Page 242 of Branded
A gentle hand on my cheek.
My lids peeling open to see Raph with clear, peaceful eyes and no pain lingering on the edges of his expression.
“Honey,” I whispered.
He stroked a hand over my hair. “Yeah?”
“I love you.”
His smile settled over me like that heated breeze. “Yeah, you do.”
A swat to his shoulder.
His arm came around me, tugging me close. “I love you, too, sugarpie.”
“Yeah, you do,” I teased back.
And then I snuggled into my man and was asleep before we even hit cruising altitude.
His rage came two months later, well after the season was over.
After the Breakers were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs.
Painful as hell to bear witness to it, especially with my man and the other guys giving every single ounce of themselves on the ice and having it not be enough.
All that work…and then just done.
But I hadn’t begrudged the extra time with Raph once the sadness had faded—sleeping together every night, hanging out and doing nothing. Movies and meals and cuddling and sex…having to use every bit of our creativity to make it work. And doing what we were doing that night, talking with our feet in the pool, staring up at the night sky.
Tonight he was talking, letting that anger out.
I was listening. I had his back.
And the fixer in me fucking loved that.
But the rest of me was—and been for weeks—just boiling every time I thought about it. Every time I wondered how in the fuck that woman could have left Raph behind.
An innocent boy.
Her boy.
Then to just start over, not bothering to come back for him.
Not bothering to call or reach out…until he could do something for her.
Because she’d called Raph’s manager, of course she had.
And Raph, the good man that he was, had given the boys an experience to end all experiences—playoff tickets, jerseys, swag, meet and greets. They’d had the works, and the joy on their faces had been incredible.
Raph had done that.
He’d given them that joy.
And his mother hadn’t done anything else. Not another apology—something better than I’m sorry. Not a word of thanks or an explanation for why she’d left Raph to his drunk, abusive father. Instead, she’d seemed uncomfortable around her oldest son, hovering around Mario and Bennie, and just fucking taking.
Me…well, I was infuriated by his mother, but I kept my anger under wraps.
Or so I had thought.
