“You have to eat. You’ve got to keep up your strength. For you. For your dad.” He didn’t mention the baby, but his eyes dropped briefly to my stomach and I knew he was thinking about it.
I went to the cabinet and took out some plates. He was right. Dana was right. Everyone was fucking right. I was starting to feel like I needed a damn keeper. Hell, that was essentially what Cam had been for me in the last day, and it was what Laura was attempting to organize. I had a whole freaking army of keepers. You’d think I’d be able to just do what they told me to do and focus on what I needed to focus on, but I guess that wasn’t really how I rolled.
I handed him one of the plates and grabbed a loaf of bread from the pantry. “You’re a lot nicer to me than I deserve lately.”
“I’m just trying to treat you how I would hope someone would treat one of my sisters.” He spread some mayo on his bread. “It’s not easy to think of you like a sister, though.”
“Because I’m acting like a bitch?” I joked.
He lifted his head, and his gaze met mine and seared straight through me. I couldn’t remember a time that I’d ever seen his eyes so expressive or anything other than simply serious. I melted into the floor, as though every bone in my body had turned to goo.
“Because you’re definitely not my sister,” he finally said, in such a way that all the nerve endings in my body jolted to life and started to dance.
“Oh.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so sexually aware. Particularly not when I hadn’t even been touched or kissed or anything, just looked at.
I forced my muscles to quit the whole boneless-jelly thing and respond, going through the motions of building my sandwich. When I finished, I carried my plate to the table and sat down. A minute later, Cam sat across from me. The fact that he was there made it difficult to think about anything except the way he made me feel, but somehow I managed to get most of my sandwich down.
We were both almost done with our meals before either of us spoke again. I was too busy trying to rein in all the tingling, jangling, out-of-control vibrations racing through my veins. I suppose he was too busy eating.
“Why isn’t he as worried about you as I am?” Cam asked, jolting me out of our silence with the outrage in his voice. “Why the fuck isn’t he here with you when you’re going through something like this?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“The son of a bitch who fucking got you pregnant! If you were my girlfriend, I sure as fuck wouldn’t be leaving you to deal with it on your own. Even if I couldn’t be with you, I’d be on the phone with you constantly, texting… I’d be making sure you fucking knew you could count on me, that you weren’t alone. And if some asshole like me got too fucking close—”
Cam cut himself off, shaking his head. He pushed back from the table and took his plate back to the kitchen, leaving me altogether too responsive to his presence and tingling with awareness. I couldn’t eat anymore. I could hardly breathe. The way he’d just spoken, the heat in his eyes when he looked at me—it was a lot more than I’d bargained for. The attraction I felt toward him was supposed to be one-sided, and it was supposed to be something I would never act on.
Cam was throwing a huge wrench into that.
“I’m sorry,” he said from behind the sink where he was now rinsing a plate that didn’t need to be rinsed. “It’s none of my business. We already established that, so I shouldn’t—”
“Cam?”
He turned off the water and looked up.
“He’s not in the picture.” I don’t know why I told him that. I kept revealing more to Cam than I wanted anyone to know. Him, least of all.
For a long time—too long—he just stared at me, those damn unblinking eyes making my blood ping like pins and needles as it raced through my veins.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
He ripped a paper towel off the holder beside him and dried his hands. “There’s no reason I need to go hunt him down?”
“I wouldn’t tell you if there was.”
His face was one big, massive scowl, but he didn’t get a chance to respond. Dana, Laura, and Katie let themselves in, their chatter rendering it impossible for us to continue our conversation.
Thank God. I needed that line of discussion to end, pronto.
Laura never seemed to stop talking. “We have to leave in just a— Oh, you haven’t showered yet? I guess you did need to eat. Shower next, though. Or maybe take a long bubble bath to relax? It’ll make you feel better. Katie and I have to go get the other kids in a minute, but we’re going to pick up dinner and wine for you, and we’ll come back later. Rachel’s coming over after she finishes up at work, too.”
Cam brought me a glass of water, his eyes not meeting mine. “I’ll go now that Dana’s here.”
There was a part of me that wanted to beg him to stay again, to tell him I would prefer him to be with me than the girls right now. They were my best friends, but it was like a tornado of energy and movement followed Laura everywhere she went sometimes. Cam was the exact opposite. Everything seemed to slow down, to settle, when he was with me. Right now, that seemed like what I needed more than anything else.
I couldn’t make any words come out of my mouth, though, and I didn’t like the thought that I needed him.
He headed for the door but stopped when he passed Laura. “She doesn’t need wine tonight. She needs rest.”
Laura let out a laugh. “Wine’ll help her re—”
The look he gave her cut her off mid-word.
“Okay. No wine tonight, then.”
Cam turned and caught my eye. “Call if you need anything.”
I nodded, and he headed out the door.
The girls swarmed into the dining room and took seats around me. “What was that about?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know,” I hedged.
“You really aren’t a very good liar,” Katie said, brightening. “I could give you lessons. It’ll give me something to do.”
“Don’t let your father hear you talking like that,” her mother said.
“Why?” Dana asked, winking at me. “Because he’d know who she got her mad lying skills from?”
“Exactly.” Laura shuddered dramatically. “Seriously, though. Wine tonight, or no?”
“Just rest, I think. At least for me,” I said, despite the fact that a glass of wine sounded like just what the doctor ordered. Once again, Cam had been right. Being a preggo meant no wine with the girls.
For months and months.
Damn it.
“CADENCE IS WORRIED sick about you,” Mom said.
I sighed into the phone, flinging my free arm back against the pillow over my head while I lay in bed. That movement dislodged Buster, and he whined as he shifted into a position where I wasn’t halfway on top of him. “She’s paying too much attention to the hockey media,” I said. “She knows better than to do that.”
“She’s seventeen. Everyone at school is talking about it, about what you did. What did you expect?”
I expected that as my sister, she knew me well enough to know why I’d done what I’d done. But Mom and my sisters all lived in a suburb just outside of Winnipeg, one of the most hockey-obsessed places they could possibly live, and the hockey media had been absolutely skewering my character in the last day or so. I could only imagine how much worse the Canadian media was painting the picture than here in the States. It couldn’t be easy for my sister at school right now.
“I’m sorry, Mom. Tell her to call me tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll talk about it.” It was too late to talk now. Cadence was already in bed since she had to get up early for figure skating practice before school.
“You should talk to Chloe, too. And Corinne.”
I usually talked to my mom and each of my sisters several times a week. Sometimes every day. But since everything went down this week, this was the first time I’d had a chance to talk to any of them.
“I will,” I pro
mised. “I’ve just had a lot going on.” And a great deal of it had very little to do with anything my family was aware of. So much of it was centered on Sara.
“I know you have, Cam.” Mom sounded tired. She always sounded tired, even though I sent her money to help pay for the mortgage and Cadence’s figure skating and Chloe’s college expenses—I’d sent money for Corinne’s education, too, back when she had been in nursing school—so Mom wouldn’t have to work so hard. She never slowed down, though. Mom never took time to take care of herself.
“Chloe has a boyfriend,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
There wasn’t a chance in hell it was an afterthought.
“Do I know him?”
“No, but she wants you to. She wants to plan a big family thing so you can meet him whenever you come home, but it’s hard since we don’t know when that’ll be.”
“Sounds serious.” My sisters usually tried to keep the guys they dated away from me because I could be pretty intimidating. I wouldn’t ever hurt one of them unless they’d earned it, but the guys tended to run off before it ever came to that once they met me. If Chloe actually wanted me to meet this guy, she’d probably already been with him for months, if not longer.
“I think she’s hoping for a ring soon,” Mom said. “I’m not sure Dylan will give her one until he’s met you, though.”
“Is he good for her?”
“Yes.” Mom’s smile came through in her voice. “They’re good for each other.”
“Will she finish college before the wedding?” I didn’t want my sisters to ever have to rely on men for their livelihood. It was something Mom and I had both agreed for as long as I could remember. We didn’t want the girls to end up in the same sort of situation Mom had been in when our father walked away.
“Dylan is just as insistent about that as we are. She’ll get her degree.”
“I promise I won’t take his head off until I’ve actually had a chance to get to know him, then.”
Buster whined again, much louder and more insistently this time. He probably needed to go out, but he never wanted to do that on his own if I was home.
“Sounds like you need to take him out,” Mom said. “I’ll let you go. I know you have a lot on your plate, Cam.”
“Yeah. I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too. Call your sisters.” With that, she clicked off, and the line went dead.
I tossed my phone onto the nightstand. As soon as I sat up on the bed, Buster made a flying leap off it and raced for the stairs. I’d barely made it to the bedroom door and I could already hear him running in circles and yapping excitedly in the kitchen. “Stupid pup,” I mumbled to myself. He knew good and well that he could go through his doggy door whenever he wanted.
“All right, all right. I’m here,” I said. I don’t know why I talked to him. I’d known he was deaf since the day I got him, and not once had he ever reacted to a word from my mouth. He’d been a gift from Mom and my sisters back when I signed my first pro contract—a little piece of them to keep with me when I was so far from home. I supposed I talked to him because he was the only one around for me to talk to.
He raced through the door as soon as I opened it, diving headfirst under a hedge and disappearing into his own private jungle oasis. His happy barking almost drowned out the soft knock at my front door. In fact, I thought I’d imagined it at first, but a moment later I heard it again.
Who would be at my door at this hour? It was well after ten on a weeknight. Anyone I could think of who might drop by would be far more likely to call first, but even that list was pretty short.
I had stripped down to a pair of jeans not long after dinner, and for half a second, I thought about going upstairs and at least pulling on a T-shirt, but whoever was outside on my porch knocked again, and I scrapped that thought.
I crossed into the living room and flipped the switch for the porch light before dragging the door open.
Never would I have expected Sara to be the one knocking, but there she was—big, blue eyes looking up at me, and a loose, oversized sweater pulled tight around her body, her arms crossed over her chest to hold it in place.
I must have stared without saying anything for too long because she turned around and started heading back down the steps.
“Wait. Sara, stop,” I said to no avail. She kept walking, her fuzzy house shoes surely getting damp on my lawn since it had rained earlier in the evening. That was when I noticed she was in a gold nightgown underneath the sweater—no pants, just some sort of long, satiny nightie that ended just below her knees. What the fuck?
I started after her, the wet grass cold under my bare feet. If I was cold, she had to be freezing out here dressed like that. “Sara.” I caught up to her before she got to her car and took her hand.
“I don’t know why I came here,” she said. She stopped walking, but she didn’t turn to face me. “I wasn’t thinking. I just—”
“Look at me,” I interrupted. I needed to see her eyes. I needed to get some visual clues about what was going on in her head so I could figure out how I was supposed to react, what I was supposed to do. This was one of those moments when I was extremely glad I’d grown up surrounded by women. It gave me a leg up on figuring out how to understand them. The most important lesson I’d learned from my sisters was that it was all in the face.
Slowly, Sara turned…but she stared down at the ground. I tipped her chin up so I could see her eyes. They were slightly wild, more pupil than iris in the yellowish glow of the streetlights.
“Are you all right?” I asked. She didn’t look like she’d been hurt, but sometimes you just couldn’t tell. Things might have gone downhill with Scotty. Maybe she was ill, or there could potentially be a problem with the baby. Was she miscarrying? A thousand different possibilities raced through my head.
She shook her head but said, “I’m fine. I should go. I shouldn’t ever have come.”
“Did you need something from me? Can I help?”
“It’s nothing. I’m just being silly, is all.”
“Tell me.”
She shivered. The rain had brought cooler weather, and Portland could be chilly enough at night in the spring. She should have put on some real clothes before coming out like this, and definitely a good pair of shoes.
I scowled. “But come inside first.” I turned around and started back into the house, Sara’s hand still in mine. She followed more easily than I’d expected she would. I sat her down on the couch and went into the guest bedroom downstairs, taking a spare blanket from the closet. When I returned to the living room, I draped it over her.
“Now tell me. What’s going on?” I sat down on the other end of the couch so she’d have plenty of space.
She tugged the blanket up higher. “I just couldn’t stand being in that house alone tonight. I was okay while the girls were there with me, but Rachel had to go back home to her kids, and Katie was worn out and needed to go to bed, so Laura took her home, and then Dana wanted to go be with Zee for a while before the team leaves for Vancouver tomorrow. And so it was just me and a big, empty house.”
“So you came here,” I finished for her.
“Yeah.” One side of her mouth turned down in the most adorable pout. “I told you it was stupid.”
“You said it was silly.” I would have remembered if she’d said she was stupid. I would have corrected the shit out of that.
“Same difference. Either way, I shouldn’t have come.”
“Why not?”
The telltale flapping of the doggy door met my ears about a half second or so before Buster ran in to join us, barking like mad with his tail wagging hard enough to create a breeze. He jumped up onto Sara’s lap and started kissing her face as though she was his long-lost love.
“Sorry,” I said, leaning over to grab him. He did the same thing to my face when I pulled him over to me. “He’s a little overly friendly sometimes.”
“He’s okay. I don’t mind.”
/> I hoped she meant that because Buster squirmed free of my grip and bounded back over to her. I’d never seen him get quite so excited over anyone other than Cadence when she was younger. With Cadence, it had always seemed like he was nuts about her because she was closer to his size and would get down on the floor and roughhouse with him. I wasn’t sure what drew him to Sara beyond all the things that kept drawing me to her—and those things didn’t make a lick of sense for him.
He gave her a big slurp right on the end of her nose, and she giggled. That was good to hear. She’d been so down, so unlike herself since her father’s heart attack.
I got caught up in watching her laugh with my dog going berserk over her for so long that I almost forgot I still didn’t know why she thought she shouldn’t have come to my house.
“You can always come here,” I said, and her eyes shot up to meet mine. “I like having you here.” I liked it a hell of a lot more than I should.
“Really?” She gave me this look, as though I’d lost my mind, which obviously I had. “You don’t mind me barging in like this?”
“I’d rather have you here with me than home alone and miserable.” The thought that she might spend another night in my bed was in equal parts a source of exhilaration and torture.
But it would be even greater torture to ask her to leave.
SOMEHOW I’D ROLLED over and wrapped myself around Cam during the night.
Before going to bed, we’d decided not to bother with me even attempting to sleep in his guest room since it hadn’t gone so well last night. He’d said that Buster would probably stay between us, despite the fact that he’d worked his way up to snuggle with me on my pillow last night. Cam had sworn that was just a fluke, that Buster preferred to be right in the middle of the bed. He’d also promised that he wouldn’t touch me—that we could just share the bed like siblings—even though neither of us felt like we were siblings. I’d promised the same. I might dream about unleashing the crazy sexual tension between us, but I would never act on it. Or so I’d told myself. And him.
Apparently, my sleeping self didn’t want to cooperate with my waking self, and Buster had no intention of doing what Cam expected him to do. Sleeping me had other ideas about what to do with him while we were in bed together, and Buster had disappeared to somewhere near our feet, if the heavy breathing I felt on my toes was any indication.
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