Cadence and Chloe raced around behind the sofa so they could look over her shoulders and see everything on the little screen, and Corinne and Mom both leaned in closer from the side. I headed back to the dining room, leaving them to it.
Half an hour later, Dana and Rachel had settled on their wedding dresses and picked out the color and fabric for all of the bridesmaids to wear, and they’d decided on a style for Sara’s dress. Apparently all the bridesmaids were getting different styles. Whatever. It was all done, and all the women in the house here were gushing about how gorgeous and perfect and amazing everything was going to be.
All I knew was I was starving and no one had done anything about putting lunch together. Scotty’s stomach rumbled right around the same time as that thought crossed my mind.
“Unless you’re hiding an alley cat in there, we need to eat,” I said, raising a brow in his direction.
He laughed—something he’d been doing around me more and more lately. I still wasn’t sure how to react to it, but at least he was loosening up around me some. Maybe I was loosening up around him, too.
“I was wondering when anyone else was going to notice,” Scotty said. “I hate to say anything since I haven’t been able to help out much.”
“No helping out today. You up to going out or should I order something to bring in?”
“If I don’t get out of this damn house—” he glanced at Dylan with an apologetic look on his face, even though he’d limited himself to damn instead of fucking like he would usually say “—sometime soon, I’ll go crazy. I’m sure Sara’s feeling the same way. Let’s go.”
At least he’d kept his voice down and hadn’t cursed in front of my mother. It wouldn’t have surprised her, but that didn’t mean I wanted her to hear it. I was pretty good about keeping a lid on it around her. That was something most hockey players—hell, probably most athletes—learned at a young age. Language like that was fine around the guys but not around your mothers.
We got up and filled all the girls in on the plan—Sara gave me another look that said I was rescuing her—and got everyone organized to head out. Sara still didn’t have a bra or real shoes on, so she headed upstairs to get a pair.
“Oh! Can I come with you?” Cadence begged, clapping her hands together and practically hyperventilating in her excitement over seeing Sara’s shoe collection. “Cam told me you have lots of shoes, and I’m absolutely dying to see them.”
“I don’t see why not,” Sara said, but I couldn’t interpret her tone.
I wished she’d been facing me when she’d spoken, but she was already heading down the hall toward the stairs with Cadence racing after her. The pair of them came back down a few minutes later. Sara had put on a dusting of makeup—not that she needed it—and was in a pair of bright-pink pumps that made me salivate. Not that it mattered what shoes she put on. These days, just looking at her in anything or nothing at all was enough to cause that reaction in me.
Scotty went with Mom, since the SUV she’d rented had running boards which would be easier for him to get in and out of than my truck, but that meant Cadence had to come with Sara and me.
I helped Sara in, and she carefully slid over to the middle. She winced while she did it, though. I knew I shouldn’t have gone along with her idea last night. We’d probably set her back in her recovery. Now wasn’t exactly the best time to talk about how I shouldn’t have given her oral and made her come, though, since my barely seventeen-year-old sister was clambering up to sit beside her.
“You’re going to look amazing in that bridesmaid dress,” Cadence gushed. “With your boobs? Hello, cleavage. What shoes are you going to wear with it?”
Sara shot me a look that was equal parts mortification and bemusement. I shut the door after Cadence got settled, chuckling the whole way around to the driver’s side and wondering about Sara’s shoes just as much as my sister was. Even if I’d had months to try to prepare Sara to meet my family, it wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing in the world could prepare a person for Cadence.
On the way to Amani’s—the only place I could think of that would be able to handle a large group on a Saturday at a moment’s notice—Sara leaned into my side.
Small victories. I had to appreciate them when I recognized them.
Maybe today hadn’t been too difficult for her yet.
SPENDING THE DAY with Cam’s family hadn’t been horrible. Far from it, actually. I’d definitely been overwhelmed at first, but the more time I spent with them, the more I wanted to.
Mrs. Johnson made me think of Mrs. Campbell a lot, the sort of mom who would give you a homemade cookie or brownies or something equally soothing and bad for you after a crappy day. She was easy to talk to, and even though she asked a lot of questions, it never felt like she was prying—she just wanted to get to know who I was beyond whatever the Canadian news had to say.
Corinne was the oldest sister. She was petite, like Mrs. Johnson, and had some natural curl to her long, brown hair. She worked as a nurse at one of the major hospitals in Winnipeg, and of all the Johnson women, she was the most reserved—kind of like me, in that regard. It wasn’t that she didn’t want me to know anything about her; she just wanted to be cautious about how much she shared and why. I got the impression that her trust didn’t come easily, but once you’d earned it, you had it for life. That was something I could relate to.
Cadence, the youngest, was possibly Corinne’s exact opposite in every way, other than their height and hair color. She was a bundle of exuberance and curious about everything, but not in a way that felt intrusive. I honestly wasn’t sure how she pulled that off, because with anyone else, I’d be wanting them to back off. Cadence’s endless questions just made me laugh, though. She was still in high school, and she was a pairs figure skater who was hoping to be selected to Canada’s national team in the next year or two so she could compete internationally. From everything they told me, she probably had a good shot at that.
Then there was Chloe, the tall, middle sister with lighter, sleeker hair that had been cut in a sassy bob and the gorgeous boyfriend. The whole time we’d talked about wedding dresses and bridesmaid dresses, Chloe had been the most into the conversation. She didn’t have a ring on her finger, but it was pretty obvious she was hoping for one sometime soon and was trying to soak in all the details so she was prepared to make those decisions for herself. She was an undergraduate majoring in elementary education. I couldn’t imagine having a career that would require being surrounded by kids all day. I didn’t dislike kids—hell, I was about to have one of my own—but the thought of being surrounded by so many of them all day long was enough to make me break out in hives. She seemed like the type who could pull it off, though—smart, funny, energetic. If anyone had the tools for that job, it was probably her.
After we’d come back from lunch, they had all stuck around while the wedding dress party came over to do some modeling in person. It wasn’t long after that before Soupy, Babs, and Zee had showed up with Rachel’s kids, and we’d had a house full of people the rest of the day. Someone ordered pizza around the time Kally and Webs showed up with the puppy and the Weber teenagers, and then the house was so full I couldn’t hear myself think.
At one point, I sneaked up the stairs to have a few minutes of quiet, using the bathroom as my excuse. When I came out, Cam was waiting for me in my bedroom.
“How did you know I was up here with all that insanity going on?” I asked.
“I’ve been watching you. All day.” He held out his arms, and it was the easiest, most natural thing in the world to go into them. He knew just how to hold me to ease all of my stress away. “This hasn’t been too much for you, has it? They’ll all go home soon.”
I shook my head, my nose brushing against his shirt as I did. “It actually helped to have all the others come over.” They gave me a buffer—a way to get to know Cam’s family without it being strictly just me and them. I felt more like myself, too, when I was around Dana and Laura and the o
thers. I didn’t feel like I had to put on a show. I could just be me, and then Mrs. Johnson and her girls could see who I really was without all my nerves and anxiety poking through to the surface and making me prickly.
He bent his head down so his nose was buried in my hair, and he breathed in deeply. “How are your ribs?” Even as he asked, he placed the palm of his hand on them, just where the pain was always at its worst.
How the hell could he make that sound sexy?
“Not too bad,” I said. “Better than this morning.”
“Then why have you been cringing all day?”
I shook my head and pulled away from him. “It’s nothing.” Just gas. That was what I kept telling myself, at least. I headed for the door.
“I don’t like it when you lie to me, Sara. I wish you trusted me enough to tell me the truth.”
It wasn’t about trust, though. It was about fear and about my own belief that if I didn’t speak my fear aloud then maybe it wouldn’t come true. I went down the stairs and rejoined the party, and I tried to push it all out of my mind. That wasn’t easy to do, though, because the rest of the evening I felt Cam’s eyes on me. It was as if he was trying to stare through me in order to get to the bottom of things.
Eventually, everyone started to trickle out and head home for the night. The team had practice in the morning, so they needed to get some rest. Maddie and Tuck needed to get to bed, and Noelle’s puppy had been fighting sleep for so long that his head looked like it was about to fall off his body. Having this many people around had proven to be way too much excitement for the little guy. Dana, Zee, and Babs had been the last to leave. They’d stuck around to help tidy up the mess. It was almost ten o’clock before the three of them headed out the door, leaving the house suddenly empty and quiet.
Now that they’d all gone home, I realized just how exhausted I was—physically, emotionally, and in every other conceivable way. What might have exhausted me more than anything else was what Cadence asked me right before they left to go back to Cam’s house.
“Do you love him? Because he really, really loves you, Sara.”
She’d asked it quietly, when no one else was right beside us. That might have been the first quiet thing she’d said the whole day, actually.
I knew she was right about her brother and his feelings for me. It went beyond the simple fact that he’d told me he loved me. Everything he did, the way he treated me—it all added up to love. Lust wasn’t enough to account for his actions. Neither was any sort of misplaced guilt he might feel about Daddy’s heart attack. There wasn’t any good, reasonable explanation that fit. He might have initially told my father that he was the one who’d gotten me pregnant for some reason other than love, but everything else? The way he was so careful with me. The way he gave up all his free time to take care of not only me but also my father. The way he was willing to risk his position on the team in order to pursue a relationship with me, the coach’s daughter. The way he bathed me and washed and dried my hair and held me at night, all night, without thought to his own comfort. These were the actions of a man in love.
A man in love with me.
But did I love him, too? Hell, did I even deserve him? I wasn’t sure. Of any of it.
“I don’t know,” I’d said to her. “I care about him, more than I ever expected to. I don’t want to do anything to hurt him. But I also don’t want to lie and tell you what I think you want to hear. I don’t want to say it unless it’s the truth, unless I know it’s the truth and I believe it with everything that’s in me.”
I’m not sure what reaction I’d been expecting, but it definitely hadn’t been the big grin she’d given me. “Okay,” she’d said. “But when you do figure it out, you should tell him first. He deserves to know.”
At the moment, as Cam was taking me upstairs so we could go to bed, that was the question that kept racing through my head: Do you love him? Falling in love with him hadn’t been in my plans, but then again, not much of anything that had happened lately had been in my plans. Maybe I didn’t know what was best for me in this case, and maybe falling in love with a hockey player wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
At least it wouldn’t be if it was Cam.
He closed the door behind us, and he kissed me—a slow, languorous kiss that shouldn’t have turned me on like it did. And, like he had every night since coming to stay here, he helped me change clothes, all the while being cautious of my injury. But it was more than just caution. There was love in every movement he made, as though he was being careful with me not just so he wouldn’t hurt me but because I was precious.
He was taking such tender care in helping me that it brought tears to my eyes. My arms were up over my head so he could pull my shirt free, and I tried to brush the stupid tears away before he noticed. I should have known that wasn’t possible, though. He noticed everything about me, always.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked as I lowered my arms. He tossed my shirt onto the bed and cupped my cheeks, using his thumbs to brush away the wetness that was continuing to fall.
I shook my head, wishing I could make myself stop crying, but it all just kept building within me.
He slipped his arms around me, holding me close like he had that night in the hospital after Daddy’s heart attack. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head again. What I wanted was for someone to sift through everything that had been going through my head over the last couple of weeks and tell me what it all meant. Did I love him? Would it come between me and Daddy if I did? How would I be able to handle it if there were two men in my life—two men who I loved—and one of them had to go to a different team, a different city? Hockey players and coaches moved around all the time. How long would I have with both of them here, together, in Portland?
I’d never wanted to date a hockey player, but for the first time in my life I was starting to come to terms with the reasons behind that refusal. Only now, it might be too late for me to be coming to this realization.
“Okay,” Cam said softly. “It’s been a long day. We don’t have to talk about it right now.” He sat on the edge of the bed, pulled me onto his lap, and held me until the tears stopped.
After sniffling for a few minutes and reveling in the way he held me, his hands moving gingerly along my back, repeatedly, in a manner that both soothed and inflamed, I tilted my head up so I could see him. His hazel eyes were staring down at me, worried.
I stretched my neck so I could kiss his chin, despite the two-weeks’ growth of scratchy facial hair.
“Don’t go asking me to hurt you again tonight,” he warned.
I shook my head. While sex wasn’t far from my mind, it was definitely not in the cards for tonight. “I just wanted to ask you something.”
“Anything.”
“Why do you love me?” I sounded so damn vulnerable when I asked him that, and I fucking hated to be vulnerable. I never wanted anyone to see me when I was weak, but Cam could do that to me. He made me feel fragile, but in a way I’d never experienced before. It was as though being open with him in this way gave me a different kind of strength. I hadn’t wrapped my head around it yet. I was almost afraid to.
“Why do I love you?”
Was it possible for him to come across as both fierce and soft at the same time? He looked like an avenging teddy bear, like a man determined to love me into submission until I couldn’t help but love him back.
He might not have to try too much harder, either.
“I love you because you have the sexiest pout in the world. I love you because you won’t get mad at me if I accidentally curse in front of you, since you probably curse more than I do. I love you because you’re even more stubborn than I am. I love you because even when you frustrate the hell out of me, you fascinate me. I love you because you might be wary about letting me and my family love you, but you have good friends and you keep them close, and that means you’re loyal. I love you because you let me hold you when you cry an
d because you wake up wanting to kiss me. I love you because you went to visit my dog when I was gone. I love you because you would do anything for your father and that means your family is important to you. I love you because you’re you, Sara.”
If I hadn’t already melted into a puddle of goo when he’d told me he loved me because I was stubborn, not in spite of the fact that I was, the way he kissed me when he got to the end of that speech would have done the trick. He put every bit of that love that he’d professed into it, one hand cupping my cheek as his lips brushed gently across mine and the tips of our noses rubbed together.
My heart felt like it was going to thunder out of my chest because of all the feels he was making me feel, and my hand shook as I lifted it to press his closer to me so I could feel more of his touch.
He slipped his hand back toward the nape of my neck and eased me forward so he could kiss my forehead. “Come on. Let’s finish getting you ready for bed.”
There was no chance I was going to fall asleep anytime soon. Not with that frantic pulse and the thousands of thoughts racing even faster through my mind.
My whole world had been tipped on its axis in the last couple of weeks—but I was starting to think that maybe I didn’t mind too much.
SARA HAD BEEN squirming and trying to find a comfortable position every few minutes for hours. The sun was already starting to come up, but she probably hadn’t even gotten a good hour of sleep the whole night with all the tossing and turning she was doing. Which meant I hadn’t gotten any sleep to speak of. I couldn’t because I was so worried about her. I’d spent the whole day knowing I’d caused her pain, and now she was in so much distress that she couldn’t sleep.
I was an ass. Especially since I’d known what kind of shape she would have been in yesterday, and yet I’d asked her to go through a full day of dealing with my family. She hadn’t been up to that, but she’d gone along with it, and now she was even more miserable than she’d been before. I wished there was something I could do to take some of the pain away. Anything. But all I could do was hold her and try to make her as comfortable as I could.
Delay of Game Page 26