Page 36

HAYES

“You’re awesome at that,” Riley says, curling into me to rest her face against my neck. I gather her into my arms, still breathing fast. We’re sweaty and naked and blissed the fuck out.

“ We are awesome at that,” I smile, panting hard and stroking a sweaty curl from her forehead, watching her heavy-lidded eyes flutter open and gaze into mine.

Her hand cups my cheek. “I’m glad I waited. I’m glad it was you.”

“Me with an audience,” I smile.

“An audience of helpers,” she muses. “Don’t sideline them. You know how they get.”

I grin and hitch her leg over my hip, breathing in the scent of sex that clings to us like a drug. Riley’s body is so warm and soft against the hard planes of my body, fitting perfectly in every way.

“There was never anyone else,” I admit. “No one got close to tempting me before you.”

She blinks with surprise, reaching out to stroke my eyebrow and cheek, fingers featherlight. “Really?”

“Really. And no one will again.” I know this in my heart, and I’m not fearful of her response. She needs to know I’m a one-woman man, and she’s it for me. My sweet Riley, who cries out for God when she comes and whose nose turns pink with every orgasm. Sweet Riley who touches my prickly brother, Jacob, with tenderness, and laughs extra hard at Shawn’s jokes because she realizes he’s seeking her approval. Riley, who makes me feel like a king even though I share the throne with two others and who notices the smallest things to make us feel seen. Our sweet girl has become the magnet at the center of our lives, joining us with barely any effort.

“Hayes.” Her voice is husky, and her touch is reverent. Her throat crackles when she swallows.

We haven’t spoken about the future. Not yet. There are hurdles to jump—our friends, her dad, society, hockey—but none of it worries me because nothing is more important to me than she is. But there’s a real chance that Riley won’t be on the same page, and I have to be prepared to be patient.

“Yeah, princess.” I bring her hand to my mouth and kiss her knuckles like a gentleman in a black-and-white movie.

She shakes her head, staring at my lips. “Where did you come from?”

“Pretty sure my mom and dad did something unspeakably gross, and nine months later, I emerged from somewhere I don’t want to think about.”

Her chuckle is warm and throaty, and I enjoy having the chance to make her laugh.

“I don’t deserve you.”

Tipping her chin so she’s forced to look at me, I frown. “Oh, pretty girl. You absolutely do.”

Riley blinks, and her eyes grow glassy like she might cry, then she eases away from me. “I’m going to take a shower,” she says.

I don’t want her to leave the cozy contentment of my bed, but we have things to do. The urge to join her for some wet and soapy fun is strong, but my dick is taking a well-deserved rest for now.

“Okay. Enjoy.”

She disappears with a towel in hand, and I straighten out the sheets and comforter, pull on some boxers, and slump onto the bed. It’s unusual for us to have time alone. Shawn has an overdue assignment, so he has disappeared to the library to tear his hair out in isolation, and Jacob is taking his turn at a fundraiser; one of the many Coach bullies the team to attend.

I stare at the wall and adjust my dick. The memories of Riley, naked, slick, panting, coming, harden it into a semi.

Jesus. I didn’t think lust this powerful was a thing I’d ever experience.

She’s like crack, or meth, or some other highly addictive substance that it’s impossible to get out of your head. The opposite of kryptonite.

I’m already imagining how I’m going to make her filthy the moment she leaves the shower when my phone buzzes. It’s on my nightstand, so I grab it and study the message. Collins is having a party to celebrate his birthday. It’ll be another drunken sex-fest, but it doesn’t bother me so much now that Riley’s in my bed, and the pressure to be like all the other hockey bros has dropped away. I rest my phone back on the nightstand, noticing the brown leather of my dad’s journal through the crack in the partially opened drawer.

I haven’t read it yet. Its presence has lingered in the back of my mind, like a terrible secret that could come out at any time. I grab it and flick it open, hoping that, if I read a few pages, I’ll find it filled with unimportant details, and I can give it back to Riley to place back in the box.

It feels heavier somehow than the last time I held it, like it’s grown even weightier with confessions my father was too proud to share. The leather cover is rough against my fingers, the pages dull and yellow with age, and I flick through page after page of scrawled handwriting. Dad was a skilled hockey player with style and grace on the ice, but his penmanship was a mess of jagged scrawl that is hard to figure out.

Another game. Another hit. They keep telling me to take it easy, but what the hell does that even mean? This is my job. My life. My identity. It isn’t possible to play hockey without hits. But the headaches are worse. Sometimes, it’s like my head is caving in, the edges of my vision blurring. The other day, I nearly blacked out in the middle of a rush. Can’t let them see that. Can’t let them think I’m weak.

The back of my throat tightens. I can see him, clear as day, gritting his teeth and frowning. Was he pretending he was invincible? Was he battling past the pain? As a kid, I guess I never thought about what he might have been going through. Children expect their parents to have everything under control. They need them to be stable and reliable, not prone to angry outbursts and violence. Back then, I wouldn’t have known what I was looking at.

But now? Now, I see the cracks.

The anger is harder to control, and I hate myself for it. One minute, I’m fine; the next, I’m yelling at the boys because they left their bags in the middle of the hallway. They look at me with these wide eyes, hugging the walls like they want to escape through them. Like I’m a monster, and maybe I am. All I’ve ever been good at is hockey. People aren’t easy. You can’t expect them to slide like a puck into the net. I can’t even look at myself in the mirror anymore because I don’t recognize the person looking back. The next hit might end more than my career, but if I take a break, if I stop, there’s nothing left.

His words hit me like a body check, driving the air from my lungs. He put us through so much. Jacob went through the worst. Having sympathy for someone who loomed over you, who hurt you, is impossible, but reading about his guilt and regret and hearing how much he was spiraling brings a new perspective to my feelings about him. Hockey was too central to his life and understanding how little he valued everything else cuts deeper than it should after all these years. He risked everything for hockey, even us.

I had another fit today. They’re getting worse. The blackouts, the shaking—I can’t tell anyone. Not the team, not my family. If the boys found out... they’d look at me like I’m broken. Like I’m not the man they’re supposed to look up to. I can’t do that to them. I won’t.

He was having fits?

I clench the journal tightly, the soft edges curling under the pressure of my palms. All those times he snapped at us, lashed out, retreated into himself, was this why? Because he was hiding something he couldn’t face? Something he couldn’t control? And believing we’d think any less of him because of it. Jesus. If he’d just got some help, maybe he’d still be here. Maybe he could have seen how much he had, even without the game.

“Hayes?” Riley’s voice pulls me back to the present. She’s standing in the doorway, wrapped in a blue striped towel, her hair wet and her head tilted slightly as she studies me. “You okay?”

I nod, even though it’s a lie. “Yeah. Just... thinking.”

She steps inside, and her gaze flicks to the journal in my hands. “You’ve been reading it.”

“Yeah.” My voice comes out rougher and more affected than I intended. “It’s... hard reading.”

She sinks onto the edge of the bed beside me, her hand resting lightly on my arm. “I’m here if you want to talk about it.”

I hesitate, staring at the journal that I’ve now closed. Part of me wants to burn it, to bury everything inside it so we don’t have to return to the time that was so hard for us to handle. But another part of me, one that recognizes that the status quo isn’t exactly healthy, wants to show it to my brothers and make them see the man behind the memories we’ve created.

“I didn’t know,” I say, finding it hard to look at her as I speak. “He was suffering, and I didn’t know.”

“You were a kid,” Riley says gently. “Even if you did, it wasn’t your job to do anything to help him. He had adults around him who could and would have stepped in.”

“He was having... episodes… after that hit. Fits. Blackouts. He wrote about how he couldn’t stop himself from getting angry.”

Riley’s brow furrows, her fingers tightening on my arm. “That hit he took was brutal.”

“And he just kept playing.”

“Until he stopped.” That’s a part of the story that’s clearer now. I never understood his claim that he quit playing to spend more time with his family. The reality was, he spent more time asleep in a dark room, more time yelling at us, and treating our mom like shit. I used to feel so guilty for wishing he’d just go and play hockey again and leave us at peace. And that just overlaid the guilt I felt when he died.

“Jacob blames himself for the way Dad died. He was sick at practice, and Coach called Dad to pick him up early. The accident happened on the way.”

“Do you think he had a fit while he was driving?”

“It’s possible. I don’t know. I never saw his death certificate. All we knew was he died in a car accident on the way to the rink.”

“Shit.” She closes her eyes like the cold light of truth is too hard to face. All these years Jacob has been bearing the weight of guilt that wasn’t his… should never have been his. She’s quiet for a moment longer, her gaze growing thoughtful. “Do you think Jacob could be dealing with something similar?”

The question lands hard, taking me by surprise. “What?”

“Haven’t you noticed?” She plays with the fabric of the comforter. “He gets so many headaches.”

“Does he?” My first instinct is to dismiss it, but as her words sink in, I start piecing things together. The way he rubs his temples during practice. The number of times I’ve caught him sitting on the sofa with his eyes closed. The times he’s skipped out on post-game celebrations, claiming he’s tired. The way he snapped at me during drills last week when his voice was sharper than usual. And then there’s the fight. We’ve had arguments before as brothers do, but the way Jacob came at me, his fists flying like he was barely holding himself together... that wasn’t like him. Jacob’s always been intense, always carried more weight than the rest of us, which put him on edge. I thought it was that, but combined with the headaches—

It makes sense.

“Shit,” I mutter, scrubbing a hand over my face. “He took a hit last season. I thought it was bad, but he brushed it off. Doc signed him off to play because he claimed he had no symptoms.”

“You think I’m right?” Riley asks.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “Wouldn’t he talk to us, Shawn and me, at least if he had something like this going on?”

Maybe he wouldn’t tell Riley. He doesn’t like showing weakness at the best of times, especially not in front of a woman he cares for. He wouldn’t want anything to change her opinion of him as a strong and capable man. Even when his heart was breaking, he wouldn’t let our mom see his disappointment in her self-absorbed behavior.

Riley squeezes my arm, and I watch a trickle of water coast down her neck and over her clavicle, disappearing into the soft fluff of the towel. “You need to talk to him, Hayes, before it gets worse. He has to come clean with the doctor, at least.”

I nod, but the thought of confronting Jacob fills me with dread. He won’t want to hear it, and if he’s anything like Dad, he’ll push us all away before admitting something’s wrong. Still, I can’t ignore this, not when his health is at stake.

For Jacob. For all of us. “I will.”

But as Riley leans her head against my shoulder, scented with my shampoo, her quiet presence grounding me, I glance at the journal again. There’s so much I still don’t understand, so many questions I may never find answers to.

And one overwhelming fear: what if Jacob’s following the same path?