Page 57 of Branded (Breakers Hockey)

Twenty-Three

Raph

I strolled up the front walk of Pru and Marcel’s place, knocking lightly on the door.

Not wanting to disturb because they had a new kid to get settled in their house.

Mila Rose.

A pretty name.

I was looking forward to meeting her.

But…I needed to see Beth more.

Two days I’d spent not pushing. Two days I’d spent trying to calm the worry, to assure myself that she was okay. Two days I’d spent internalizing my shit, making sure my head was straight, that I’d taken what I’d learned about myself, what Hazel had told me to heart.

Two days when it had taken me two minutes.

I’d gotten my head out of my ass when Beth had passed out.

The events that followed had just served to reinforce I was on the right path.

But I’d wanted to be sure, and she deserved for me to be that way.

I was.

And I was done thinking about it.

Now had come the time for action.

The door swung open, and Beth stood there, surprise giving way to pleasure as her red lips parted in a wide smile.

“Hey,” she said, leaning close and rising on tiptoe, wrapping her arms around my shoulders.

Her mouth hit my cheek, mostly because the moment she’d started reaching for me, I’d bent and closed the distance between us, making the contact happen.

“Hey, sugarpie,” I murmured, her obvious happiness at seeing me settling deep inside my heart.

She dropped back onto her heels, smiling up at me. “What are you doing here?”

“Seeing you.”

“I thought we’d meet up after I was done with?—”

I reached forward, smoothed my thumb along her top lip. “You’ve got?—”

I held it up, showed her the black crumbs I’d just wiped off.

“Oh,” she whispered on a shaky breath. Then she shrugged and her mouth turned up. “Double-Stuffed Oreos are my weakness.”

I filed that knowledge away for future reference—along with mentally ordering several giant ass boxes of the cookie sandwiches—then slid my hand down her arm and laced our fingers together.

“I didn’t want to wait to see you.” Her lips parted on an exhale and I pressed my lips to her forehead. “Your night was okay?”

“It was good. Really good. Mila is sweet, and Pru and Marcel are in love.”

“Good,” I murmured.

“Do you want to come in? Pru went up to say goodnight, but I’m sure she and Marcel will be down soon.”

My eyes went to the purse hanging from her shoulder. “You were leaving?”

A gentle smile. “It’s getting late, and I figured I’d have a sexy hockey player showing up at my place soon.” She patted her rounded belly. “Plus, I’m on an Oreo high, which pretty soon will be trailed by an Oreo crash, so I need to head home.”

“And you want to give Pru and Marcel space,” I presumed.

She froze and then her expression gentled.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Even though they didn’t know why I’d…

” A shrug. “Well, they don’t have the full story, and even though I talked to both of them, I knew they were worried.

Pru got home late last night, and I gave them the day with Mila, but they needed face time, so when they invited me for dinner, I came. ”

I knew most of the timeline.

Had been there when Pru had called that morning, and Beth had told me during her text updates.

It was why I’d gotten Smitty to drop me here, even though we’d agreed to meet up later once she got home. I didn’t even care that I’d be hearing about it in the locker room.

“You’re a good friend,” I whispered.

She gave another one of those nonplussed shrugs. “She’d be there for me.”

Good friend.

Good woman.

“Yeah, she would,” I agreed.

Laughter rang down the stairs—masculine and feminine and youthful—and Beth’s face softened. “That’s a good sound,” she whispered.

It was.

From what Marcel had told me and the guys, Mila hadn’t had much to laugh about.

Pru would light the way, Marcel would provide soft and gentle guidance, and both would give loyalty and love until their last breaths.

She hitched up her purse, shifted slightly from side to side.

“We should go,” I offered.

Her eyes hit mine again. “You don’t want?—”

“I’ll catch up with them later.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Got it in you to give an annoying hockey player a ride home?”

Another blink. “What?” she asked again.

“Smitty gave me a ride over”—I slanted a glance at her car, parked at the curb—“think I can hitch a ride home?”

“Smitty?”

Right.

Too many details.

I shuffled her forward, out onto the porch, and reached for the door, closing it, and hitting the button on the bottom of the electronic keypad that would engage the dead bolt.

Then I shuffled her forward, down the steps, and to her car.

Her purse off her arm.

Keys out and locks bleeped.

“Get in, sugarpie.”

The next blink had her face clearing. “Let me guess,” she muttered. “You’re driving me home?”

“ Us home.”

She gave me some tart. Just a dash of it, and I liked it. “I don’t remember inviting you back to my place.”

I grinned. “I invited myself.”

“You were serious when you said annoying hockey player.” A grumble that had amusement coiling through me.

I let it out, chuckling as I opened the passenger’s side door. “I’m honest to a fault.”

A sigh, but she folded herself into the seat. “You’re lucky I’m on my Oreo crash and feeling too lazy to argue with you.”

“Lucky,” I agreed, grabbing, and dragging her seat belt across her.

“I can do that,” she said, reaching for it.

Fingers on hers, stalling her movements. “I know you can.”

I clicked the snap in place.

“Raph.”

I ran my fingers along her jaw. “Humor me.”

“I—” A spark in her eyes, but one she extinguished between one blink and the next. “Consider yourself humored.” A beat. “This one time.”

I laughed, straightened, and closed her door, rounding the hood and cramming himself into the driver’s seat. She giggled as I folded himself in, fumbled to adjust the seat. “I know you’re small,” I teased, “but this is ridiculous.”

“I’m not the one going all macho and having to drive.”

“Considering I think my knees were up to my ears, I think I’ll table the macho for the foreseeable future.”

Another giggle. “Right,” she said disbelievingly.

She got it.

Got me .

But not totally, because halfway through the ride she whispered, “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“Do what?”

Her eyes were focused on the darkness out the window. “I’m probably not the smartest choice, considering all you went through.”

My fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “I don’t really think it’s a choice.”

She winced. I saw it in the reflection of the window, and reached for her, squeezing her leg lightly. “Don’t tell me you don’t feel it, too.”

She turned, and I caught a glimpse of her face before I had to focus on the road.

It told me that she felt the same way as me.

“Exactly,” I whispered. “This was going to happen. Always.”

Silence.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she murmured after a moment.

“Sugarpie,” I said as I drove carefully.

“I need you to know that I’ve got my head together now.

Part of that is because of you. Part of that is because I’ve realized that what really fucked me up was that I trusted my instincts about Monica.

I thought she was a completely different person.

I thought we were different together. And when she showed me different… ”

Her hand hit my thigh, and she got what had been happening in my head faster than I had.

A hell of a lot faster.

“You lost trust in yourself,” she whispered.

“Yeah, honey.” I covered her hand with my own, squeezed.

She fell quiet.

I let her have that.

But as we closed in on her house, I gave her the rest. “I’m working on that, and my shit is sorted.”

“And mine isn’t,” she whispered.

“Let me rephrase that,” I said. “My shit is sorted for the moment . I’m sure we’ll come to a point where it isn’t, and where I’ll need you to help me sort it.”

Her chest expanded. Fell.

“Am I wrong?” I asked.

Quiet then, “No.”

“So,” I said, squeezing her hand, “what you need to know is that you helped me pull my head out of my ass after a year.” I checked over my shoulder for traffic, changed lanes. “Then you had a moment and now you need me to be the steady. That’s okay. That’s life. That’s how relationships work.”

“But we haven’t even been on a date.”

My lips curved. “Is this you asking me out?”

“I— Raph— I’m being serious. I think you’re a good guy and I like you a lot, but this”—she waved a hand at her head, her belly—“is a lot to deal with.”

“I don’t need easy and fake, Beth. I need a woman who’s real.”

“Raph,” she whispered.

“I’m serious. I need a woman who can deal with real shit.”

She turned to me, brows lifted, as though to say that her breakdown meant that she couldn’t handle real shit.

Meanwhile, it showed me that she was a survivor, that she’d overcome and fought for the good things in her life.

“Fuck that,” I said fiercely. “What you went through was not you being weak or not being able to deal?—”

“I think having a panic attack and needing to be sedated in the hospital is the very definition of not being able to deal, ” she said, giving voice to those thoughts I’d seen in her eyes.

“That’s bullshit.”

“I—”

“It’s bullshit, sugarpie.” I squeezed her hand again. “You don’t have to be perfect. You’re allowed to have moments where you’re not strong.”

She went still.

Really still.

“Beth,” I murmured when she didn’t reply.

Her eyes, when they came to mine, were stark.

“Look, honey. I don’t know what you’ve gone through. Though,” I added quickly when shadows crossed her face, “I’m here to listen when you’re ready to talk about it, whenever that might be.”

Her inhale was sharp, her exhale was long and loud.

“But I do know that it’s serious enough to have wounded you deeply.

So deeply that you have panic attacks and nightmares—and this isn’t me trying to get you to divulge everything here and now before you’re ready.

This is me respecting that you’ve been through things that hurt you, that affect you today, that make you human . ”

“I—” She clamped her teeth together.

“I also know that you may think you need to be perfect and steady and totally unaffected by everything from your past while you play superwoman and take care of everyone else.” I laced our fingers together. “But you don’t need to be that with me.”

Her gaze went to the window. “We’d be better off ending this now.”

“You don’t need to be that with me, honey.”

Her shoulders inched up. “You’d be better off.”

“You don’t need to be that with me,” I repeated.

“This is me trying to take care of you,” she said softly.

“I know.”

“So you agree that we’re not going further?”

“No,” I said. “We’re not giving up. We’re not searching for perfect. We’re going to be us and real and figure out if we want to keep being real together.”

I’d meant the words to be a comfort, but they only seemed to make her shoulders inch up more.

“Beth.”

Finally, she looked at me.

“We haven’t even been on a first date, sugarpie.”

Her expression was blank.

“At least give me that. One date. A real one, and then you can dump my ass if you want.”