Page 169 of Branded
Fly right across the ice, sail through the walls.
And reduce my castle to rubble.
Fifteen
Raph
“You know you fucked up, right?” Smitty muttered as he dropped onto the bench in the locker room next to me.
“How? Saving your ass in our zone?” I asked. “Or by taking that shot off my foot when Marty couldn’t get across the crease to make that save?”
Because the last still fucking hurt.
Would be throbbing for days.
My snark got me a punch to the shoulder—hard, though not hard enough to really hurt.
Just hard enough for Smitty to remind me of his strength.
It wasn’t nearly as hard as that puck I’d taken to my foot, and I was just thanking the hockey gods I’d begun wearing thick plastic coverings on my skates. I wore them every game after I’d broken a bone in my foot a few seasons before. Without them, that block tonight would have definitely cracked another bone, and it had hurt enough that I wasn’t looking forward to taking my skate off.
Samantha, our head trainer, would get me right, I knew.
But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be sporting a monster bruise and sore ass foot for a few too many days.
“With Beth.”
I blinked, glanced up from my skates, and saw the knowledge in Smitty’s eyes.
Fuck.
Yeah. That.
I knew I fucked up with showing that, not only to my teammates, but to the arena full of Breakers fans.
But I’d seen her there with Oliver and Hazel, with Hannah and her teammates doing a fucking dance that was somehow both sexy and adorable—enough of the first that my dick had twitched in my cup (ouch) and plenty of the second that I’d seen more than one set of male eyes on her (even with that baby belly).
I’d caught a glimpse of her dancing with that little girl, her belly rounded, and…
I’d wanted.
No.
I’d wanted her for a long time, but I’d ignored it because of Monica, because of the complication of dating someone who was close with my friends. I’d ignored it, even as that wanting grew.
But I was at a breaking point.
Or maybe that had been at CeCe’s a few days ago.
Seeing her fall, witnessing the tears, the shadows, the way she tucked them all away and reassured her friend when it was clear that she was far from that after her nightmare that had woken her not knowing where or when she was. Then she’d gone shopping for clothes she needed because she was doing something big for those friends and their babies needed it, not blinking when they weren’t her usual style, wearing them as she danced with a little girl, and smiling at me through the glass like I was a lunatic when I called her sugarpie.
I couldn’t ignore Beth.
Not anymore.
Not the way she looked through the window of the shoe store, teeth pressing into that bottom lip, like she was worried I was going to run out of patience or she was going to use up my good will, even though I was the one who’d all but bullied myself into the trip.
I fucking hated shopping.
