Page 72 of Branded (Breakers Hockey)

One

Cas

I was a hockey player who’d had fun.

Lots of fun.

I liked women—curvy or slender, tall or short, breasts or ass or long, shapely legs, blond or black or brown-haired or a redhead. It didn’t matter to me.

I just liked women.

But over the last months, I’d concluded that I liked one in particular.

She was smart and a hard worker. She had an ass that could make a grown man weep (and maybe it had brought a tear or two to my eyes once or twice, mostly because I was growing so desperate to see and touch and kiss the lush curves of Jules’s ass that I was living in a perpetual state of blue balls).

Tonight was the night my balls got some relief—or maybe the night that they lived in even more agony for at least a bit more time…

Because tonight I was going to ask Jules out.

And if she said yes, then I’d be lucky enough to spend more time with her.

Which meant my balls would spend more time in her vicinity.

Hence, a lack of relief.

Hence, me almost wishing for my balls to continue their agony.

Hence…I was an idiot who was delaying.

I was going to ask Jules out.

It had taken me an embarrassingly long time to work up the courage—harkening me back to my high school days—to ask her to go on a date with me, but I was a professional hockey player, dammit. I’d dated plenty of women.

I could ask one more out.

Easy to think.

Harder to accept.

Because as I slid from the bustling barroom and followed Jules down the hall, my pulse was pounding in my veins, sweat was pricking on my nape.

Because…this meant something.

She pushed out through the back door and I followed, slipping into the evening air.

CeCe’s, one of my favorite places to come—both because this woman worked here and because it had good food—was in a bustling part of the city.

Tonight was no exception.

Laughter punched through the night air, traffic buzzed in the distance, but here, behind the restaurant in the quiet alley that had dumpsters shoved on one end and a row of employee cars on the other, it was hushed.

“I come out here to think sometimes,” she murmured, surprising me, not realizing that she’d heard me following her out.

Not realizing that she’d seen me there staring and not speaking.

Being an idiot.

Christ.

“When it gets to be too much,” she said, voice still soft, turning toward me, her brown eyes rich, dark chocolate in the dim light.

God, she was pretty with those big eyes and gentle curves to her cheeks, her jaw. Her lips were plush pillows that I wanted to taste.

They’d be incredibly soft, I knew.

They had to be.

And she?—

“You know,” she whispered, insecurity creeping into her tone. “Because it’s so loud inside the bar and busy and?—”

“Will you go on a date with me?!”

It was an abrupt burst of sound, so it was no surprise that she jerked back in shock, the gentle smile that had been on her face while telling me about her need to find a bit of quiet disappearing in an instant.

I could have turned and punched the thick brick wall behind myself, pummeled it until my knuckles split.

She’d been giving me a little piece of herself.

An insight I could have held close, an opening I could have eased through.

I wasn’t an idiot—or rarely outside of my interactions with Jules, anyway.

I could have taken that insight and used it to learn more about her, to understand the shadows that sometimes lived in her eyes, to find out what made her smile and why she had a need for quiet.

Was it just the buzz of activity inside?

Or because she was busy with work and school and being a mom that she needed to steal slices of silence?

Instead, I’d yelled at her.

And her face said she both didn’t like the volume and what I’d asked…yelled…whatever.

“Jules,” I began, being certain to modulate my tone this time, to not startle her.

To not yell. Fuck.

“I can’t,” she said before I got further than saying her name. “Not because of you.” She reached out, squeezed my forearm, and hell if sparks didn’t fly up my skin, skitter through my heart, grow into embers in my stomach, flames licking down toward my dick.

“I—”

“I’m not ready to date anyone,” she murmured. “Again, not because of you.”

Her fingers sliding away, and I didn’t miss that they curled into a fist she pressed to her hip, her knuckles standing out in sharp relief.

Her lips pressed together, released. “I-I’m just?—”

I reached over, captured her fist. When she went stiff, I crouched a little so that our gazes connected.

“Don’t worry,” I whispered, smoothing out her fingers, hating the half-moon indentations on the palms of her hands, hating that I’d been the cause of them.

“I get it. I just”—I brushed my thumb over the crescent-shaped hurt—“ Careful , gorgeous.”

Her inhale was sharp, and I let her hand go, stepped back to put more distance between us.

I wanted to leave, to find some privacy—some quiet—to introduce my fist to the bricks, but I didn’t want things to be weird between us, didn’t want Jules to be uncomfortable here.

Where she worked. Where she’d become part of us .

The Breakers.

The guys and I came in regularly.

She was taking careful steps toward friendship with Hazel and Pru and Kailey and Beth.

I didn’t want to be responsible for fucking that up.

“The quiet,” I said, waving my arm out toward the alley. “I get needing it.”

Not a smooth transition in the least.

But disappointment was flowing through me in great waves that resembled tsunamis.

So, it was the best I could do at that particular moment, yeah?

Meanwhile, Jules was so still she resembled a statue, and as I watched her out of the corner of my eye, it seemed like she was hardly breathing. Tense. On edge.

Because of me.

Fuck.

“I’m one of four, so it was always noisy,” I told her, barely able to resist the urge to rub my temple, to try to soothe the ache that was beginning to blossom there.

I was fucking things up. Royally. “The oldest,” I added, wanting to give her something of me, something that would make her know a piece of me, but also something that wouldn’t make her feel uncomfortable.

“Which means that my parents were always in my business growing up”—this time when I shot her a smile, I breathed a little easier because some of the tension had left her frame—“at least until my siblings started making trouble.”

That sent the corners of her mouth turning up. “And were you?”

I lifted my brows in query.

“Trouble?” she asked, eyes dancing.

And now I relaxed.

Because she was Jules again.

And maybe I hadn’t fucked this up quite as much as I’d thought.

Growing up, I’d actually been a pretty good kid overall, critically aware that my parents had been working to the edges of their physical and mental abilities to provide for our family. I hadn’t wanted to add to their stress.

But I hadn’t been perfect.

“No more than any other kid,” I admitted and then laughed at her expression before adding, “Truthfully, I get into a lot more mischief nowadays with the guys. In my family, Sam”—a glance at her—“he’s my younger brother and the ringleader of trouble. Now and then.”

The pranks that kid had pulled…

Good God, it was no wonder our mother always complained about all her gray hairs.

“Yeah?” she asked, curiosity in those pretty brown eyes. “What’d he do?”

I opened my mouth, mind spiraling through the stories of my brother, filtering out the best ones, the ones that would make her laugh?—

The door crashed open behind us.

A drunk couple, locked in an embrace that resembled two octopi going at it, stumbled out, giggling and pawing each other, their mouths creating so much suction that the sounds of their saliva exchanging bodies was going to haunt me for a good long while.

Jules shuddered—I assumed for the same reason—but the couple had shattered the relaxed mood I’d managed to coax her back into. Her shoulders tensed and she inhaled, held that breath, then released it in a rush of air.

I watched all of that in fascination.

Then her eyes came to mine…and I braced.

She was going to keep trying to let me down easily.

God, I wanted to touch her, to kiss her, to hold her close until the uncertainty in the dark brown depths faded.

But she didn’t want that.

So, all I could do was leave her be.

“I get it, gorgeous.” I smiled a smile that I’d perfected over the years, one that had disarmed my parents, turned their worry from me when they had too much on their plates and didn’t need to focus on my petty, unimportant kid-drama.

“No hard feelings. Promise.” A wink, my lips curving further, tone lightening. “I’m used to rejection.”

And, just like it had growing up, that smile paired with the light words worked.

Jules relaxed again, rolling her eyes and shaking her head at me. “I’m sure,” she said dryly.

“It’s true,” I teased, tugging open the door (much more gently than the octopi couple) and waving at her to proceed ahead of me. “My heart has been stepped on so many times over the years, I’m sure that it’s basically just pulp.”

Her laughter filling the hall…filling my heart.

Then she shook her head again, her smile as she looked back at me joining that laughter in my heart, and gestured to my table as we strode into the busy barroom.

“Go sit down and”—another glance over her shoulder that didn’t do anything to assuage my need to kiss her—“if you behave, I’ll bring you one of Cody’s freshly baked cookies. ”

I had a sweet tooth.

And I loved Cody’s cookies.

But I knew that tonight, it would sit heavy in my gut, no matter how tasty.

Because I’d shot my shot.

And I’d fucked it up.