Page 309 of Branded
Not even yummy ones? the self-destructive part of my mind asked.
Nope. No. Never.
No more hockey players. No matter how yummy they were.
A nod to myself (and ah, wasn’t delusion great?), and then I’d spotted the box office so led Ethan that way.
One hockey game.
For Ethan.
No more hockey players.
Ever.
“Whoa, Mom!”
I was feeling the same thing.
The inside of the arena was bright and huge and cool, the air tightening the skin on my cheeks as we walked carefully down the concrete stairs, following the usher who was leading us to our seats.
“Here you are, Ms. Blackstar,” she said, pointing toward a pair of chairs on the aisle that was obscenely close to the glass. Just—I counted quickly—six rows back.
Expensive seats.
Oh, I was going to kill him.
“Thank you,” I told the usher.
“He can go down”—the woman nodded at the row of kids gathered next to the glass—“and watch the players warm up so long as you guys are in your seats at puck drop.”
Wide, excited eyes on mine. “Can I, Mom?”
I nodded. “Yeah, honey,” I said, the words barely out of my mouth before he was scrambling down the steps and pressing himself into a free spot on the glass. I’d need to wrangle him away from the ice at some point, get the kid some food, but he’d been too excited for me to torture him by making him wait in the long food lines.
And not that I would admit it, but he’d wasn’t the only one who was too excited to wait in line.
Smothering a grin—and thinking that it was convenient to have a kid to blame my impatience on—I watched Ethan chatter excitedly with a kid next to him who was decked out in Breakers gear from head to toe.
That was my boy, able to make friends anywhere.
A rush of noise drew my focus back to the ice, and I found my breath catching as the teams began to enter the rink. I’d served hockey players at CeCe’s on a regular basis for years now. I was used to their height, to how big most of them were. But like this—on their skates, flying rapidly around the ice—and I felt tiny, like an insignificant speck in the universe as all the crazy bright planets and moons and meteors flew around me.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
My gaze focused, and I saw Smitty grinning at me, waving a big hand. He pointed down at the kids, presumably asking which one was mine.
I pointed at Ethan.
And that was when my heart cracked open because he crouched enough to stare into my son’s eyes, mouthing something I couldn’t see, but a moment later, he’d straightened and tossed a puck over the glass to Ethan.
Shit. Now my eyes were damp.
But even through that dampness, I saw that Smitty took a few more moments to toss pucks to each of the kids gathered around Ethan.
Such a good guy.
But even as I thought that, my gaze was skipping beyond Smitty, going to the players fanning out behind him. Marcel was there and Raph, Theo, and Walker, a few of the other faces were familiar as well, but none I knew as well as Cas’s.
