Double Major (Portland Storm)

by Catherine Gayle

  “It’s all going to work out. You’re still going to be playing. It’s not like you got sent down to the minors or anything. You’re still in the NHL.”

  He gave me a look that was just this side of rolling his eyes before turning around and heading for the bathroom, but at least this time he was looking where he was going.

  I went back into the banquet hall and took my seat.

  “What’s up?” Katie asked me. Her parents were busy talking to Soupy and Rachel, so for once, Webs wasn’t listening in on our conversation. “You look upset,” she said, reaching for my hand under the table.

  “It’s…” I could feel myself blushing, which drove me crazy. I hated how easily I blushed. I hated how she could make it happen without even trying to. I shook my head and dropped my voice, since it wasn’t really my news to share and I didn’t want to steal his thunder with any of the boys. “Razor got traded.”

  “Oh. I—”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket with a new text message, and I let go of her hand so I could check it. I should have news about Levi at any moment—especially if it was him that Jim had traded up for.

  I pulled my cell out and slid the bar to unlock the phone, and I nearly lost my shit.

  You’ll never believe it. I got drafted #4. By the STORM.

  I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a crazy sound, which caught Webs’s attention. He glared at me, and I mumbled, “Sorry.” Then I turned to Katie, setting my phone down on the table. “Jim drafted Levi. My brother’s going to play for the Storm.”

  Her jaw dropped. “So, essentially, Razor got traded for your brother?”

  That was exactly what had happened, and I didn’t know how to feel about it. In one fell swoop, I’d lost my best friend to another team, but I’d gained my brother. Well, I already had my brother, but still. He was going to be my teammate someday. Probably not this year. It was insanely rare for anyone to make an NHL team as an eighteen-year-old the way I had, and it was even more of a unique situation when the player happened to play defense like Levi did. They usually needed more time in juniors or college, and maybe some time in the AHL, as well. But sometime down the line, he would play in Portland. With me.

  I’d never let myself dream it would happen. And I hated that it was coming at Razor’s expense.

  Katie kissed my cheek, which always did a number on me. Not that she’d done it often. I could count on both hands the number of times she’d kissed me in any way, and it only made me wish we were alone. I knew my face was bright red, maybe verging on neon. But then Soupy was tinging a spoon on his glass and standing up so everyone could see him, and I had to refocus.

  All I wanted to do right at that moment was take Katie out into the hall and kiss her silly, because it was the only thing that seemed to make sense. Instead, I kept my ass in my seat and tried to pay attention to Soupy.

  But I didn’t let go of her hand, and she didn’t let go of mine.

  FOR AS LONG as I could remember, Zee and I had agreed that we would be each other’s best man. It had been a given since well before either of us knew who we would marry, and definitely before it had been determined that we would have a joint wedding. It only made sense for both of us to fill that role for one another, after all, even though we were also both playing the part of the groom tonight. One thing about this arrangement that I counted as a blessing was that it allowed me the opportunity to make a toast. Zee had said he didn’t really want to, which didn’t surprise me. He wasn’t a big talker, usually—not as much as I was. He tended to say what needed to be said when he needed to say it, and then he moved on. I was far more likely to stick my foot in my mouth.

  I didn’t want to just toast him and Dana, though. There was something more that I needed to do, whether it was comfortable or not. What I said tonight needed to mean a hell of a lot more than just, Here’s to your future, I love you both, don’t fuck things up and hurt my sister and make me hurt you, you bastard, because I don’t want to have to do that.

  I needed to man up and apologize. Not only that, but I needed to make sure they understood—both of them—that while I would still gladly rip off Zee’s balls and shove them up his ass if he stepped one toe out of line as far as my sister was concerned, I knew that wasn’t going to be necessary. None of it would be. He’d proven time and again that not only was he never going to do anything that might hurt her, but that he was quite possibly the best thing on the planet for her. I had to be sure they realized I was aware of all of that. That I’d accepted it. That I respected him for it, and yes, I fucking loved him for it.

  He wasn’t just my best friend anymore. As of today—a couple of hours ago, actually—he was my brother. We had always felt as close as brothers to me, but now it was official. Legal. He’d just married my sister.

  I hadn’t completely avoided apologizing. Not exactly. I’d given them both half-assed excuses and told them I regretted some of the shit I’d said and done, and other things like that several times over the last year or so, but it had been nothing like the type of real apology they deserved because of all the crap I’d done to try to protect Dana from him. My efforts had actually hurt them both and had driven a huge fucking wedge between us that was even now still keeping us at least somewhat apart.

  Skirting away from the tough issues, not owning up to my shit—that just wasn’t like me in any other area of my life. I was the guy who took everything that was standing in my way as a personal challenge, and I would never give up until I’d gotten my way. It had been like that with my career. Hell, it had been like that in some ways with Rachel, convincing her to go out with me because of all the things her ex had done to her kids.

  So now was my chance to do something about it with Zee and Dana…and to do it with a big fucking audience. Nowhere for me to hide. No opportunity to shrug off my shitty behavior as being no big deal. No way to pretend I didn’t realize exactly how much Zee had done for my sister in a way that no one else could have…especially not me.

  That was all running through my head as I stood up in front of the crowd. Every eye in the room turned to me as I tapped my spoon against my glass. A panic-inducing silence settled over the room, with no sounds other than a cough over in the corner or someone shifting their chair along the floor. Shit. It was now or never.

  Mom and Dad were sitting right in front of us, alongside Zee’s parents, and they had Maddie and Tuck with them. Tuck had climbed up on my dad’s lap and made himself at home, and my mother looked like she couldn’t be happier about any of it. Which only made sense, after all. She’d gained both a daughter and a son today, and two grandchildren, as well. My heart surged at the thought. Those two were going to be my kids, and they were sitting with their new grandparents. And now I was feeling all weepy and proud and shit, right before I had to own up to what an ass I had been for far too long.

  Rachel reached for my hand, calming me. It was as if she could sense the emotion racing through me, even though I hadn’t given her any indication of what I was going to do. Hell, I hadn’t told anyone in case things didn’t go as planned. It wasn’t that I thought I’d chicken out. I just didn’t know if it would all come out the way I hoped it would, and I wanted to avoid making a big ass of myself. I threaded our fingers together and smiled down at her before looking back out over the sea of faces, the people who made up my life.

  “We wanted to thank you all for coming out to share this day with us,” I started. “I know I can speak for Rachel, Dana, and Zee when I say that today means so much more to us because we’re able to spend it with the people we love. I know a lot of you came in from out of town, and some of you even came from out of the country. Thank you for choosing to be here with us today, when there are so many other things you could be doing with your summer, so many other places you could be.”

  A cell phone vibrated against the table down the row from me, and I glanced over to see Babs blushing like a loon and fumbling to move it back to his pocket. He mouthed, Sorry, but I shrugg
ed it off. It hadn’t bothered me. It had just given me a moment to collect myself, to settle my thoughts. I hoped he wouldn’t let it bother him too much. Babs tended to worry about things like that a lot more than he should.

  “I, um…I wanted to take a minute to say— No, to apologize. I need to apologize. Ah, fuck,” I muttered beneath my breath, frustrated that it already wasn’t going the way I’d planned it.

  “Mr. Soupy, that’s a bad word. Mommy said you’re not supposed to say fuck!” Tuck called out from my father’s lap.

  The whole room burst into laughter, except Rachel, whose face turned as red as her hair. At least it was embarrassment coloring her cheeks like that, though, not anger. “Tucker David Shaw! What did I tell you about saying that word?” she demanded, but my mother had taken Tuck off Dad’s lap and brought him onto hers, quickly taking the situation in hand.

  “Mr. Soupy said it first,” he said, rolling his eyes.

  Maddie was sitting between my parents, eyes wide, looking from one of us to the next as though trying to decide if she could get away with laughing like everyone else around her or if she was better off biting her tongue.

  “You’re right,” I said to Tuck once the laughter died down some. “We’re not supposed to say that word. I shouldn’t have said it, and you shouldn’t have repeated it. Right?” I waited for him to grudgingly nod. “That’s the thing… Sometimes we do things that we know we aren’t supposed to do, and sometimes those things hurt people we care about or get them into trouble, and then we feel bad. Because we shouldn’t have done it in the first place.” Then I turned my attention to Zee and Dana at my side. “So I need to apologize to you two.”

  Dana was shaking her head and looked like she might start to cry at any moment, and Zee made to stand up as though he was going to try to stop me, but I couldn’t let that happen. They deserved a real fucking apology.

  “When I first found out that my sister was in Portland with my best friend, I was anything but happy about it. In fact, I wanted to bash his face in. I would have tried to if I hadn’t been halfway across the country when I found out. Looking back on it now, I know why they didn’t tell me what was going on—because they knew I’d react like a Neanderthal, which was exactly what I did—but it only made me angrier.”

  Sure enough, my sister was crying. Fuck. It made me want to look away, but that would be taking the easy way out. I forced myself to keep looking at the two of them. Zee’s reaction was the one that was really making it hard to keep talking. I’d never seen him more thunderstruck than in that moment.

  “Dana’s my kid sister, and right up until then Zee had always been on my side, helping me protect her from the things she needed to be protected from, to look after her. But suddenly I felt like she needed to be protected from him, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t take it very well, and that’s probably putting it mildly.”

  A few of the guys scattered around the room chuckled, probably remembering the day I’d dropped my gloves in practice and tried to let my fists settle my issues with Zee for me. He’d just let me hit him, hadn’t fought back at all. That had only served to make me feel like an even bigger ass than I already had.

  “I wasn’t just being the overprotective big brother,” I said. “I took it further than that, by a mile. Dana definitely had some things to work through back then, and if she’d gone to anyone but Zee for help, my reaction might have been justified. But she hadn’t. She’d gone to the man who was my best friend, who’d been with us through it all, who I knew, without a doubt, would never cause her harm… And yet I’d done anything and everything in my power to make his life miserable. If either of us was hurting her, it was me. So I owe you both an apology. Zee, I’ve loved you like a brother, but I haven’t always treated you like one. I’m sorry. And Dana, I promise I’ll mind my own business and trust you to know what you’re doing from here on out. I might not always like it, but I’ll keep my opinions to myself unless I’m asked for them. I’m sorry. More sorry than either of you could ever know.”

  By this point, Dana was openly crying, and Zee was staring at me like I’d lost my ever-loving mind, and I felt like a fucking idiot because I didn’t know what else to say or if I even needed to say anything else.

  “Are you done?” Zee asked me a moment later.

  “Yeah?” And why the hell had it come out like a question?

  “You’re not going to try to apologize for this again on our anniversary or something, are you?” He shook his head. “You’ve already apologized. Multiple times. Let it go, Soupy. We both did a long time ago.”

  Before I had a clue what he was going to do, Zee was out of his seat and closing the distance between us, and he pulled me in for a hug. A real hug, too, not a side hug like guys tended to give each other.

  “You’re sure?” I asked, but I was all choked up and it came out funny, and I was glad no one out in the audience could hear me.

  “If you fucking apologize for trying to protect the woman I love one more time, I’ll rip off your balls and shove them up your ass,” he whispered in my ear.

  Well, there was that.

  “So we’re good?” I asked as we pulled apart. For the first time since I’d started, I noticed the crowd. Half of them were as teary-eyed as Dana was, and Rachel was busy trying to fix her eye makeup because she had been crying so hard it was a mess.

  “You think I would have asked you to share a wedding day with me if we weren’t good? You can be really dense.”

  I shrugged. “So can you.”

  We took our seats again, and I was pretty sure someone else was supposed to make a toast or a speech or something.

  Before that could happen, Tuck shouted, “Can we have cake now?”

  ERIC TOOK MY hand as we cut across the middle of the banquet hall, twining his fingers with mine as he had so often since my arrival in Portland, when I’d asked him to help me learn to fight off my panic attacks. Each time he held my hand like that, it made me think back to those early weeks, when every little touch had been so difficult and yet so crucial to my life. I’d had no idea when I’d flown across the country that it wouldn’t just affect my future, but our future. I’d only known it was likely going to be the most difficult thing I’d ever done.

  Even now, I sometimes struggled with fighting off the attacks that would threaten to overwhelm me, as I had last night at the bachelorette party. Not with Eric, though—at least not any longer. Over the last year or more, he’d become my sanctuary, my soft place to fall when everything else felt like too much. He was always telling me how strong I was, that I was stronger than he was where it counted, but he was wrong. It was his strength that got me through.

  I smiled as we walked, hoping all my love for him would shine through my eyes to meet him as we traveled across to the cake table. This was a day I’d convinced myself I would never get to experience. After what had happened to me in college, when I’d been gang-raped, I had been sure I’d never be able to experience a man’s touch without succumbing to the most intense panic attacks imaginable. For years, no counseling or drugs had helped, to the point that I couldn’t even let Brenden or my father hug me without it taking over my entire being. I’d fully believed I would never be able to do the most basic things like hold a man’s hand or kiss him. But Eric had changed all that. Now I was his wife, and I was going to spend the rest of my life with him.

  And I was pregnant with his child. I wanted to tell him, but I didn’t know how. Or when.

  Brenden and Rachel were right behind us as we headed across the big room, and the entire wedding party was following along. Tuck had gained a perch high on Babs’s shoulders. Maddie was right between Brenden and her mother, holding tight to both their hands. My breath caught at the sight of that little girl latching on to my brother like there was no other place she ought to be. Much like me, she’d come a long way toward healing from some horrifying things in her past. Now Brenden was going to be her father, and there wasn’t a man in the world w
ho would be a better fit for that role. He’d lived through my ordeal; he knew what Maddie needed, and he knew how to give it to her.

  Our guests got up and shifted to let us through, moving out of our way while at the same time positioning themselves in spots they thought best for watching this tradition.

  When we arrived at the cake table, Eric and I went around to one side of it while Brenden and Rachel were on the opposite side. The four of us were going to cut into it at once, this huge, single cake. We’d talked about having separate cakes but decided against it on Brenden’s suggestion. We were getting married together, he’d said. We had shared groomsmen and bridesmaids and everything else that was part of our big day. We might as well share a cake, too.

  He had been so adamant about all of that, yet he still felt like he owed us an apology. I had to wonder when he would get past it, when he would let it go. Lord knew Eric and I both had a long time ago—if either of us had ever really been upset with him in the first place, which was debatable. We both understood where it had come from, so there wasn’t any reason to be upset with Brenden.

  I picked up the cake server that was lying on our side of the table. Eric stepped into place behind me, placing his arms around me so his hands could settle over the tops of mine. Brenden and Rachel took up a stance similar to ours, with Maddie standing just off to the side. Babs and Katie slid into a spot near them, with Tuck still up on Babs’s shoulders, so that their entire family could be together for this. The photographer and videographer started shifting people around—wedding party and guests alike—in such a way that their cameras would be in perfect position for all the right angles.

  I twisted around and kissed Eric while we were waiting for everyone to get in place. Just a peck for now, just enough to buy some time and sort out how to tell him my news.

  “Have I told you today how beautiful you are?” he asked before I could figure out my plan. Granted, I’d been trying to figure out my plan since last night when Katie had guessed my secret, and I’d only gotten more confused about what to do and say and the timing of it all once I’d bought the test and seen the two little lines.