Page 313 of Branded
I was used to watching five-year-olds play—er, fly around, fall down, jab each other with their sticks, and generally spend their time on the ice acting like tiny maniacs with blades strapped to their equally tiny feet.
And barring that, growing up I’d watched middle schoolers and high schoolers and a few players destined for the big leagues zip around the rink. But it wasn’t like this.
Watching professionals skate and shoot and hit, now that was a revelation.
My breath caught with every collision. I winced when pucks hit the glass and the boards and the goalies and the players. And, yeah, my nails bit into my palms each time another player got close to Cas, every time he was hit with a puck or slashed with a stick. And this was professional hockey. Sticks were cracking all over the place and pucks were flying and…
Shit.
He might get hurt.
This was a complication I didn’t need.
I had a hundred-dollar bill folded neatly in my pocket that I needed to get back to him. I had a lap full of souvenirs and a belly full of treats. My son was jazzed beyond belief and wriggling next to me, absolutely captivated by the game (and with absolutely no wincing or worry in sight). He was hooked and happy and…
Cas had done that.
Made my son happy.
Clink.
The chains around my heart hit the concrete floor at my feet, leaving me exposed and vulnerable and?—
“Oh!” the crowd gasped.
Every muscle in my body tensed as Cas’s big body flew through the air, collapsed to the ice, and…
Didn’t move.
He didn’t move.
For long enough that my lungs began to burn.
“Mom—” Ethan began, his worried gaze turning to mine, but then the crowd seemed to collectively sigh, and my eyes whipped back to the ice.
Cas was up on his skates and the look on his face…
Sent a shiver down my spine.
He was pissed.
Maybe it was a cheap shot—I didn’t know enough about hockey to say one way or the other. I hadn’t bothered to learn the sport that closely as a kid, nor when I watched the games on TV with Ethan. Mostly I took cues from the announcers and the people around me and, this time, the crowd hadn’t gone one way or the other. It could be that Cas was just angry he’d been knocked to the ice. Or maybe he was concussed, and the hit had unleashed his inner hockey demon.
Either way, he was on his feet and his skates were flying across the ice and…he crashed into a player from the other team, knocking his opponent down to his knees, scooping up the puck, and moving.
Shit, he was fast when he wanted to be.
And this time he didn’t pass the puck to his teammate, not like he’d been doing for the first half of the game.
He just started skating, hauling butt up the ice, the puck on his stick, and his legs moving so fast I could barely track them. Out of his end of the ice, crossing the big red line that marked the halfway point on the ice, and…
I clenched my teeth together when a player on the other team careened toward him.
Cas just dropped his shoulder, kept skating, and the other player bounced off him.
Literally, bounced off and hit the ice.
Because Cas was a man on a mission. He kept moving, kept skating, crossing over the blue line that led toward the other team’s section of the ice.
