Page 360 of Branded
Breakers versus Sierra.
Christ almighty.
I could possibly be this stupid. And unlucky.
If I’d been by myself, I would have hopped right out of this seat, walked my butt up the concrete stairs, fled to my car, and surprised my hot hockey player in his bed later that night.
But I wasn’t alone.
I was with my son, who was firmly entrenched in the hockey bug and loving every part of playing, practicing, and watching the sport.
No surprise since he’d been adopted into the hockey fold—hell, he’d even gotten to hang with Cas and the rest of the Breakers crew last night at CeCe’s for a little while before Cas had taken him back to my place.
Mary was still babysitting semi-regularly, and I had been worried about the semi part of that fact, since Ethan had also spent time with Nonna JoJo and Ace—aka Luca—and one night with Kathy and Tim (Sam and Margot were back at school) but then Mary had told me that her coursework had gotten really intense and she was overwhelmed and that while she loved Ethan, she was glad to have some extra kiddo free time to study.
My guilt was assuaged—somewhat, because Mary had also confessed that she’d felt overwhelmed for a while but hadn’t wanted to leave me in a pickle. So, since I was saving a lot of money on babysitting fees (though I had offered to pay both Cas and his parents and they’d both declined), I vowed to do something nice for Mary as soon as the semester ended. A spa day, or a gift card toward books in the campus bookstore.
God knew I felt down to my bones how expensive textbooks were.
But…maybe a spa day.
Because Mary was like me.
She didn’t have a lot of family, didn’t have a lot of friends.
And since I was no longer on the outside, no longer relegated to the sidelines (and it felt fucking great), I was going to bring Mary along with me.
I’d totally bet that Beth, Kailey, and Hazel would be down for a spa day. Pru was a bit more of a tomboy, but I thought that even with that being the truth, she would still be down, too.
All of which was a good thing, something I was looking forward to.
But it wasn’t something that was going to help me take care of this situation.
We’d arrived later than the last time we’d come to a game—having zipped over straight from Ethan’s practice and making a pit stop for some grub on the way. Yeah, I was saving on babysitting, but wasn’t going to go crazy with spending, especially with arena prices (though I had promised that Ethan could pick something here for dessert and, for the record, he’d gone with cotton candy, which was currently smeared like bright blue lipstick around his mouth).
The game was starting in just a few minutes, the national anthem had just finished and a player from either team had gathered around a few people standing on a red carpet that had been rolled out on the ice.
The Breakers player was Marcel.
The Sierra player…was Lake Jordan.
God, I hadn’t actually seen him in years, and…he looked good. Bigger and stronger and happy, standing there smiling next to the group of people, pausing to ruffle the boy’s hair.
I could almost hear his voice, since it hadn’t been all that long since we’d talked (though in my darker moments, I had preferred texting, because it had been less personal and more comfortable and…easier for me to remain on the sidelines).
I needed to reach out to him.
Connect.
Tell him how much his help had meant to me. Tell him how much it had meant that he’d…well, that he’d been good to me when no one else had been.
So, now that I wasn’t on the sidelines any longer, I needed to own that, to let him know how much it meant then and now, and…it was just that I’d prefer to not do it anywhere in the vicinity of Nate.
For one, my lawyer had advised me long ago to not communicate directly with my ex.
For another, I hadn’t seen Nate since he’d turned me away and broke my heart and…I wasn’t sure how it would feel to see him now, after all this time.
Last, and more importantly, I didn’t want to expose Ethan to his vitriol.
