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“Knew what, Mom?”
“You can second-guess yourself all you want, but I know my daughter. You love this hockey boy.”
Kassie put her hands up in protest. “Woah! I never said the L-word. We haven’t known each other long enough to even think about that.”
“Kass, there isn’t a time restraint on love. It just happens,” Ali added.
“Well, I just don’t see how this is going to work. It puts Luc in a bad position, and it puts Kaden in a bad position. And it puts me in the middle. No one can truly be happy like this.”
“Dear, the only one putting your brother in a bad position is himself,” her mom said, and Kassie knew that she was right.
“But I’m the cause of all of it. It’s been eating away at me since yesterday. And as much as I want to be with Luc, I can’t be the reason he gets traded, or that Kaden gets traded, because they’re a problem in the locker room. Teams don’t deal with things like that in the locker room; they just get rid of the problem.” She shook her head in defeat. “The code wins. Guidelines, whatever. I should’ve avoided athletes. I knew better.” At the very least, hockey players, specifically, Renegades players.
“But you do want to be with Luc, don’t you? Kass, I saw you two at the party. You’re pure heat together. The way he looks at you, the way he touched you, it’s like you’re his world. And I know you haven’t been dating for that long, but sometimes it doesn’t take long to know that you belong with someone.” Ali snuggled Kaleb in her arms.
“Something else is bothering you, dear. What is it?”
Kassie didn’t want to admit this. If she said it out loud she’d sound like a jealous teenager, and she hated the thought of that. She just shook her head.
“Do you have his jersey yet?” Ali asked.
Damn, that girl knows me so well that it’s scary.
“No. He has enough little fangirls running around with his jersey on; he doesn’t need one more.” As the words left her mouth, her mom’s face lit up as if it all clicked.
“Ah-ha,” her mom said.
“Ah-ha, what?”
“Green is a terrible color on you, Kass,” Ali said, shaking her head and grinning.
“What?” Kassie looked down at her shirt. What they hell are they talking about?
“You saw the bunnies yesterday, didn’t you? At practice. I heard all about them. Hell, I’ve seen them when I’ve been there. They’re hard to miss.”
She didn’t want to admit it, but slowly she nodded her head. “Yes.”
“And they’re making you think twice about being with him? Why?”
“It’s not them. It’s not him. It’s not anything. It’s everything. I didn’t like being jealous of those girls. I’m twenty-two years old. I have better things to do than be jealous. But they’re the ones standing there in his jersey, not me.” She shook her head, regretting everything she’d already said. “It’s stupid.”
“You want to be branded as his, don’t you?” Ali asked, her mouth gaping open in humorous shock.
“I’m not anyone’s property,” Kassie droned. “That’s kind of high school, don’t you think?”
“Oh, cut it out, Kass. You know if he made some grand gesture, showing you and everyone else how important you are to him, you’d swoon. And I wouldn’t blame you one bit.”
“Dear, is your brother the biggest obstacle?”
Kassie shrugged. “Kind of. I mean, he’s my brother. I care about him, and I don’t like him being so angry with me. And I really don’t like seeing him treat Luc so awfully. They’re teammates; they’re supposed to be close, like family. I would step back to make all that anger stop. To make everyone happy again.”
“Everyone except you,” Ali pointed out.
Her voice was soft as she said, “I really do like him, so much. I just don’t want to mess up his career.”
“That sure sounds like love to me,” Ali said, as she cooed at a laughing Kaleb.
“She’s not wrong, dear,” Kassie’s mom agreed, then turned her attention to Kaleb. “Hey there, big guy. Who’s our handsome little O’Conner man?”
