Page 69 of Branded (Breakers Hockey)

Thirty-Five

Raph

She wasn’t waiting at the bottom of the elevator like we’d arranged.

My hair was wet. I’d skipped out of the locker room as soon as I could…and she wasn’t there.

I grabbed my cell from my pocket and jabbed the button to call the elevator.

Worry was back, clenching my insides.

All I knew was that I needed to get up there. She needed me, and I had to be there. I jabbed at the button again, using my other hand to dial her number.

It rang and rang.

Voicemail.

“Fuck,” I hissed, jabbing the button a third time.

“Um, Raph?”

I turned, saw Cas was there. “What?” I snapped.

“I think you need to come?—”

The elevator doors opened.

“No, I don’t.” I stepped onto the car.

“Beth is?—”

Knots in my insides.

I clamped my hand on the metal door, stopping it from sliding closed. “Beth is what?”

Cas’s face was grave. “She’s down the hall, man.”

I was moving before I realized, in Cas’s face, my hand gripping my friend’s shirt. “Where?” I growled.

Cas, thankfully, didn’t get hackles up and snap back.

He just pointed to the right.

I let go then hauled ass down the hall, aware that Cas was following me, but not focusing on that.

Because…Beth.

Something wasn’t right with Beth. I felt it in my belly. I knew it because she wasn’t at the elevators, because Cas’s face, his voice, they weren’t right.

“Where?” I snapped when the hall split off into two directions.

“Left,” Cas said.

I spun to the left, my intestines in fucking knots…

And then I saw her.

Leaning against the wall, her neck bent, gaze on her feet.

“Beth, honey—” I took her hands, dipping down when she jumped, trying to see her face. But she didn’t make me wait, just glanced up, and her eyes were stark.

“Raph, I need to?—”

The door behind her opened.

And…my mom stepped out.

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

“She…um…found me inside the arena,” Beth said carefully. “She?—”

A slender woman in a fitted jacket stepped out of the room, a security guard at her shoulder. “Do you know this woman?” the guard asked.

Tempting to say no.

But prevaricating wouldn’t get us any closer to sorting out whatever the fuck this shit show was about.

“My mother,” I gritted out.

The security guard nodded.

The woman next to me, the one in the jacket, said, “She accosted your wife. Grabbed her arm and wouldn’t let go even though your wife asked several times.”

My hold on my temper had been markedly thin.

Two fucking decades without one word aside from asking me through my social media to show her boys the Cup, and then to show up in my life like this? Hurting my woman? Making a scene at my place of work?

Beth’s hand found my, squeezed. “Breathe, love. I’m okay.”

“Where did she grab you?”

Maybe it spoke to how on the edge I was, but Beth didn’t argue, just held up her arm. “Here. See? I’m okay, love.”

No marks. No bruises. No scrapes or fingerprints. And love on Beth’s tongue.

I breathed.

“Come on,” I said. “We’re going.”

Beth squeezed my hand again. “There are two boys with her. Your half-brothers.”

Shit. Show .

I stopped, gaze hitting the ceiling.

Fucking hell.

“Sir, what do you want?—”

“You’re our favorite player,” a small voice whispered.

My gaze jerked down, and I saw that a boy who was maybe ten or eleven had peeked around the doorway.

Beth’s hand went tight.

“Yeah”—another boy popped his head out, this one younger, maybe seven or eight—“Mom said that we might be great hockey players like you one day if we practice hard enough.”

I clenched my jaw, and I wanted nothing more than to fuck off out of here.

But…these kids weren’t my mother.

They had no fucking clue. How could they?

“Yeah, buddy,” I said. “You can.”

I turned to my mother, sucked in a breath, and searched for anything remotely kind to say. What came out was, “Did you pick better this time?”

Guilt on her face, blue eyes like my own clouding with guilt. “Yes,” she whispered.

That settled somewhere in me, a wound I hadn’t even known still existed. “How long?”

“Fifteen years.”

Fifteen .

And she’d left me with my father still. Left me and started over and?—

I looked at the two boys in the doorway, thought of the abuse my father had put me through, the yelling, the neglect, the shit heaped on day after day, and then I thought about where it had gotten me, where I was today.

The woman who was standing next to me, body pressed close, hand tight around mine.

And I waited for the rage to take me over, for the fury of the circumstances to cloud my mind.

But…it didn’t come.

Instead, I was staring at two boys, at my half-brothers, and I was glad their childhood had been different from mine. Glad there was light in their eyes instead of shadows.

I was pissed that my mother had dared to lay a hand on Beth.

But that was it.

The rest was…indifference.

This woman had stopped being my mother when she walked out, when she stayed away. But my brothers? My brothers were innocent.

“Do they know?” A beat. “About me?”

My mother shook her head, whispered, “No.”

I didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.

I glanced down at Beth.

Her expression was placid, but I felt her tension.

And suddenly, it didn’t matter what I felt. There would be time to unpack it later.

For now, I needed to take care of two boys who had nothing to do with this then get my woman and my ass on a plane.

“Raph?” Beth whispered.

“I’m okay.” Another squeeze of her hand before I released her and moved to the boys, squatting down in front of them. “What are your names?”

“Mario,” the older one said.

“Bennie,” the younger one chimed.

“It’s cool to meet you guys.” Their faces lit up. “Do you come to a lot of games?”

“We got an eight-pack for Christmas!”

Tickets to eight games. The perfect gift for hockey-crazed kids.

“Wow,” I said, meaning it, “that’s awesome.”

“And Mom lets us pick out a souvenir every time we come.” Bennie held up a medium-sized plush of the team’s mascot. “See?”

I smiled. “That’s really cool.”

“I gave Bennie my souvenir money because it was too much,” Mario whispered loudly. “He’s gonna let me have his next time so I can get a T-shirt.”

Good kids.

Happy kids.

I glanced up, saw hope in my mother’s eyes then looked back down at Mario. “That sounds like a good plan.”

“Now, I want to talk with you more,” I told them, “but we have to catch a plane, so maybe your mom can give me her number and the next time you come down to Baltimore, you can come to a Breakers game.”

“Really?” the boys exclaimed.

“Really,” I said.

“Whoa,” Bennie said.

“Awesome,” Mario added, practically bouncing from foot to foot.

I held out my fist, bumped both of the boys’.

Then I stood, leaned close to my mother. “Devon Scott at Prestige Media Group is my agent. I’ll tell him to expect a call from you.”

Tears in her blue eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

The apology meant nothing because I…felt nothing—except no, it wasn’t nothing. It was…neutral indifference.

“You’ll make a great father,” she went on, gaze going from Beth’s stomach back to me.

“Thanks,” I muttered, turning away from her, taking Beth’s hand.

And then I started walking.

Away from my past.

Toward my future.