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REED
I was smiling as I jogged back across the river toward home. Violet’s reaction when I’d mentioned her pig comment was still clear in my mind—the shocked look in her eyes and the faint pink shine that had flushed her cheeks. I’d definitely caught her off guard. Maybe she thought I hadn’t heard her at the ice rink. Or that I didn’t recognize her. Impossible.
Violet wasn’t the kind of girl you forgot. She had stunning long, deep red hair, and her eyes were such a startling shade of light blue I’d struggled to pull my gaze from them. Her features were delicate, and when she wasn’t glaring at me she looked like she could have stepped right out of a fairytale—well, fallen out of one in her case. Between her clumsiness walking on the ice and the way she eyed the snow with such distaste it had been easy to tell she wasn’t from around here.
I’d first spotted her well before she’d called me a pig. It was just after we’d won the game and were coming off the ice. I saw her in the stands, and she’d stopped me in my tracks. I should have gone straight to the locker room, but I wanted to get a better look at her. I paused for a little too long, and my sister had rushed up to me with some of her friends. Cammie had just been trying to hit me up for cash, but seeing me surrounded by all those girls must have looked bad to Violet. I imagined it was why she thought I was a pig. If only she knew how terrible my track record with women actually was.
Flurries of snow started to descend as I neared home. I’d cooled down while helping Violet with her car and walking her to the party, but my body wasn’t bothered by the chill in the air. Then again, the cold rarely got to me. I sometimes wondered if my dad was right when he insisted the Darlings were long-lost descendants of the abominable snowman.
In this case, I thought it was something far simpler. I couldn’t feel the cold because my heart had been racing ever since I’d leaned close to Violet and whispered in her ear. Sure, she had a boyfriend, thought hockey players were pigs, and lived in Sunshine Hills, so there was no way she’d be interested in me. But she still had me buzzing with more nervous excitement than I experienced before a big game.
It felt easy to be around her, and it was the first time in as long as I could remember that a girl hadn’t talked, or attempted to talk, with me about hockey. They were always asking about my games, where I was going to college, or, most often, my prospects of playing in the NHL one day. Sometimes, it felt like girls only saw me for my stick—my hockey stick, that was. It was part of the reason I wasn’t interested in having a girlfriend. I didn’t have the time to dedicate to one, but mostly it was because I never felt like I could trust the motives of the girls who showed an interest in me.
I turned down my street and eased to a light jog as I approached our house. Despite what the kids at Sunshine Prep believed, Ransom was a nice place to live. The homes were respectable, and the people were decent and hard-working. We might not have luxury cars, ridiculous mansions, or a country club on our side of the river, but we weren’t terrible people like so many in Sunshine Hills said.
Unfortunately, I was probably part of the problem when it came to our town’s bad reputation. Once my brothers and I hit the ice, we fully embraced our roles as the Darling Devils. There was always a new rumor or two spreading about us, and while a lot of them weren’t true, I’d abandoned trying to set the record straight long ago. People could think what they liked about us off the ice as long as we were feared on it. Hockey was our life, and if our lethal reputation gave us even the slightest edge, we were all more than happy to play up to it.
Violet didn’t seem affected by it though. She hadn’t been here that long, so maybe she was yet to develop an aversion to the name Darling. All the other kids at Sunshine Prep knew about my brothers and me. Hell, even people who lived in Sunshine Hills and didn’t go to the school tended to avoid us when we ventured into the town.
No one hated us more than the Saints hockey team. Every game we played against them was a major event, and I’d heard there was a dartboard in their locker room with pictures of my brothers and me on it. They all dreamed of taking us down on the ice, but they were either too scared or too untalented to make it happen and we usually beat them. It only made them despise us more, and tensions were particularly high this season because our two teams were forced into sharing a rink while the Saints renovated their own.
Violet might have thought I was a pig, but I had to admit it was a nice change to the fear or the fawning I usually encountered. Hockey was such a big deal at Sunshine Prep though, so it was probably only a matter of time before Violet was throwing darts at my face too.
When I got home, I walked around the back of the house to enter through the sliding doors on the deck. I was surprised to find my brother Grayson on the porch swing. He was sitting in the dark, clutching a can of beer. And despite the fact it was freezing out, he was only wearing a T-shirt and shorts. There really was something wrong with my family and our inability to feel the cold.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked.
“Sunbathing, obviously.” Apparently, he was in an even more grumpy mood than normal, and I could almost guarantee he was out here avoiding our younger brother, Parker. His stern expression would have made anyone think we lost today, but I was guessing it was there for another reason. He was sulking because his best friend, Paige, was away for the weekend.
“Obviously,” I replied.
Grayson shrugged and ran a hand through his dark hair. Although we were twins and we shared similar features, we weren’t identical. Grayson was slightly taller than me, and it didn’t seem to matter how many weights I lifted; he’d always been bigger than me and built like the yetis we’d apparently descended from. People had often confused us when we were younger but no one made that mistake any more.
Mostly, it was our personalities that set us apart. While I sometimes felt like I had to pretend to be the dark and scary Darling Devil the world expected me to be, Grayson’s stormy demeanor was no act. He was more reserved, and his brow was perpetually furrowed in a way that terrified our opponents, and, well, everyone who didn’t really know him. My dad often joked that Grayson had been born scowling.
“So, how was your run?”
I could hear the judgment in his voice. Grayson thought I was an idiot for going running after games, but it was hardly something new. For years I’d been punishing myself by running a few miles immediately after we lost a game. We might have won today, but I hadn’t played my best.
I was also disappointed I’d gotten myself sent to the penalty box for ramming that guy into the boards. Hockey was an aggressive sport, and my brothers and I relished that aspect of the game, but losing control wasn’t acceptable, especially now I was captain of the team. On this occasion, I’d let anger get the better of me. The dude had been talking trash about my little sister, so I couldn’t exactly let him get away with it.
“Run was fine,” I said.
“What took you so long? You didn’t play that badly today.”
“I was helping Violet.”
“Violet?” Gray sat up a little straighter. “Who the hell is Violet?”
“A girl from Sunshine Prep. Her car broke down, and I happened to run past. Figured I’d do my good deed for the day.”
He snorted under his breath.
“What?”
“I’m guessing she was hot then.”
“You really think I’m that vapid?”
