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“Hell, no. Occupational therapy. I’d like to work with returned veterans and help them manage their injuries, reintegrate. Well, some of them.” She nibbled on her bottom lip and never looked away from the road.
“That’s a decent goal. Drawing from your...?” I asked, letting my words hang.
Silence filled the small space between us in the bubble car.
Finally, she glanced over at me. “My grandfather was an Army veteran. He had an internal fight that no one else really saw but us at home. He struggled with day-to-day things after a shoulder reconstruction and some...other injuries.” She stopped talking for a moment. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
“It's fine. We have time to fill. Go on,” I prompted her gently.
Something about her intrigued me. Her story had my attention but there was much more to her than the model-slash-cheerleader type that she portrayed on the outside.
She sighed in a whoosh of breath. The tension that held her shoulders in a tight line disappeared. “He lost his personal battle a few years ago, over my high school grad. We lost my Mom to cancer, and it was the tipping point. Like there just wasn’t a reason for him to be here anymore. The struggle of making his hands and arms work daily got too much, though there were plenty of things that were never dealt with inside him too. No one saw it, so no one cared.” She gripped the steering wheel with whitened knuckles. “I’m so sorry. I swear I don’t just blurt crap out to any random person.”
“It’s not crap. And if you need to say it, then say it.” Usually, having unrelated emotional shit dumped on me in any formwasn’t something I encouraged, having enough of my own to deal with.
But Wrenlee spoke clearly, though her voice was raw, and every word came straight from the heart. If she put her passion into her study and work, she’d be amazing. I brushed my knuckles over the back of her hand on impulse, her skin soft against my calluses.
She jumped, swerving slightly, though she didn’t move her hand from where I touched her.
“Well, thank you.” She straightened the car on the road and flashed me an uncertain smile. “What about you?”
“Studying? Apart from hockey?”
“Well, I can’t get between a boy and his first love,” she teased, her smile brightening a million watts.
I was the deer frozen in the headlights, except my headlights were a phantom of my own making.
“Got those priorities right,” I agreed. “Nothing so altruistic as you. Finance, economics. The capitalism that makes the world turn.”
“Aiming for CEO of a Fortune 500?”
“A fortune 50,” I corrected her.
“Of course.” She rolled her eyes.
“A boy’s gotta have goals.”
“How do those goals go against your professional sports ones? Isn’t there a conflict?” Her eyes held the question that she hadn’t asked yet.
“The game will always come first. Professional drafts come up soon and my last good chance is next year. Getting signed early is the dream.”
“And you’d drop your Fortune 50 dream for some ice shavings and a little black disc?” Her lips curved up, though her tone was somber.
“In an instant,” I replied. “Besides, who says I can’t do both?”
“Of course, you can.” She gave me a slight exasperated shake of her head. “But one takes brains, and the other takes brawn.”
I hiked both of my eyebrows high. The girl harbored some serious bias against hockey ...or maybe jocks just got to her in general. “I mean, taking all that bulk into a board room and dishing out deals with fists is sure fire way to make a company boom.”
Wrenlee threw back her head and laughed, the light sound lifting my mood.
Damn, but she was sexy as hell as her attention returned to the road. In a rush, I gathered more questions than I could fit into the remaining drive into Rippton. We were less than fifteen minutes out and I wanted to keep learning all about Wrenlee Cheshire, and her emotional baggage.
The assholes who took me wasted a few gallons of gas in their kidnapping spree. But that left me with plenty of time to learn more about Wrenlee. Maybe her bias against sports players, too. Or just players.
“Are you busy today, after you drop me off?” I faced her and got the exact response I expected.
“Are you going to ask me out on a date, little Emperor? Or did you have something else in mind?” She batted her eyelashes—thick, curled and lush as fuck—though I recognized the warning signs.
