Page 93 of Branded (Breakers Hockey)

Twenty-Two

Jules

Boom!

I jumped, clamped my hand to my chest, thinking that hockey was not for the faint of heart as I watched the Breakers’ player being smooshed against the glass—which rattled, swaying and bending to physics-defying angles when the player, whose name I didn’t know, took a bone-jarring hit.

“Ouch,” I muttered, but even before I’d finished the word, the player shoved off the boards, sending them rattling again and was… gone .

Just gone .

Okay, well, he hadn’t poofed away in a puff of smoke. He was still on the ice, just somehow suddenly ten feet away and hauling ass toward the other side of the rink.

The guys were big .

And fast.

And did I mention big?

And fast?

Yeah, I knew that Cas and Smitty and the others were tall and in shape, but adding their pads onto those already muscular bodies and the three or four inches from their skates onto their already taller than normal height made them seem like giants—especially when Ethan and I were so close to the ice.

I was used to watching five-year-olds play—er, fly around, fall down, jab each other with their sticks, and generally spend their time on the ice acting like tiny maniacs with blades strapped to their equally tiny feet.

And barring that, growing up I’d watched middle schoolers and high schoolers and a few players destined for the big leagues zip around the rink. But it wasn’t like this.

Watching professionals skate and shoot and hit , now that was a revelation.

My breath caught with every collision. I winced when pucks hit the glass and the boards and the goalies and the players.

And, yeah, my nails bit into my palms each time another player got close to Cas, every time he was hit with a puck or slashed with a stick.

And this was professional hockey. Sticks were cracking all over the place and pucks were flying and…

Shit.

He might get hurt.

This was a complication I didn’t need.

I had a hundred-dollar bill folded neatly in my pocket that I needed to get back to him.

I had a lap full of souvenirs and a belly full of treats.

My son was jazzed beyond belief and wriggling next to me, absolutely captivated by the game (and with absolutely no wincing or worry in sight). He was hooked and happy and…

Cas had done that.

Made my son happy.

Clink.

The chains around my heart hit the concrete floor at my feet, leaving me exposed and vulnerable and?—

“ Oh!” the crowd gasped.

Every muscle in my body tensed as Cas’s big body flew through the air, collapsed to the ice, and…

Didn’t move.

He didn’t move.

For long enough that my lungs began to burn.

“Mom—” Ethan began, his worried gaze turning to mine, but then the crowd seemed to collectively sigh, and my eyes whipped back to the ice.

Cas was up on his skates and the look on his face…

Sent a shiver down my spine.

He was pissed .

Maybe it was a cheap shot—I didn’t know enough about hockey to say one way or the other.

I hadn’t bothered to learn the sport that closely as a kid, nor when I watched the games on TV with Ethan.

Mostly I took cues from the announcers and the people around me and, this time, the crowd hadn’t gone one way or the other.

It could be that Cas was just angry he’d been knocked to the ice.

Or maybe he was concussed, and the hit had unleashed his inner hockey demon.

Either way, he was on his feet and his skates were flying across the ice and…he crashed into a player from the other team, knocking his opponent down to his knees, scooping up the puck, and moving .

Shit, he was fast when he wanted to be.

And this time he didn’t pass the puck to his teammate, not like he’d been doing for the first half of the game.

He just started skating, hauling butt up the ice, the puck on his stick, and his legs moving so fast I could barely track them. Out of his end of the ice, crossing the big red line that marked the halfway point on the ice, and…

I clenched my teeth together when a player on the other team careened toward him.

Cas just dropped his shoulder, kept skating, and the other player bounced off him.

Literally, bounced off and hit the ice.

Because Cas was a man on a mission. He kept moving, kept skating, crossing over the blue line that led toward the other team’s section of the ice.

It was only then that he lost the puck.

Or rather, that he gave the puck up to his teammate, sliding it across a slice of open space to Raph, who corralled it without missing a beat and started sprinting toward the goal. The other team closed in on him in just a few moments, slowing him down, cutting off his rush.

But Cas had kept moving.

And Raph noticed.

The other team didn’t, though.

They were focused on Raph and the rest of the forwards closing ranks around him, taking sticks, bodies colliding, open space being closed.

Except around Cas.

Cas slipped down, paused—all alone—next to the net.

Even the goalie wasn’t looking at him.

But Raph had.

And he slid the puck back, passing it between skates and sticks and sending it directly to Cas.

Who, as I’d mentioned previously, was all alone.

In front of the other team’s goal.

I sucked in a breath, nerves seizing, but I didn’t even get to exhale before Cas was moving, whacking at the puck, slamming it home.

For one second, the crowd was silent.

But only for a heartbeat.

Then the arena erupted with cheers.

And I was right there with the rest of the Breakers’ fans, jumping to my feet, arms in the air, a scream of “ Yes!” erupting from my mouth as the refs’ whistles blew and the red-light shone, the goal song blared through the arena’s speakers.

I glanced down at Ethan, saw he was dancing and cheering, his smile huge as he yelled his head off.

Then I looked back at the ice, saw Cas being mauled by his teammates, a cluster of them hugging him and smacking him on the shoulders and back, their group crashing into the boards in a ball of celebrating, hot, hockey players.

But that only lasted for a moment because then the gaggle of yummy hockiness broke up and they began skating to the bench.

All except for Cas.

He pushed off the boards, separated from his teammates, and turned…

And pointed to me.

And I found I was smiling just as wide as Ethan had been.

Shit.