Page 364 of Branded
“I know you helped her five years ago,” I said, taking a breath and trying to find my control again. Lake—asshole or not—had helped Jules. That was fact. Jules cared about Lake. Also, fact. But neither of those mattered in this moment because I needed to end this conversation, stop fucking around, and find Jules. “But I have them both now, so you need to back the fuck off.”
“Look”—Lake took his own breath—“I can appreciate that you care about her, but she’s important to me, Cas. I need to talk to her.”
“She needs to leave that shit in the past.” A beat. “Including you.”
“If she wanted to leave it behind—leave me behind,” Lake said, “she wouldn’t return my texts and calls, wouldn’t have come to the game tonight.”
There was a point to that.
One I didn’t want to hear.
Not right then.
Not without knowing where Jules was. Not without knowing where Nate was.
Jules would come down. I knew it. Not just because she’d made arrangements with Smitty, but because she wouldn’t take this away from Ethan—a chance to meet a player he liked, a chance to be in the mix of all this hockey atmosphere.
The kid was hooked.
And Jules wouldn’t hesitate to give that to her kid, no matter what it might put her through.
“This isn’t a safe space for Jules,” I said, “and you know it.”
For the first time, a glimmer of uncertainty hit Lake’s expression.
But we didn’t have time to explore that, to continue the conversation.
Because a voice came from behind us.
“I had that pussy.” A laugh that was cold and cruel. “And let me tell you, it was nothing to fight over.”
“Nate,” Lake began.
But he didn’t get to finish.
Because that was when the elevator doors dinged, opened…
And Jules and Ethan stepped off.
Forty
Jules
Ethan was chattering, excited about descending into the depths of the arena, barely able to contain himself because a woman in a Sierra shirt had come during the third period and said Lake Jordan wanted to meet us and had given us passes to the Sierra side of the arena (taking away my ability to avoid that part of our evening).
He’d been beside himself.
Seeing the Sierra and the Breakers?
Nirvana for a hockey-crazed five-year-old.
So Ethan was about to meet Lake Jordan and see the people he liked most in the world (and no, I didn’t include myself on that list, not when it came to a comparison between me and his hockey players).
And yes, he thought of them and called them his hockey players.
But I’d barely been able to smile at his description, had barely been able to file it away to tell Cas later because one second, he was chattering, and the next, the elevator doors were opening and I was stepping off onto the floor and…
Into a fucking nightmare.
