Page 28 of Puck You Very Much

She looked at him suspiciously. “If you went out with me, Dax might what?” she asked sharply. “And you are making him angry on purpose? I thought you wanted him to stop hating you.”

“Oh, I do,” he replied honestly. “But he’s still my brother, whether he likes it or not, and I couldn’t resist.” He shrugged helplessly. “Besides, it’s better to make him angry than to get no reaction from him at all.”

“Are you certain of that?” she asked doubtfully.

“Yup,” he answered firmly, then looked over and regarded her thoughtfully. “Did Dax tell you anything about his childhood?”

She gave him a knowing look. “Of course not. He doesn’t tell anyone anything about his childhood. Which, I guess, is why no one knows you’re brothers.”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I can’t blame him. I don’t like talking about it either. But Dax has always been a…very emotional person. A hothead, impulsive, and arrogant on the ice.”

“You don’t say. I can’t imagine that at all,” she replied dryly.

Jack raised one corner of his mouth. “It was balancing for him. At home he could never do what he wanted, so that’s all he did away from home. At home he was the angel. He had to be to keep Anna, Mom, and me out of trouble. But at school, on the ice…” He shrugged. “The nicknameDevilis no coincidence. But it doesn’t matter. Whenever his father heard about any of Dax’s escapades, it didn’t end well.”

The blood left Lucy’s face and her breathing paused.

“He didn’t hit him or anything,” Jack replied hastily, seeing the horror on Lucy’s face. “But there are other ways to make a child feel worth less than a damn. I wasn’t really his son, so it never bothered me when Temple Senior was an asshole. But he had power over Dax, which he exploited. Dax was furious with his father because of it. Always angry. But at some point…he stopped being angry.”

“Why?” she whispered, her voice almost lost in the sound of dozens of runners on ice.

“Because I told him that it was his anger that was giving his father power,” Jack replied coolly. “Because I knew he would only get better once he learned to let go of the anger and replace it with indifference. That he should ignore the people he truly hates. And that it’s only worth arguing and discussing with those he respects.” He lifted the corner of his mouth bitterly. “Of course he listened to me. And, as I predicted, he got better.” He sighed heavily. “I considered myself clever and wise back then. Now I’m the idiot who is afraid that Dax won’t be mad at me forever. I live in constant fear that, at some point, he won’t be. That he will use my advice again and become indifferent to me,” he concluded quietly.

A lump worked its way up her throat and her eyes burned. That sounded like a terrible childhood. And a terrible burden that both brothers had to constantly carry with them.

“So,” Jack said lightly, “that’s why it’s always better to provoke a reaction from Dax. You’ve only lost when there is no longer a reaction. And we definitely have one thing in common: we don’t like losing. I may have lost my family once, but I won’t make that mistake twice.”

Lucy stared at him. Her heart beat loudly and heavily in her chest. A new cold, one other than that of the ice rink, burned her skin. “Why are you telling me this?” she repeated.

“I have a theory,” he explained quietly. “A theory that it can’t hurt if you like me and understand me better.”

“Okay,” she said, perplexed, because he had achieved the opposite with his story. She definitely didn’t understand him. He spoke like he had eaten too many fortune cookies.

“Thanks for listening, Lucy,” he said with a smile, and stood. He was huge on his skates, and yet he curiously seemed to have shrunk in the last few minutes.

“No problem,” she croaked, shifting uneasily in her seat. “Oh, well, since you seem to want to work on your relationship with Dax, I don’t think he would like it at all if he knew what you just told me.”

“No, probably not,” he replied calmly. “But he can’t get any madder at me, so…” He shrugged.

She wanted to ask why that was. What had Jack done? But she didn’t have to open her mouth to know he wouldn’t answer. Instead, another question found its way out of her mouth. “Do you deserve it?”

“Excuse me?” He turned and raised his eyebrows.

“Dax’s anger. Do you deserve it?”

Jack didn’t answer for a few heartbeats. He just stared at her unmoved, his gaze unfathomable. Just when Lucy thought he wasn’t going to answer, he murmured a single word: “Definitely.”

He turned and was halfway back to the ice when she called after him, “Jack, what I wanted to say was that he won’t care that you were pretending to flirt with me.”

The smile that appeared on his face could have outshone a Christmas tree. “What can I say? Apparently, I know Dax better than you.”

She rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. Jack still had a lot to learn about his brother. If she knew anything, it was that Dax couldn’t care less about who she was dating.

Chapter 9

“You’re not going out with Jack.”

Startled, Lucy glanced up and sighed heavily. Naturally. “The seatbelt sign is on, Dax. You’re not supposed to be standing at all,” she reminded him.

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