Page 70 of Sinfully Shameless Chef

Jameson captures my hand and presses a kiss to the palm. “I thought we were going to talk about you, not me.”

I narrow my eyes on him. “I’m worried about you.”

He releases a deep sigh and leans up to kiss me. “I’m fine, Iz. I’m just playing hockey.”

“What?” I jerk back. “But I got the impression at dinner that you never played.”

His face hardens slightly, and he tenses under me and pulls his hand free. “I hadn’t since I was very young…until fairly recently.”

“Why, though? It seemed like a bit of a sore subject with Bash and Rachel.”

He twists his lips, and I’m not entirely sure he’s going to answer me. I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t since I sure as hell am not looking forward to having to come clean about what I’ve been hiding, either.

But he eventually relents and shifts under me slightly. “It was always my dad’s thing with Bash. It was how they bonded. And it was also what made him such a shitty father. He pushed so hard to be perfect and wanted his boys to do the same. I never wanted to be a part of that because I saw what he did to Bash and didn’t want to bring down even more shit on myself.” He releases a deep sigh, his chest heaving under me. “But after he died, I just…”

His words trail off, leaving silence hanging in the air between us. Though even without saying it, I can see exactly where he’s going with this.

“You were drawn to the ice because it held some sort of connection to him.”

“Shit.” He scrubs his hands over his face and groans. “I don’t know. I just saw something on someone’s social media about a men’s league and felt this need to go play, at least once, even though I haven’t been out on the ice in over twenty years.”

I lower myself back down and press a kiss to his neck. “It could be about your dad, or maybe it wasn’t really about him at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he died, and you were left with just Bash and Rachel. Maybe it’s more about wanting to connect with something you know Bash loves and getting closer to your big brother than about wanting to connect with a father who was shitty to you.”

He stills under me and uses his hand to urge my head up so his eyes connect with mine. “How did you get so insightful?”

I laugh. “Grams was a font of wisdom. I must have absorbed some of it at some point.”

“She raised you alone?”

It isn’t exactly anything I want to discuss right now, but it beats talking about other things.

Distract. Distract. Distract.

I lower my head to his chest, pressing my ear over his heart to listen to the steady rhythm for a moment. “Yeah. My mom died when I was six. I never knew my dad. Grams was it for me most of my life.”

Jameson runs his hand up and down my arm, sending little goose bumps skittering over my skin. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. She was great. I had a really happy life with her. Just because you have two parents raising you doesn’t mean it’s the perfect family, right?”

I peek up at him, and his amber eyes darken to almost a chocolate brown.

“Yeah, you’re right. Things definitely weren’t perfect in my house.”

“But you all survived and thrived.”

He nods and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Yeah, we did. Though we all had a lot more bruises than this as kids.”

“It was that bad?”

A long sigh slips from his lips, and he squeezes me. “It was bad. Bash took the brunt of it because he was the oldest and spent the most time with Dad. If he fucked up something during a practice or a game, we all knew what that meant. We tried to shield Rachel since she was a girl, and she and Bash tried to shield me because I was the youngest. Mom tried to shield all of us. It was kind of a vicious cycle.”

I never had to experience anything like that, but I understand vicious cycles all too well. It feels like I’ve been caught in one since the day I was born. “You broke it, though. You got away from him. And you found something you love. Concentrate on that.”

Jameson shrugs. “I try to. I really do. I just want to get FURY open already. It seems like it’s taken a lifetime to get here.”

---