Center Ice (Boston Rebels Book 1)

I’m just coming down the stairs into my basement office, the newest episode of my favorite horror podcast blasting in my ears while I try to get the nerve up to call Drew back. When I step onto the bottom stair, there’s a loud knock on the glass door. I’m not expecting anyone, so it takes me by surprise, and I fumble my lunch, spilling salad all over as the plate and fork go clattering to the floor. Maybe if I wasn’t listening to a terrifying story unfolding, the knock wouldn’t have scared me so much?

I tap the earbud to pause the podcast as I let out a guttural sound—the groan of frustration that’s been building all day as I’ve struggled through exhaustion and the worry over Drew knowing about Graham.

Then I hop over the plate, take the turn around the corner of the coat closet, and come face to face with the man who couldn’t be bothered to return any of my calls all those years ago.

He’s standing on the other side of the door, his hand over his eyes as he practically presses his face up against the glass. When we lock eyes, his expression takes my breath away. It’s pain, and confusion, and—if memory serves—longing.

“Are you going to let me in?” he calls out as a sheepish grin spreads across his face.

Do I have a choice?

I take my earbuds out as I take the few steps over to the entrance and slide the lock at the top of the door up, then turn the deadbolt. When I swing the door open, he just stands there, saying nothing.

“You could have just called.” It’s a ridiculous thing to say, since he’s already called multiple times.

“So you could just keep ignoring me? Which I’ll be the first to admit, I deserve. I’m sorry to show up like this”—his lips press together and his eyes scan my face—“but I was desperate.”

I can feel my eyebrows scrunch together, and I hear Jules’s voice in my head, teasing me about how I’m going to develop a permanent crease in the space between them for how often I’m scowling. “For?”

“Answers? Last night was…a lot to process.”

“Yeah,” I say, a heavy dose of sarcasm in my tone as I turn and head into my office.

I can tell he follows, because I hear the door shut behind me. Walking to the table that takes up the middle of the room, I sit on the far side and gesture for him to take a seat. But he passes the seat I’m motioning toward and takes the one opposite the corner where I’ve just sat. He’s as close as he can be.

And that brings back all kinds of memories about Drew’s lack of respect for personal space—not because he’s being a dick, but because he obviously came from a family where close physical proximity and constant touch were the norm. I noticed it when I tutored him—the way he’d easily swing his arm over me and rest it against the back of my chair as he leaned in to look at a problem I was showing him, how he insisted on walking me home at the end of each nighttime tutoring session and how he’d always reach out and squeeze my shoulder and thank me, how when we joked around, he’d punch my arm lightly or poke me in the ribs or reach over and swat my thigh.

It was so different from my own experience after my mom died. She was always touching us—smoothing her hand over our hair in passing, giving us hugs when we’d had a bad day, kissing our foreheads before we headed to bed. Her love language was physical touch, and that didn’t stop, even when she got sick. But once she was gone, the lack of physical contact was almost overwhelming.

Maybe that’s why I started craving his attention and his affection. He had an easy-going spirit that could not have been more different from my own serious nature. He was light and happy, easily pleased and seldom bothered—a stark contrast to the man who now sits across the corner of the table facing me.

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asks, his voice gentler than I’d expect for someone who just found out he has a five-year-old.

“Sure,” I say lightly and give him a little shrug. “I got pregnant. I called you twenty times to try to tell you, and you never called me back. Not even when I broke down and told you I was pregnant in a voicemail.” I cross my arms over my chest, raising my eyebrows and biting the corner of my lip like I always do when I’m nervous.

I notice his eyes focus on that, and I want to scream Really? I just confirmed that he had a kid, and he’s looking at my lips like he wants to kiss them?

“You still do that, huh?”

I squeeze my arms tighter against me, like I can use them as a shield to protect myself from him. “Do what?” I’m scowling, and I know it, but it makes one corner of his lips turn up.

“Bite your lip when you’re nervous.”

“What would I possibly be nervous about, Drew?” I bluff.

“How I’m going to react to the news.”

“I’m more concerned with your non-reaction. You don’t seem shocked. Or apologetic. Or any of the other reactions I might have expected.”

“I’ve had all night to come to terms with the fact that I’m a father. I’ve had all morning to regret not getting to see him as a baby, not being there for his birth or his first steps or his first words, or any of the other moments that should have become memories.” As he looks at me, his eyes never wavering from mine, and I note the regret in his expression. “I wasn’t ready to be a dad five years ago, and I’m sure you didn’t feel ready to be a mom. But if I’d known, I’d have stepped up.” He reaches across the table and wraps his fingers around my elbow, giving it a quick squeeze. “I’d have been there for you and Graham. And it kills me that it’s my own fault that I didn’t know. That you had to do this all yourself, and that I missed it all.”

I tilt my chin as I stare at him with what I’m sure is wide-eyed disbelief. I don’t know what I expected his reaction to be, but it wasn’t this.

“I didn’t have to do it all myself. I had Jameson and Jules.”

“Yeah,” he says, leaning in. “Can we talk about how I didn’t know Jameson was your brother, and how he clearly doesn’t know that I’m Graham’s father?”

I let out a sigh and deflate a little.

“I didn’t tell you Jameson was my brother because I didn’t want that to be a factor in our…friendship. My whole life, people used me to get closer to my brother. College was the first time that no one knew who I was or that we were related.”

“But he was already advising me, so it wasn’t like I’d have used you to get closer to him. I’d already committed to him being my agent once I was drafted.”

While everything I said was true, of course he’d have to go and notice that it wasn’t true for us. I wasn’t worried he’d use me to get to Jameson. I was worried that he’d use his professional relationship with Jameson as a reason not to get close to me. And I craved my time with him, even while I pretended that nothing about him impressed me.

“I wanted to keep Jameson as far away from my relationships—both friendships and romantic—as possible. He was always a little…overbearing.”

I feel guilty saying it because my brother is amazing. He retired early from the NHL when our dad left so that he could make sure Jules and I had as normal of a high school experience as possible. Without him, I have no idea what my life would look like. But it certainly wouldn’t have involved the elite private high school I attended in Boston, nor going to Boston University, nor having the help I needed when Graham was a baby so I could get my architecture degree. And Jules and I definitely wouldn’t have been able to save our dad’s construction company. My entire life—all my successes—are because Jameson stepped in and stepped up when we needed him to, at great personal expense.

“Is that why you never told him I’m Graham’s father?” He asks the question so casually, and I don’t understand how this news isn’t flipping his world upside down.

How is he so calm?

“Why are you not freaking out about the fact that you have a kid you didn’t know about? I mean, you’re so unbothered about it, it’s kind of freaking me out.”

“Believe me,” he says, leaning back in his chair, “I spent a good part of last night freaking out, especially when you didn’t call me back. It’s why I’m here now, in person. Would you rather if I wasn’t handling this well?”

“No,” I say slowly, considering my words. “I guess I’m just projecting how I’d be feeling if I were in your shoes.” I don’t mention that—having watched his life as closely as I could for these past six years, and determined he was an impulsive and unreliable guy—I’d expected him to run away from this news, not toward it.

Drew gives me a half-smile. “I can’t imagine you ever being anything but calm and collected. In college, I’m pretty sure you were the most mature person I knew.”

Yeah, well, I had to grow up quickly, I think to myself. But I don’t say it out loud, because if there’s one thing I excel at, it’s holding in my feelings.

“So…” Drew continues when I don’t say anything. “How exactly did you manage to keep my paternity a secret when your brother is my agent? And why? When I didn’t call you back, why didn’t you just tell Jameson and have him reach out to me?”

A laugh bursts out of me. “Are you serious?”

He nods. “Yeah. That’s the thing I don’t understand. You had a direct line of communication to me, through your brother, and you didn’t use it.”

“Drew, I called you twenty times.” I feel like a broken record player with how often I’m emphasizing this fact. “And you didn’t even call me back. How do you think Jameson would have responded to the news that you knocked up his baby sister and then refused to take responsibility for it?”

He draws back, his eyes boring into me as they rake over my face. “That wasn’t me not taking responsibility. I didn’t know.”

I give him the same look I’d give Graham if he was telling me he’d eaten all his dinner when he’d clearly just shoved his food in his napkin and left it wadded up next to his plate.

“I only listened to the first message, and you didn’t tell me you were pregnant in that one or I would have called you back.” Drew has the good sense to look ashamed when he says this.

I hear exactly what he’s saying, it’s what I’ve known all along: I wasn’t worth calling back. Maybe if he’d known why I was calling, then he’d have called. But he wasn’t going to call just because it was me. I didn’t matter enough to even return my call.

“It didn’t feel like the kind of information you should leave someone in a voicemail. What should I have said? Hi, remember our night together before you moved to Vancouver? Well, I’m pregnant. Call me back, thanks.”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what you should have said. It was a dick move that I didn’t call you back, and that’s on me. But also⁠—”

The door at the top of the stairs swings open, and Jameson’s voice fills the space. “Hey, Audrey,” he calls as he jogs down the stairs, “have you seen the… What the hell happened here?”

He’s stopped on his way down the stairs and is looking at the plate and salad spread all over the floor. He hasn’t noticed Drew yet, and my eyes slide over to him in a look of pure panic. Under the table, Drew squeezes my knee in what I’m sure is supposed to be a reassuring gesture, but instead sends a full-body shiver through me.

“Uh…a client knocked on the door as I was coming down the stairs and it shocked me. I dropped my salad. I’ll pick it up later.”

Jameson’s head snaps over to me then, noticing Drew sitting there for the first time. Thankfully, his hand is already back in his own lap. “Drew? What are you doing here?”

“I have some work that needs to be done at my mom’s place,” he says without missing a beat. “Colt mentioned that your sisters run a construction company, and I stopped by to see if the project is something they might be able to squeeze in. Audrey was kind enough to see me on short notice.”

Jameson’s eyes flick between us. I recognize the look of suspicion because he used to do the same to me and Jules when we were teenagers and he was trying to catch us in a lie.

“It’s lucky she happened to be around.” Jameson’s voice is flat, and I can tell he isn’t quite buying what Drew’s selling.

“Indeed,” I say. “Jules would have flat out refused to even talk to you.”

“Why’s that?” Drew asks, relaxing back in his chair casually, like this isn’t the most awkward possible moment for my big brother to have walked in. Like we’re not in the middle of lying to him, as if we’re children caught doing something wrong instead of grown-ass adults in the middle of an important conversation about our child.

“Because we’re perpetually overbooked. But if the project is small, we might be able to fit it in,” I say, then I glance over at Jameson. “What was it you were looking for?”

“The electric air pump. We ordered a bounce house for the backyard for the twins, and I thought it came with one, but it didn’t.”

“It’s probably in the storage closet off the playroom,” I tell him as I nod my chin toward the door that leads to the playroom Jules built for Graham so he’d have somewhere safe to hang out while we worked. She added a climbing wall with harnesses last year, once he was old enough to safely use it, and the slide into the ball pit is still in one corner. Lauren’s twins love to play down here with Graham when she and Jameson are over.

As he moves into the playroom, I grab my iPad from where it sits on the table and say, louder than necessary, because I want Jameson to hear, “So tell me more about your project.”

“My mom has Parkinson’s.” The statement is quiet but decisive, a nod to the reality of living through a terrible disease. “I don’t know how much you know about the disease, but it doesn’t shorten your lifespan; it just takes away your ability to live normally. She was diagnosed right before I graduated⁠—”

“Drew.” The word is practically whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

He’d never mentioned anything about this, even though it means that he’d found out during the second semester of his senior year, when I was still tutoring him. He’d always seemed so carefree, and now I wonder if at least part of that was an act?

“It was really hard to leave her when I was drafted, but she was doing okay for the first few years. My older sisters both live on the same street, so they were there to help her. But it’s become progressively worse lately, and they basically told me they needed me around more. Hence the trade to Boston.”

He swallows, and it’s a deep gulp. There must be so much more to the story that he’s not sharing, but I hope that while he’s out there upending his whole life to come home and help out more, he’s got people around to support him, too.

“I’m sorry. That must be really hard.” I know what it’s like to watch someone’s health fail due to a disease that deteriorates the quality of their life drastically. I watched my mom slowly die from cancer, and my dad succumb to his alcoholism.

“It is what it is,” he says, oblivious to my own experience with sick parents. “I got to spend the whole summer with her…” He glances off across the office and doesn’t say anything for so long that I think maybe he’s not going to finish his sentence. “It was hard to see how much she’s declined.”

“I’m sure,” I say, reaching over to give his arm a supportive squeeze. I immediately wish I’d never touched him because every muscle in his forearm flexes in response to my touch, and I’d rather not know how cut he is under his long-sleeve shirt—especially because I have a thing for forearms. When I pull my hand back quickly, his eyes watch it travel back to my lap.

“So anyway, her Occupational Therapist suggested some changes to her home that might make it easier for to get around now and in the future. Some are minor things, like changing the type of doorknobs. That I can probably take care of, but there are two bigger things. One is turning our first-floor family room into a bedroom, and the other is retrofitting the bathroom⁠—”

“Found it!” Jameson yells from within the playroom. I let out a sigh of relief, and then he appears at the doorway. “Thanks for this. I’ll give it back to you Sunday night when you come over for dinner.”

“Alright. Hope the kids love the bounce house. See you this weekend.”

He gives us a nod and heads out the front door of the office, turning and giving us a wave as he leaves.

“Holy shit!” I say, followed by a big sigh as I lean back in my chair. “That was a close call.”

“I take it you still don’t want him to know?” Drew asks as he glances at me sideways. I don’t like how judgmental the question feels.

“Until we’ve figured this out together, why would we want Jameson involved?” I ask as I close my iPad and stand, taking my coffee cup to the sink built into the counters along the wall.

“You’re right,” he says, and I can hear his steps behind me. “Sorry, I just didn’t like the way it felt like I was some secret you were hiding.”

I spin back to face him. “No offense, Drew. But that’s been the case for the last six years. And you can thank me later, because my ability to keep a secret probably saved your NHL career.”