Page 92 of Stand Your Ground

I chuckled. “I just mean your whole childhood. I… I have no concept of what any of that would be like, but I could picture it — the beauty of Canada, a mom and dad who work to make ends meet and spend time with their son, all your waking time spent thinking of hockey. It just sounds really nice.”

Carter frowned, his paddle slicing through the water. He opened his mouth, and I knew he was going to ask about my family, so I dodged before he could.

“Do you do it often?” I asked. “Paddleboarding?”

He sighed like he didn’t appreciate the subject change, but fortunately, he let me make it. “More so in the offseason, but yes. That’s why I bought a house right on the water. I just launch into the canal and paddle out to the river any time I want. Mornings are the best,” he added. “Or summer evenings, when you can be out there at nine o’clock and still have daylight. I love watching the birds fly across a pink sky. Or hanging out with the dolphins.”

“Hanging out with dolphins?” I repeated incredulously.

He nodded, making a face like I had no idea what I was missing. “Oh, yeah. They love me. I may have no game when itcomes to the ladies, but porpoises?” He scoffed, huffing on his nails before buffing them on his chest. “Can’t keep them away.”

“Pretty sure we have bottlenose dolphins, not porpoises.”

“Technicalities.”

I rolled my eyes. “You really need to stop saying that, you know.”

“What? A man can’t brag about being a dolphin magnet? Also pretty popular with the manatees. I bet one shows up any moment.”

“Imeansaying that you don’t have game. It’s not true.” I paddled a bit closer to him. “It’s not your game that’s been stopping you. It’s your lack of confidence.”

“Obviously.”

“But you don’t lack it as much anymore, do you?”

I shot the challenge at him with an arch of my brow, and Carter smirked. I wished I could see his eyes under his sunglasses.

“I may be coming around,” he conceded with that grin still locked in place. “I have a good teacher.”

“Damn straight, you do.”

Suddenly, Carter shot upright on his board, eyes wide as he pointed to the water beside mine. “Look!”

My natural reaction was to jump and scream a little, which highly annoyed me and highly amused Carter. He laughed, reaching out for my hand and pulling until our boards were side by side.

“Look,” he repeated, and when I followed his finger to the water, I saw it.

A manatee.

“Told you.” Carter smirked, waggling his brows at me. “The sea cows got it bad for Fabio.”

I shook my head on a laugh, but then was lost in watching the magnificent creature. It was massive — easily ten feet long —and yet moved with a gentleness that didn’t match its size. The nickname sea cow made sense, not just for the bulk of its body, but for the calm way it grazed its way through the river. At first, I thought there was only one, but then another drifted up beside it, their wide, gray backs gliding just beneath our boards like two slow-moving boulders.

“Oh, watch, they’re coming up for air,” Carter said, pointing again.

Sure enough, the pair surfaced in tandem, their whiskered snouts breaking the water. They lingered so close we could have reached out and touched them if we’d dared — but we didn’t. We only watched, breath caught, as their dark eyes blinked back at us before they slipped beneath the surface again, weightless and unhurried.

I leaned back on my palms, soaking in the sunlight as the manatees continued upstream. Our boards drifted lazily in the current, the whole river humming with peace, like it, too, was in awe of the gentle giants passing through.

“Will you talk to me now?” Carter asked, his voice soft.

“What do you want me to say?”

“How about anything other than, ‘I’m fine.’”

I let out a long sigh, staring up at the blue sky above us, at the white, puffy clouds floating by. A big part of me bucked like a bull. I felt the familiar resistance like a hand over my mouth preventing me from saying a word.

But there was a softer side to me that had suddenly grown teeth.