Page 2 of Fluttering Heart

“This one stupid?” Nikolay asks after a long beat of silence. He points at me, and I know what Charlie’s about to do. Sadly I don’t have the body weight to hold him back from beating his teammate to a pulp, so I look up at Beau. He sighs when he sees the clear panic in my eyes and walks over to stand next to Charlie.

Beau is a firefighter, probably one of the strongest men in the Heart family—and there are a lot of those—but he’s only slightly stronger than Charlie, and Nikolay...

Well at six-five and with wider shoulders than I think I’ve ever seen on a person, I don’t know if my brothers could take Nikolay. It’s his job after all, to be big. As a defenseman for the Las Vegas Pirates, same as Charlie, he’s supposed to look big and intimidating.

The three of us might only be six foot three, but when you add skates, Charlie has always been a formidable player all on his own.

This situation though, and where I think it’s going, is probably going to get real messy if Beau doesn’t?—

“Oh fuck,” I whisper when it’s Beau who steps up to Nikolay instead of having to hold Charlie back.

He jams a finger right in the middle of the Russian’s chest and practically growls.

“You better watch your mouth or I’m going to show you how real men fight on solid ground,Santa.” He says his nickname with derision.

“What—”

“Just shut up. And never call my brother a name again, okay?” Charlie interrupts his teammate, then he simply spins around and looks at me like I’m... well, yeah, stupid.

“Fi,” he starts with his older brother, superior patience. “I love that you thought to bring Beau here, and we can most definitely make all of your plans happen. What Beau just went through is fucked up, but you won’t be going back home a better man, and you’re most definitely not gonna heal a damn thing here. But wearegoing to get Beau drunk, and hopefully he can realize that although everything sucks...” He turns to Beau then. “You still have us. Always. And you know what Grandpa Yoyo has always said...‘Home is where a Heart is.’So welcome home, let’s get you settled.”

“Love the sentiment,” Beau says with a roll of his eyes. Yeah, he’s not gonna fall for Charlie’s heartfelt words today.Thisis why I brought him here—I don’t know how to make it better for him. “But Finn got us rooms at the Winner so we’re not even sleeping here. And I don’t want to go out to a club or get drunk. You know I get awful hangovers.”

“Maybe the pain of a hangover will help with forgetting the heartbreak and betrayal,” Nikolay says in a thick Russian accent.

“Not helpful,” Charlie mutters, but apparently Beau disagrees.

“More helpful than all your lovey-dovey bullshit. Now just give us passes for tonight will you?” he demands—very ungratefully, I might add, which isn’t like Beau at all.

“No. I don’t have any more tickets for tonight’s game. I can get you some for Sunday, but if you want to go today, then I’m going to have to call in a favor to get you into Gab’s suite.” Hearing the name of Charlie’s team’s owner brightens my mood a bit. I loved the woman the second I met her back in October.

“That is better.” Nikolay nods solemnly. “Gab will fix them both.”

“Excuse me?” I demand.Why do I need fixing?

“Oh, please,” Beau says. “You need professional help to fix that crippling eternal optimism.”

“It’s not something I want fixed,” I tell him and then just for funsies stick my tongue out at him. He mimics me and Charlie steps into our line of sight before we can completely revert back to our childish ways.

“Okay, okay, I’ll drive you to your hotel, then make sure you have a ride to the arena tonight, okay?”

“Thank you, Charlie,” I sing-song like I used to do when we were way younger. Maybe there’s still a way to salvage this trip.

* * *

“You didn’t have to pay,”I mumble at Charlie when I come back from the bathroom in the hotel lobby. He slaps the keys to the unnecessary car he rented for us in my hand and I hold them up to his face. “For this or for the room. You know I had a reservation and they make you give a credit card for that, and I make a very good living,” I try to reprimand him. His hero complex isn’t as out of control these days as it was when he first got into the NHL fifteen years ago, but it’s still alive and kicking.

The seven years separating us means that he’s always had a bigger role than simply being an older brother when it comes to Beau and me, and sadly it also means that he’s not really a son to Mom, more like a... helpful and very loved nanny.

At least that’s how it was after Dad died when Charlie was only fourteen.

“Shut up, I have millions.”

“I know,” I deadpan and roll my eyes at him. “I’m your accountant, remember?” I’m well aware of how nice his one-year contract with the Pirates is, though I still don’t understand why he accepted it when he’d already announced—to the family and to the world—that he was retiring.

“How could I ever forget?” he asks in a tone that tells me I’ve been successful in my nagging.

“Why the hell did you rent a G-Wagon?” I demand as we walk over to the couch in the lobby where Beau is drinking a virgin margarita. Jesus, he looks pitiful

---