Page 17

SIXTEEN

Damon

The tension is rampant in my car as I drive, thick enough I can cut it with a knife.

I ignore it and just drive steadily through the curved roads leading down from Joey’s place and out toward the airport.

The guys meet at the practice rink and take the bus over, but there’s enough parking that Joey and I usually park directly at the private airfield itself. Of course, usually Joey and I drive separately.

Hence the tension.

“Gonna clue me in why you’ve kidnapped me and my luggage?”

“Don’t think I can actually kidnap luggage.” I glance over at her when I feel the tension ratchet tighter. “Just saying.”

She rolls her eyes. “ Just saying, gonna clue me in as to why you’ve kidnapped me and stolen my luggage?”

I focus back on the road, mouth curving. “Nope.”

There’s a long blip of quiet.

Then she asks archly, “ Nope?”

I flick my gaze to hers before looking forward again. “Yup,” I say. “Nope.”

The silence descends a second time, for long enough that the airport appears in the distance. But thankfully her impatience arrives before the turnoff for the parking lot. “Damon,” she says softly. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I told you.”

She exhales sharply. “No, you haven’t. You got a bee in your bonnet”—my mouth curves because that’s funny as fuck—“about something that shouldn’t matter to you.”

I react before I stop to think, jerking the wheel, pulling us over to the shoulder and spinning in my seat, glaring down at her. “It shouldn’t matter to me?” I growl, leaning toward her. “It shouldn’t fucking matter?”

“Look.” She leans back, rubbing a hand over her forehead, but I don’t miss that as she pushes the hair out of her face, she takes the opportunity to lean back, to put some distance between us.

That pisses me off even more.

She shouldn’t be putting distance between us.

She should be shifting closer, reaching out?—

Fuck.

Enough.

“Look what?” I press.

“My life is my own life,” she says, dropping her hand and lifting her chin. “You were a pushy fuck and I shared shit that no one aside from my therapist knows. I get that triggered some hero complex in you, but I don’t need you to rescue me, Damon. I fucking don’t.”

“Empty,” I say.

She blinks. “What?”

“You said you were empty.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re a fucking liar,” I tell her.

“Damon!”

“But I don’t care.” I check for traffic then pull out onto the road.

“You don’t care?” she grinds out.

“Nope,” I say. “I don’t care if you say you’re fine. You’re not. You’re fucking empty and I’m going to change that shit. I’m going to fill you up, Red.”

“Why? Because you have some sort of fucked-up White Knight Complex?” She laughs humorlessly. “I’m not some weakling who needs to be saved.”

“Trying to piss me off?” I ask, even though the sharp edges of my temper have me clenching my steering wheel tightly. “It’s not going to work.”

“It doesn’t normally take much.”

She’s not wrong.

My patience is shit and my temper is finely honed to a sharp point, ready to explode at all times.

“True. But I understand now.”

“No,” she snaps. “What you mean is that hearing the shit that happened to me brought up some big feelings in you. But I’m not your sister, Damon.”

I suck in a breath, that slender hold I always have on my temper slipping, threatening to fracture, to allow that barbed edge loose, free to cause hurt.

She’s still talking though.

And that’s the only reason I manage to rein it in.

“I’m not weak,” she says caustically. “Life is fucked. Shit goes wrong. Bad stuff happens to innocent people. But I don’t let it drag me down. I fucking can’t . And you continuing to act like I’m some princess perched in a tower that needs rescuing doesn’t help. It makes it infinitely harder for me to stay focused. I need to stay in my lane, to stay focused, to be the best at my job as I can.”

“There’s more to life than hockey.”

She laughs again and it’s as sharp as my temper.

As brittle as my control.

“That’s rich coming from you.”

I scowl before I can stop myself. “Joey,” I warn.

“What?” She makes a frustrated sound. “You don’t like me pointing out your hypocrisy?”

But there’s a thread in her voice.

Victory.

Like she knows she’s pushed me to a breaking point…and thus pushed me away.

My hold on my temper turns to steel. I shove my frustration down, ignore her question—and maybe the realization that she’s not wrong. “Yes,” I say. “Bad shit happens to good people. But I don’t see you as a woman who needs rescuing.”

She sniffs. “Right.” It’s a dry rejoinder. “Sure.”

“Red—”

“And you trying to lecture me on the fact that there’s more to life than hockey.” Another sniff. “That’s fucking rich.”

I pull into a spot but don’t put the transmission into park because that will unlock the doors and I don’t want Joey to be able to escape, not quite yet anyway. “I have a life, baby,” I tell her gently. “I have friends and I have my sister. I work a lot, but it’s not the only thing in my world. I go out to dinner, grab a drink with one of my buddies, go to see shitty movies with my sister. Can you say the same?”

I know the answer to that, even before she turns her irate gaze to mine.

It’s a no.

Because she goes to Sierra games, she goes to practice, she watches video and makes plans for the team and basically lives and breathes doing everything she can to make the organization the best it can be.

But there are no Game Nights or bad movies or drinks with friends—no matter the city we’re in.

There’s no shopping days or trips to the spa.

There’s no planned meetups with Beth and John, no treating herself to a nice dinner with some girlfriends.

It’s…empty.

And I know that she’s used to it.

I know that she, for some reason, thinks she deserves it.

And I know that she fucking hates it, even as she wears it like it’s the mantle she must bear.

Same as I know I can’t let that truth stand.

Not for another day, another hour, another fucking second.

But I also know that today’s not the day that truth is going to stick.

“You can’t,” I say, shifting into park.

Not a second after the locks disengage, she pops open the door, letting in the cold morning air.

“Fuck you,” she hisses.

She slams it shut, moves to the trunk, and a moment later, I watch her, with her backpack perched on her shoulders, wheel her suitcase across the tarmac.

Then I smile.

Because mad isn’t distant.

Because buried longing isn’t unaffected.

And because…nothing good is ever easy.