Jules was steady and reliable, she was fun and easy going, and it also didn’t hurt that she was heart stoppingly gorgeous in moments when the light caught her blue eyes just right, when the breeze made her short blonde hair flutter around her face in a way that sometimes had Frankie subconsciously reaching out to tuck it behind her ear.
And when she laughed? The sound of it was like a song Frankie had been waiting forever to hear.
“How would your brother feel if he knew you just referred to him as a dumb douchebag?”
Jules bumped her shoulder against Frankie’s and rolled her eyes. “He would smile at me and say yes, Jules. Sometimes that’s exactly what I am. Thank you for teaching me the error of my ways.”
“Pfft, yeah right. The Cameron Clarke I know would absolutely NOT say that, but it’s so cute thatyou think so.”
”No, you’re right,” Jules laughed. “But he knows it’s what I’d want him to say and that I’m always right.”
Their eyes met and sitting this close, Frankie could see the way the light blue of Jules' eyes seemed to flow into the darker outer ring, like rays of sun hitting thick ice and doing its best to shine through to the other side. There was a depth to them that Frankie knew she could get lost in if she let herself and the honest truth is that it wouldn’t take much to let it happen.
But Jules had been a great friend to her and she understood the difficult position she was in, her leadership role that, like it or not, affected Jules even though she wasn’t the Clarke twin that Frankie coached every day. It couldn’t be as simple as her heart wanted it to be and it didn’t help that it had taken an embarrassingly short amount of time for her to reach this point.
She had no plans to act emotionally and risk the friendship she had come to cherish so she cleared her throat and looked away from Jules and fixed her gaze out the window at the rain. It had been pouring for three days straight now and a dense fog had settled over the harbour.
“Oh, I meant to tell you. I’m going to make the trip to watch the first game of the season,” Jules said. “Cam would never forgive me if I missed it.”
They hadn’t spoken about the start of the season and how much busier things were going to get but it was right around the corner and Frankie would be lying if she said she wasn’t scared shitless.
It was too easy for her to fake her confidence and it cut deep, knowing that when she looked out at the crowd in the arena in Boston, as fans clapped for the home team and the start of another hockey season, there wouldn’t be anyone there to celebrate her accomplishment. She wouldn’t have a familiar face in the crowd, someone in the seats to be a grounding presence among a sea of strangers who will have already judged her before the pucks even dropped for warmups.
Or at least that’s what she thought.
“And I can’t miss seeing you on the bench in your first official NHL game either, can I?”
Turning back to look at Jules again, Frankie’s breath caught and her throat bobbed. “I’d say your brother is a lot more important than I am given he’s kind of the face of the team.”
When Jules smiled, her eyes crinkled at the edges just a little bit and she licked her lips then gave her head a slight shake. “But who is he without his coach? That makes you special.”
It was more like who was Frankie without the names skating in front of her on the ice because without them, without this team, she’d still be on the other side of the country coaching teenagers who were already forgetting about her while the hockey world prepared to bow at their feet.
“Well…I’m glad you’re coming,” she said, mirroring the warm easy grin on Jules' face. “It’ll be nice to see you in the stands.”
It meant more to Frankie than she could put into words, that this woman who had only known her for a short time had so much faith in her, seemed to care so much, made Frankie feel a little less alone in the craziness that filled her life now.
“Maybe you can sign a puck for me?” Jules proposed, fluttering her eyelashes in the most adorable way. It had Frankie questioning how bad it would be if she acted on every dangerous impulse she had. “You can write: to Jules, mybiggestfan.”
Chapter 14
“How was the flight?” Cam asked as he pulled Jules in for a hug.
He’d come down from his hotel room to meet her in the lobby of the same hotel the team was staying in and she leaned into her brother’s tall, familiar embrace. It didn’t matter how old they got or how frustrated she could be with him, his hugs were always comforting to her and she smiled.
“It was good, shorter than I thought it would be,” she said, glancing around the swanky lobby.
The hotel was nice; full of plush seating and gold accents everywhere you looked, from the wall sconces right down to the trash cans. Her brother looked out of place standing on the granite floor in shorts, compression socks and slides.
“You’re going to come out with us after the game tonight, yeah? Apparently the GM booked a private room at some fancy restaurant for the players and their families after the game. Even the coaches are coming to celebrate with us, win or lose.”
At the mention of coaches, the image of Frankie popped into her head and Jules smiled to herself. She was looking forward to watching her brother taketo the ice as one of the faces of a brand new franchise for the first time in his professional career and she was so unbelievably proud of him. At 28 years old, he’d accomplished a lot and she’d been right there alongside him.
His success was well earned and she knew that when he took to the ice tonight, he'd be doing it for the both of them but most of all, for their parents.
Cam was used to big game days like today but this one felt different – it carried more weight for reasons she couldn’t explain yet – but he would step out onto the ice and play with an unbridled passion just as he had at the start of every other season.
But Jules was proud of Frankie too. She was proud of the woman who had quickly become one of her closest friends and though Jules hadn’t dared to act on anything, Frankie had become someone who made her heart skip a beat, who gave her butterflies when she said her name, whose company she craved more and more every day.
