First to Fall

by Lane, Stacy

  “Cam told me,” he responds, throwing the guilt at his brother’s feet.

  I watch in horror as Earl’s eyes start to sparkle with wonderment.

  “In my defense, we are triplets and were born with telepathic tendencies,” Cam says into the hot wings dish.

  Alex chokes on laughter. “Sorry. That does feel true sometimes.”

  “I’m still confused,” Chelsea breaks in. “Are you and Brooks together?”

  “No!” More firmly, I repeat to Earl, “No, we’re not.”

  “For the record,” Cam says, joining the group now with a full plate of food. “Brooks didn’t tell me. I sensed something was up and had to drag it out of him.”

  “What might that be, son?” Earl questions with curiosity.

  “Is this because he drove her home on Halloween?” Chelsea asks, but before he could answer she turns to me. “Thought you said nothing happened?”

  My head is spinning. There are a lot of people talking all at once. Talking about me.

  “Nothing to get your hopes up about, Dad,” Alex answers for Earl. “After Brooks kissed Jo she shut the door in his face.”

  Chelsea gasps, grinning she says, “Good for you!”

  A nail-biting howl sounds from behind. I close my eyes with a groan.

  “Kissing Brooks Labelle is not nothing, Jolene Harper!”

  I spin to find Taytum and Nick stepping through the door of the suite.

  “Tay, I didn’t know you were joining us tonight,” I respond, deflecting her accusing stare.

  “I sent her a text after I got here,” Chelsea answers.

  Every eye in the room is on me now that the tea has been spilled.

  “You have a lot of explaining to do,” Taytum replies, walking up on my right side. “I want all the details, but it can wait.”

  “There are no details,” I say with a simple shrug, hoping that is explanation enough.

  “That’s your first anything since…” Taytum’s voice trails off, glancing at the people surrounding us. All eyes remain locked in on me.

  It’s really hot in here. Why the hell did I wear a sweater?

  Face heating up, I’m growing beyond uncomfortable with the stares all directed at me, and can feel the warmth crawling down my neck and onto my chest. Every time I’m anxious, bright red splotches break out on my chest.

  My hand lifts to scratch at an irritation below my collarbone, praying for a distraction.

  “Alex is going to be the new GM next year,” Cam announces out of the blue.

  “Cam!” His brother and mother shout. Angry disbelief flares in Alex’s gaze.

  From the shocked expressions starting at mad and dissolving into ones of happiness, everybody understands this top secret Cam spilled but me. I’m assuming it’s good news. Chelsea mentioned something of the like once.

  “Oh my God, that’s amazing,” Chelsea smiles, stepping over to Alex and giving him a hug. “Congratulations.”

  Taytum and Nick’s stunned expressions are lit with excitement as they murmur their felicitations. One by one, every person turns their attention to Alex who started off upset with his brother and is now joining in on the terrific moods as he talks a little about what is not allowed to be announced yet.

  But my focus turns to Cam who winks as soon as our eyes meet.

  “Thank you,” I mouth. The big reveal about Alex’s new job next year removed the topic of Brooks and me out of the fire.

  We all chat and eat as the game starts up. Cam, Alex, Earl, and Nick take the seats facing the rink, while us girls relax in the lounge area with the TV. The game is starting out kind of fun for me, actually. The suite gives the night a home-like feeling, but the electric atmosphere of being at the game in person is still there.

  While Brooks’s mom is discussing interior decorating with Chelsea, Taytum leans in toward me and whispers, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you kissed Brooks.”

  “He kissed me.”

  “Even more worth mentioning,” she snips.

  “No, it’s not. I won’t be his puck bunny,” I whisper back.

  “Someone has been Googling,” she rolls her eyes.

  “Yes, I have. Tay, he’s a notorious flirt, with a string of beautiful women on his equally beautiful tattooed arms,” I whisper-shout, hoping his mother doesn’t hear me speaking so rude about her son.

  She pauses, watching me with keen eyes. “Like those tattoos, don’t ya?”

  A flash of Brooks wearing a ball cap turned backward, hair curling out from beneath, and beautiful dark ink swirling down both arms, hits at full strength with my body responding in a flush of desire.

  “They’re an acquired taste,” I mutter.

  “Don’t be a prude,” she replies. “He’s hot as hell and you know it.”

  “No matter what I think of Brooks, it’s not happening again.”

  Taytum sighs. “Despite my pushiness, Jo, I don’t want you to be another one of those girls a guy like him hooks up with once and forgets about by the next morning. I have my head up in the clouds, thinking maybe he’d be different with you. Guess my recent engaged status has jaded me some.”

  “These people are really great,” I say, glancing around the room at Chelsea and the others. “Meeting all of them has helped me open up and come out of my shell.”

  “I’ve noticed,” she smiles. “It’s a little crazy for Nick and me, though. We’ve always seen them from afar and now we’re looped into their world. I don’t think you can grasp how insane it is to be standing in the same room as the future general manager of a professional hockey team.”

  “Yeah, that means absolutely zilch to me.”

  Taytum shakes her head with a quiet laugh. “Who knows, maybe that’s why Brooks is so interested in you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not a puck bunny, Jo. You’re not after him for the fame or his money or to be the one who will lock him down. It has to have an appeal.”

  Whatever the appeal is, we’re far too different for one another.

  As I tilt my chin up and watch the action happening on television, and hearing whistles being blown from the screen and from the real deal below, I catch the taunting, grinning face of the man constantly on my mind despite my urge for him not to be.

  He’s trouble. On and off the ice.

  • • •

  Eventually, I gravitated toward the seats facing the game below us. I liked hockey and started to understand it more than the first time I was forced to come, but I generally wasn’t a fan of sports.

  But Brooks is what drew me to this game.

  There’s an attraction I can’t deny, but simply put, I consider him a friend too. This is his job, his passion, and I enjoyed watching him in action.

  The camaraderie between father and sons was entertaining as well. I sat with the three Labelle men while everyone else remained inside the suite. Alex watched the game in silence, with sharp perception until provoked by his sibling to intervene. Cam and Earl bickered, shouted, and cheered like us women on our periods when our emotions ran high and we didn’t know what to feel more of.

  The game was drawing to a close, and not in their favor.

  All in all, coming back for another game granted more interest for me due to the people around me.

  Betty, Brooks’s mom, took a seat beside Earl five minutes before the final buzzer.

  “So, Jo, are you from Florida?” she asks, picking up a conversation with Earl sitting between us.

  “No, I grew up in Oregon. Came here for college.”

  “Fell in love with the Sunshine State like us, or was it a job that kept you here afterward?”

  “Little bit of both,” I reply. Earl shifts as Betty and I turn in toward one another. “A professor found me the job, but whether I had it or not I wouldn’t have gone back to Oregon.”

  “Sounds like you, Mom,” Alex adds, relaxing back in his seat with an arm thrown around Betty’s chair.

  “Mom’s a tea
cher,” Cam directs at me. “She helps her students get first-time jobs.”

  “I run FBLA at my high school,” Betty says.

  “I was in that club.” This is why my friends called me a nerd. I found this common ground more enlightening than the active game going on below. “One of my fondest memories of high school.”

  Mainly due to having no friends, being a complete, dorky, awkward teenage girl with parents pushing me to join school activities. They meant for me to sign up for a sport. Not sure they knew who I really was back then either.

  “Oh, I love hearing that! Some of my students come back to check in years later…”

  “Do you want to switch seats with me?” Earl asks with impatience.

  “I’m sorry. Am I interrupting this losing game with only a minute left?” Betty snips with a level of sarcasm I can appreciate.

  “You’re talking over me so it makes more sense to swap seats,” he replies, eyes glued to the players.

  “You and Cam have been talking hockey over poor Jo for the last half hour and you don’t see her complaining.”

  “We were teaching Jo. She was getting into with us.”

  “No, not really,” I insert. “You guys were more entertaining to me than the game.”

  Earl takes his gaze off the ice. “Guess you owe another game. Third times the charm. I’ll get you on board.”

  “Or you can hang out with me and we won’t discuss hockey at all,” Betty offers with a cheeky smile. “They can have hockey nights. We can do pie and coffee.”

  “I love pie.”

  Earl grumbles, Cam and Alex just laugh.

  “Do you bake?” she asks.

  I reply with an eager nod.

  “We’ll have to set up a potluck pie party.”

  “You’ve lost your touch, Dad,” Alex grins. “Guess you can’t turn everyone into a hockey fan.”

  “Jo’s stuck with us now,” Earl responds with a twinkle in his eyes. “She’ll come around.”

  “I’ve never been one for sports,” I shrug. “But I’ll tell you something just to prove you haven’t lost ‘your touch.’”

  Betty chuckles at my finger quotes.

  “Oh yeah, what’s that?” he smiles, not expecting I’m about to blow his mind.

  “The Fury power play stats last year were fourteen percent, and they are already not starting out so great this season. Definitely needs improvement. Their goalie, for twenty-eight years old, has a career average save percentage at .907, which would tell me he’s a big reason they are not winning, yet they signed him last year for another three years. If I had to predict their outcome, which I’m very accurate in almost every case, I’d calculate their division standings to be in the eighties by the end of the season. From what I read, that’s not enough to make the Playoffs.”

  Earl’s mouth hangs agape, staggering bewilderment and pride written on his face. Betty makes an impressive nod while Cam laughs from my other side like I told the funniest joke he’s ever heard. All of them missing the final seconds of the game.

  “Can I hire you next year?” Alex grins, leaning past his parents to watch me like he found a hidden treasure.

  “I’m good with statistics and theory, but not hockey.”

  “Behind the scenes, I only need your sharp math skills.”

  “We’ll see, but I’d be happy to help with free advice.”

  “Ooh, shouldn’t have said that, Jo-Jo,” Cam winces with a shake of his head. “You’ll never get rid of Alex now.”

  “Are you kidding,” Betty teases, leaning forward to pat my knee with a friendly touch. “She’s stuck with all of us.”

  With a final smile held with so much warmth I feel her words like she wrapped them around me in a hug, she stands and drags Earl off with her.

  “Uh-oh,” Cam’s eyes glisten with mischief as he makes a face once we’re left alone.

  “What?” I ask, turning to him.

  Alex stands, hands tucking in his front pockets. My neck twists his way as he speaks. “She’s only given that secretive, gentle look to one person.” His grey eyes look past me to Cam. Alex shoots him a sad smile before spinning and walking up the short stairs into the suite.

  I glance back at Cam.

  “My wife,” he says on a soft declaration.

  “You’re married?”

  “Widowed.”

  “I-I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago,” he shrugs it off. “But Mom loved Megan like she was her own daughter.”

  “What does that have to do with me, though?” We sit together as the cheers die down and the crowd disperses from the arena.

  Cam smirks, rising to his feet. Holding a hand out, I place mine in his and stand. “Just what she said. You’re stuck with us, Jo-Jo.”

  What no one needed to learn, I liked the sound of that notion a little too much.

  Their family is loving and fun and finds a way to pick and tease at one another that is not degrading. The Labelles gave family a new meaning I never knew existed.

  Inside the suite, everyone said good night to Earl and Betty. Cam needed to head back to the bar since the heavy crowd would be piling in soon. He offered to walk me across the street but I figured I’d ride over with Taytum and Nick, and declined. Alex followed him out.

  “We’re not going to Triplets tonight,” Taytum tells me after the brothers leave. “Nick has to help his brother-in-law move something really early in the morning.”

  “Want to ride over with me and Vic?” Chelsea offers.

  “I can walk,” I brush off.

  “Maybe you can catch up to Cam,” Taytum suggest, opening the door to glance down the hall. “I don’t see him but he couldn’t have gone far.”

  “Just ride with us,” Chelsea says. “I don’t want you walking down there alone.”

  “She’s right,” Nick speaks, curling a beefy arm around Tay. “Ride with them or we’ll drop you off. You shouldn’t walk by yourself.”

  “I’ll go with Chelsea. You guys head on home.”

  Leaving the suite together, we walk down the hall, parting ways at the elevator that will take Chelsea and me downstairs.

  “Are you going to stay at Triplets and hang out for a little or go home?” Chelsea presses the ground button, the doors closing behind us.

  “Home.” As she gives a small nod, I catch her hand beating a frenetic rate against her thigh. “Unless you want me to stay.”

  “No,” she shakes the response away too quick. “I know the bar’s not your scene, I was only wondering.”

  “Is it your scene?” I boldly ask. She and Vic still share a car, she goes to every home game, and he goes to Triplets after all of them. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had fun every time I have gone to Triplets, but it seems a bit much to drag your beautiful wife to a bar multiple times a week when he should be taking her home.

  “Yeah,” she replies with an overly used smile. “I mean, some nights I would love to just go home, but Vic needs to decompress after games and that’s his way of doing it.”

  “If we lived closer I would drop you off.”

  “I know you would.” She squeezes my hand, and when I expect her to let go, she doesn’t. The elevator lighting is not the greatest, but it almost appears as if her eyes are watering. “I’m really glad I met you, Jo.”

  “Me too, Chelse. Are you okay?” I squeeze her hand in return.

  “Yep.” Her used smile back in place, the doors ding and open into a busy hallway.

  The elevator opens to dark blue painted walls, white tile floors, and memorabilia hanging along every surface. Stepping out, I see the hallways break into three directions, forming a Y shape. One is jammed with guys and coaches and camera crews at the very end. Another that leads to the left ends at a door, and the third hallway has more personnel and reporters.

  This high traffic area is busy with so many people I forgot I was technically at the hockey game only moments ago.

  “Wow, it’s hectic down here.” I spot the C
aptain standing with a reporter and cameraman straight ahead. Behind him are a set of double doors. One guy steps through, swinging the doors wide to reveal a couple shirtless hockey players.

  Oh my damn. Maybe I should reconsider my appeal on hockey. Nothing like a yummy set of abs to make you rethink your life choices.

  “Yeah, it’ll be like this for a while. But once the reporters are done the place clears out.”

  I waited with Chelsea in a lounge room to the right. The doors were held open and as soon as we entered I recognized some of the faces from Chelsea’s party.

  Other than the wives, a handful of women were huddled together on the other side of the room. It was obvious the groups were divided. Wives and girlfriends stuck to one area, while the others stuck to theirs. It seemed rude and judgmental to assume they were puck bunnies, but even if the conflicting vibes weren’t coming from both parties, I would recognize them as such because of a certain redhead.

  I was chatting with the color wheel ladies, facing the open doorway, when I happen to look up right at the same time someone walked by. Doing a double take, he changed direction.

  Brooks’s smile curved into his striking cheekbones, reminding me how much more gorgeous he is in reality compared to memory.

  “Angel.”

  “Hi.”

  “Didn’t expect to see you down here.” He steps through the doorway, dressed in jeans and a black tee, with another one of his hats turned backward. This one red.

  “I’m catching a ride with Chelsea and Vic to the bar.”

  “Perfect. That’s where I’m heading.” Grin held in place, he tucks one hand inside his front pocket. “You can catch a ride with me instead.”

  I start to decline, there’s no good reason to be inside a car alone with Brooks again, but an unpleasant appearance pops in before I can respond.

  “Brooks, hey.” The redhead struts forward, positioning herself between him and I. My fantastic view from a second ago is blocked by an abundant amount of copper red hair. “Ready to go?”

  Chin dropping, I stare at my shoes with a nasty taste of embarrassment.

  “Not happening, Amber. I told you that already.” Brooks shifts, body and words pulling my face up from the floor. “Jo?”