Page 41 of Branded (Breakers Hockey)

Seven

Raph

Eggs and toast.

And water.

It wasn’t fucking gourmet, but if it stopped her from feeling dizzy, prevented her from passing out and hurting herself or those babies…

Well, I was scrambling eggs and juggling toast into her toaster.

That was answer enough, and the why of that answer—the why of why I was doing this, sticking my nose in her business, sleeping in a fucking chair beside her, cooking breakfast—was something I wasn’t going to focus on.

Doing, not thinking.

I’d done too much thinking already.

And those tears, that nightmare…I couldn’t fucking think about it.

So I was grating cheese into a pan, turning the eggs gently with a spatula, adding pepper (salt would wait until the end, just like my mom had taught me), and listening for the toast to pop up.

When it did, I buttered it, slathered strawberry jam (the only variety in her fridge and I approved) on top of both slices, scooped the eggs out of the pan, and then carried the plate to Beth in the family room.

The glass was empty, so I set the plate down, grabbed the glass, went back for the fork and napkin, refilled her water, and carried all three back toward her.

The plate was untouched.

No surprise, since I had the fork in my hand.

I pressed it into hers, draped the napkin over her lap, and said, “Eat. Drink.”

Blue, blue eyes on mine. I expected them to spark fire—she wasn’t the type of woman to take orders, even if she was off her game.

But there wasn’t a single spark in those cerulean irises.

Not one.

She just bent her head, forked up some eggs, and ate.

Fuck.

I should be thankful she was quiet, not shoveling out sass for once. But…it was wrong. Beth shouldn’t be quiet, and she shouldn’t be passing out, and she shouldn’t have fucking nightmares where she was crying out to someone not to hurt her, not to touch her.

Fuck.

“Beth,” I said, and she paused, the fork almost at her lips. “Honey, I?—”

My words stuck in my throat when she glanced up.

Empty. Desolate. A wide expanse of barren ice. A frigid dessert.

No red lipstick. No pinked cheeks.

A pale face, empty eyes, and…

I didn’t want to think about how much I hated that, so I just said, “Eat,” and then I got up and moved back into the kitchen, taking care of the pan, wiping down the counters. By the time I circled back with a third glass of water, Beth had finished her plate.

She looked at the refilled glass, up to me, and fuck me, but I was damned glad to see that her lips twitched, her eyes weren’t the frosty wasteland.

Amusement had coiled through, sunshine melting ice, cracking through the layers of frost.

“I don’t think the doctor meant to drink so much water that I’m going to pass out because my ass is waddling to the bathroom every five minutes.”

I bit back a grin.

“And that would be down from every ten minutes since these babies already seem to enjoy tap-dancing on my bladder.”

“You can feel them?” I asked softly.

It was a question that revealed too much.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “They move a lot, and they really like that jam. See?” She lifted the edge of her shirt, exposing her rounded belly, and I watched, watched in a way that stole every bit of air from my lungs as her stomach bounced and twitched.

That was…

My arm moved before I processed it, hand sliding across the space, lifting toward her stomach. It was too far, too much. I didn’t have permission to touch her, let alone her belly, but I ran my fingers over it anyway.

I felt that flutter.

I— fuck — felt that flutter.

Butterfly wings on my fingertips. Like a twitching muscle. And then a soft push that had me jerking my hand back, jumping to my feet.

“Drink,” I rasped.

“Raph,” she whispered, dropping her shirt, blue eyes not sparking, her skin still pale, especially minus her red lips. But there was understanding written into the lines of her face.

And…

I needed to go.

“Drink,” I said again.

“Okay, Raph,” she said, voice as soft as velvet.

Good.

That was good.

That was…all I could take.

I turned and walked out the door.

It was early enough that the cool air had partially fogged the glass ringing the boards.

Which was just as well.

I wanted the privacy, the quiet.

Which wasn’t just as well.

Considering I got it for all of fifteen minutes before Smitty hauled my big ass onto the ice, feet in skates, legs in sweats, gloves on, and long ass stick in my hands, smirk on my face.

“Self-medicating with ice time?” he boomed.

Yup.

Boomed.

Because Smitty might be a gentle giant, but he had one volume, and that volume was loud .

I bit back a sigh, turned, and went back to my shot, wailing on the puck, hearing the tink of the goalpost.

Fucking hell.

I’d been aiming for the upper left corner.

No goalie. No pressure. Not even a shooter-tutor.

Just me and my fucked-up head.

Well, and Smitty, who miraculously didn’t comment on the fucked-up shot.

“Heads up,” he called instead, whipping a puck at me. I took the opportunity and one-timed it, this time thankfully hitting the corner I aimed for.

“Again,” Smitty called before that puck hit the ice, winging another my way.

I shot, hit that same corner again, just for good measure.

“Bottom corner now,” he said, shagging down a puck and firing it at me.

I shot.

I hit that corner.

And then it was on, Smitty and I playing our casual game of Hockey Horse, moving around the zone, hitting the various spots, trying for various shots—or I was, anyway, considering that Smitty had apparently made it his job to be my puck bitch.

Pretty soon my lungs were screaming, my arms were tired, and I was struggling to hit the shots.

Which meant it was no surprise that Smitty called, “Last one, top third of the net on the left.

My favorite place to shoot.

Often open if a goalie had gone down to make a save, and if it wasn’t, typically it beaned them right in the helmet.

So if not a goal, then a smack to the goalie.

Win-win, especially with how I’d been feeling the last year.

I swung, followed through, hit that top third of the net.

“Nice,” Smitty muttered, skating up beside me, smacking me on the shoulder with that typical Smitty strength, one that nearly had my skate blades jammed down through the ice and into the sand beneath.

I braced, knowing my friend and teammate was a nosy fuck, knowing that he’d want to know why I was out here this morning.

And I didn’t want to talk about it, about last night or Beth’s rounded belly and how it felt to feel the babies inside move, what it had done to my own heart, how it had ripped my shields clear away and I’d felt it, yearned for it.

I didn’t want to talk about the worry gnawing at the back of my mind, that she wasn’t drinking enough or eating enough or that she was dizzy and alone or that she’d fallen back asleep and was having fucking nightmares that had her yelling and begging someone not to touch her.

Her.

Not Beth.

But another her.

And that killed me.

Because I wanted to know.

So all of that was swirling, and my arms were tired, and my lungs were on fire, and Smitty was close, the nosy motherfucker, and one wrong word and that nosy motherfucker would unleash the full force of the gossip train on me.

And I needed that like I needed a hole in my head.

But the gossip train was a train for a reason—once it was trucking along the tracks, it was nearly impossible to get it to stop.

So I was braced, standing on the tracks, prepared to be flattened.

I was tense, knowing it was bearing down on me.

I was…shocked to shit when Smitty clapped me on the shoulder again and didn’t ask. Instead, the only thing my teammate said was, “Pancakes.”

Syrup and carbs and a shit-ton of butter.

Yeah, I could go for that. “You making them or are we going to Donna’s?”

“Not even a fucking decision, man,” Smitty said, clapping me on the shoulder again.

I smiled for the first time in what felt like forever.

“We’re going to Donna’s.”