Page 27 of Blindsided

Brax actually laughed at Trevor’s discomfort. “Your boy Jack.”

I groaned at Jack Springer’s name. The kid was so talented when he settled down. The problem was when he wasn’t settled, he was a walking, talking disaster.

“Yeah. He ran into Trev as they were getting off ice yesterday. They both took a pretty good tumble.”

Trevor shook his head. “My tailbone took the brunt of the fall. He was so mortified and apologetic I couldn’t be frustrated, but it still hurts.”

I winced. “Fuck. Sorry. Tom and I have been talking about him. When we get him focused, he’s fucking brilliant. He’s just a mess otherwise.”

We pulled into the driveway at Tom and Leo’s house and Trevor parked the SUV along the long circular driveway. It was already nearly full and the party wasn’t supposed to start for another fifteen minutes. I could only assume this place was going to be a madhouse within the hour. The large field beside their house had been mowed since the last time I’d visited, and Tom had spent the entire last weekend making sure the pool was ready. There was plenty of space for two hockey teams and the support staff to spread out once they were parked; it was the parking part that was going to prove challenging before long.

Thankfully, we were already there and wouldn’t have to worry about it. I just hoped Tom’s neighbors were okay with the traffic on the street today.

Walking around the side of the house, Brax called over to where the hosts were standing. “We’ll be right back!”

He grabbed my elbow and directed me toward the kitchen. “We should probably get that skate in the oven before all hell breaks loose here and you can’t get to the kitchen to bake it at all.”

Trevor jumped up to sit on the counter and watched as Brax fiddled with the various dials on the oven until it began to preheat. When the oven preheated, I turned it off, slid my skate in, then set the timer. “Even though I do the same thing, I still think it’s funny that we put skates in the oven.”

The arrival of a number of players from the Grizzlies as well as Parliament prospects drew our attention. Trevor grinned widely at seeing the Grizzlies assistant coach arrive with his boyfriend. One second Trevor was sitting on the island, and the next he was hurrying out of the house to see his friend. Brax and I left the kitchen to follow Trevor and greet the guests who had just arrived.

We quickly fell into a discussion about the origin of the Parliament's name and mascot, and after a bit a confused voice came from the doorway. “Did someone order a… skate?”

I looked over to see someone at the back door holding my skate with a pot holder.

“Shit!” I jumped up, scaled a patio chair, and jogged toward the man holding my skate in his hand. “Fuck, I forgot all about that.” He’d already handed me the skate before it registered that I was talking to Lincoln.

I collapsed onto a chair, the noise of the patio all but forgotten as I slipped my shoe off and slid my foot into the warm skate. It must have been in the oven longer than ten minutes because the skate was a bit softer than I’d expected. At least I’ll get a good mold.

Lincoln cleared his throat and I looked up at him, not thinking anything of doing so while lacing my skate. He wasn’t looking at me but at my foot, his face scrunched up adorably as he watched my hands tugging at the laces as I worked my way up the boot. He finally pointed at it. “Um, why was that in the oven?”

Finally at the top of the boot, I cinched the laces tight and set an alarm on my phone for fifteen minutes before I responded to his question. Looking into his eyes, I could see they were filled with a mixture of curiosity and confusion, and I smiled. “Hockey players are weird?” When he didn’t smile, I gestured toward my foot and started talking.

“These are custom skates. They fit like a glove all the time. Except when I sprained my ankle last season. My ankle swelled up and it was so tight it was cutting off circulation to my foot. I had to play the remainder of the games, so I did exactly this, just to accommodate the swelling. Now that the swelling’s down, I need to remold it to fit my foot again. Blisters and skating are not a fun combination.”

Lincoln’s face had paled, though I didn’t understand why until he spoke. “You played injured?”

“I would hardly call a sprain an injury.” My dismissal of the accident didn’t reassure Lincoln if the look on his face could be believed. “It was the playoffs. A sprain is annoying, sure, but in the playoffs, you’re all in. Unless you are told by a doctor you can’t skate, you’re skating.” And for a player to be told by a doc they can’t skate, the player would have to tell the doc they were injured in the first place. Which I had not.

Changing the subject, I turned the focus toward Lincoln. “I didn’t think you’d show up.”

He lifted a shoulder, his eyes finally lifting from my skate. “I didn’t know if I would. This still feels…” He looked around the house then toward the patio and yard that were steadily filling with people. “It feels surreal. How is it that I have anything to do with this?” Letting out a scoff, he corrected himself. “I take that back. I know how I have something to do with this. My brother’s incompetent and my mom is blind to reality. That and I’m a fixer, the one who gets called when Aston fucks up.”

There wasn’t much I could say because I still only had bits and pieces of the story. In the nearly seven weeks since we’d seen each other the first time, this was the longest we’d talked without raising our voices. I’d gotten hints of the story from Tom and Daisy but not enough to have an accurate picture of everything that had led him here.

I lifted my shoulder awkwardly. “You’ve made some really good decisions. You’ve pulled in some great sponsors already, and the season hasn’t started. You might not know hockey, but I can tell you know business. Your job isn’t really hockey. That’s on Daisy, Tom, and to a lesser extent me. Your job is the business of hockey. You don’t have to pick the players; you just need to make sure we have it in the budget for the player we want.”

Lincoln gave a dry chuckle. “Even the business of hockey is a lot different than the business of real estate.”

“I don’t know. I saw the way the attorneys bristled at you in the contract negotiation. You were pretty ruthless. That’s what it takes in this world.” I should know—I’d been on the receiving end of owner and management ruthlessness over the years. Having someone like Lincoln had been great while negotiating my employment with the league. I’d gone in expecting a fight, but Lincoln had fought for me, even though I was pretty sure that wasn’t how it was supposed to go. It was probably part of the reason the attorneys kept shaking their heads when he spoke up. If he could fight so hard for someone he shouldn’t have been negotiating for, I knew he would be able to use that business sense to work some fantastic deals for our team.

To my surprise, Lincoln blushed lightly and ducked his head. I didn’t understand his embarrassment at my comment, but I fully appreciated that I was seeing the bashful sub Lincoln had just started getting comfortable being when he’d left me. Brax’s relentless reminders about the two of us talking things out were nearly deafening in my head and were causing my ears to ring.

I stood despite knowing I shouldn’t. Standing up, I was only a few inches from Lincoln, my hand automatically reaching for his face and angling it toward me. “Link.” My voice came out as a whisper, the nickname falling from my lips effortlessly.

He blinked me into focus, or as much as he could at such close proximity. Every second my whisper hung between us, our bodies got closer until I could feel his nose against mine. My body was reacting to his nearness, a muscle memory I hadn’t forgotten in eight years. My lips parted, ready to kiss him, when a crash sounded from near the doors to the patio, followed by a yelp, a loud splash, and a collective gasp.

We both jumped back in time to see Owen, a new Grizzlies acquisition, popping up from the pool.

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