me what to do,” he says with a scoff. I round on him and smile smugly.

“Can I really not?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, just use contractions, man,” heshouts, exasperated. It only makes my smile more genuine. “And stop smiling.” He points a finger at my face then focuses on taking his gear off.

Like me, he takes care to put everything where it belongs so at least our equipment manager won’t be mad at us. Then we walk silently to the players’ parking lot and I stop next to my pretty Vanquish. Charlie’s brow furrows as he looks down at my car, and I’m about to snap at him, ask him what he’s looking at, when he shakes his head and looks back at me.

“Just follow me home.”

I was about to ask him for his address, so I could go get some thingsthenmeet him at his place, but this works too, I suppose. In any case, I don’t feel like talking to him at all, so I just shrug and get in, back out of my spot, and wait for him.

I see a car pull up next to mine and pass by slowly, which I have to reluctantly appreciate—anyone who is careful around my car at least has common decency, which is all I can say about Charlie—and then I see he has the new fully electric BMW SUV, and that just earns more appreciation. It’s a pretty fucking car, that’s for sure.

Not as pretty as mine, but still . . .

And what the fuck am I doing admiring his car?

I keep pondering that question as I follow him to the gated community outside the city where some of my other teammates live. He must let the guard at the gate know I’mwith him, because he greets me with a smile and gives me a red square.

“Just put it on top of your dashboard and you should be able to come in and out without having to sign in until you give it back.”

“Thank you,” I tell him and place it in its new spot.

“Big fan,” the guard says in a hurried voice.

I decide to be nice today so I catch the name tag on his uniform and nod at him with a smile.

“Appreciate it, Rick.”

With that, I move the car along and keep following Charlie who for sure had to wait for me to finish up with Rick. I pretend that it doesn’t make the hate shrink, even if just a little.

The driveway where he turns is long, and you can’t really see the house until the bend, and I have to snort a little. It’s a picturesque house, that’s for sure. Very cute, but cookie cutter and... boring. Yes, it’s boring.

But then again, Charlie Heart is a boring guy, isn’t he?

If he didn’t play hockey I bet he’d be selling insurance or... houses. I smirk at the thought of saying all this to him when he gets out of his car, and the unforgiving set of his jaw tells me he’s about to snap at me if I don’t get out of the car.

Alas, I can’t keep insulting him in my head all day no matter how much I want to—it has turned out to be the best activity, though, to avoid thinking about the fact that I won’t be playing tomorrow.

Charlie walks up the steps and opens the front door without saying anything to me. He just leaves it open and assumes I’m going to follow him, and dammit, I do.

“This is... nice,” I say when I find him getting a bottle of water out of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

Admittedly, the kitchen is pretty kickass. My father would’ve gone insane for that six-burner range. Through the big sliding doors that lead to a back yard on the opposite side I see a shiny, massive grill that would’ve made him weep with happiness.

Grief, potent as ever, squeezes my heart mercilessly.

“Yeah, the best I could find in a week,” he mutters cryptically.

“Why did you even come here?” I finally ask what I’ve been desperately wondering since I found out he’d become a Pirate.

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