Losing an Edge

by Catherine Gayle

  Connor gator-chomped Anthony’s arm and giggled.

  Anthony let out a fake howl of pain. “You got me!”

  “The agilators got you.”

  “I’m dying! Help. Help me, Cadence.” He held out his arms, which allowed Connor to jump on his midsection and bury him in the ball pit until I could only see his feet.

  “CayCay can’t save you from the agilators.”

  In no time, half the other kids in the place had joined Connor in climbing all over Anthony, but he only laughed and egged them on. It only took him minutes to become the prime attraction of the day, a human jungle gym for their amusement. He laughed and joked with them, giving in to any punishment Connor and his newfound friends saw fit to give him.

  I found a nearby spot on a bench where I could be sure Connor didn’t cause any true harm. My cell phone buzzed in my pocket only a moment after I took my seat. I dug it out and swiped the screen to find a text message from Sara.

  I like Anthony, too. Just in case you don’t trust yourself in determining whether you should like him. Don’t know him as well as 501, but there’s no need to feed him to the agilators.

  I laughed out loud, which caught Anthony’s attention. He flashed a grin in my direction—a distraction that lasted barely long enough for Connor and the other kids to pile on top of him again—and I did my best to sit back and enjoy the day without worrying about any of the men who were at the forefront of my mind.

  AT TEN TILL eight, I parked behind Jonny’s pickup in the driveway, my knuckles practically white as I gripped my steering wheel. There was no fucking good reason for me to be this nervous. Yeah, Cadence was Jonny’s sister, but despite appearances, he was a reasonable guy. Besides, he’d married his coach’s daughter. And my brother had married the daughter of one of the other coaches. The guy who used to be the captain of the Storm before Jamie had married a teammate’s kid sister. It wasn’t like any of this was unheard of or out of the ordinary, and especially not around this team.

  But no matter what kind of pep talk I tried to give myself, I was anxious as all hell. And I didn’t like it.

  Dating wasn’t exactly a hardship for me. Women tended to throw themselves at me, especially now that Jamie was well and truly taken. It tended to go with the territory when you had the trademark Babcock dimples and propensity for blushing. I’d even gone in for a spray tan a couple of times to see if darker skin would cut down on the blushing, but it didn’t seem to matter. Blushing ran in the family. Plus, all the guys felt the need to rib me for it, which only made me blush worse.

  Sitting in my car wasn’t going to do me any good, so I cut off the engine and headed for the porch. I hadn’t even gotten my finger on the doorbell when the door flung open, and a wet, naked Connor Johnson grinned up at me. “You’re a motherfucker. Mommy’s gonna feed you to the agilators.”

  Buster followed after him, barking at me.

  “How about you don’t jump on my balls first?”

  “I wanna go back and jump in the balls again,” he said, grabbing my hand and taking off down the steps toward my car. “Let’s go.”

  “Whoa, buddy.” I ushered him back inside so I could shut the door and keep the cold out. “I don’t know anything about that…”

  Sara came down the stairs with Cassidy wrapped up in a hooded bunny towel. “Hey,” she said when she saw me. “I didn’t hear the bell.”

  “I didn’t ring it. Connor let me in before I could.”

  She scowled at her son. “What did we say about answering the door?”

  “Only Mommy and Daddy and CayCay can.” That kid didn’t look the least bit contrite.

  “Mm hmm. And what were you supposed to do before leaving the bathroom?”

  “Dry off and put on my Batman underwears.” He looked up at me, like he was searching for an accomplice. Then he grinned. “501 said balls.”

  “So did you, buddy,” Sara said, trying hard not to laugh.

  “Can I go to the ball place with him?”

  “Maybe some other day.” Sara gave him a stern look. “Go. Dry. Put on Batman.”

  The naked boy streaked up the stairs with the dog hot on his heels. When he got to the top, he flung himself at Cadence, who was making her way down, apparently using her clothes as a towel to dry himself off.

  “Connor Allan Johnson,” Sara warned, shaking her head in my direction.

  “The ball place?” I asked.

  Cadence flashed apologetic eyes in my direction as she headed down the stairs. “We took them to an indoor park today. He spent hours pretending he was an alligator eating Anthony in the ball pit. Are we doing anything outside? I’ll need to go change into something dry if we are.” She had on a gold sweater dress that hugged her curves and ended an inch or two above the knee, and some sort of strappy heels that made her legs look long and sleek.

  “Not tonight,” I assured her. “Indoor only. So as long as you think you’ll dry off soon… I don’t mind waiting if you want to change, though.” Although, that would leave me subject to whatever tortures Jonny might have in mind if he came in from wherever he was hiding.

  Not only that, but I hoped she’d stay in this dress. The material didn’t leave much to the imagination, but that didn’t stop my imagination from running overtime.

  “Nah. I’m fine. Let’s leave before Connor does something else to sabotage me.” She took her coat and purse out of the closet and allowed me to help her into it.

  “We’ll leave the light on,” Sara called as we headed out the door.

  Cadence nodded and waved.

  Once we were in the car and on our way to the Moda Center, she turned to me. “Cam hasn’t been giving you a hard time, has he? I didn’t mean for it to go down like that yesterday. In front of him and all.”

  I shrugged. He wasn’t being any worse than I’d expect. “Why did you lie to him?”

  She raised a brow.

  “You didn’t agree to go out with me when I asked you. I would have remembered. Trust me.”

  “Maybe my brother doesn’t need to know everything.”

  “Maybe not. But maybe, if I’m going to be part of your lies, I should know what’s going on.”

  “Maybe you should,” she said. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  We were at a red light, so I faced her for a moment. Her face was still lit up with the same gorgeous smile she usually bore, but it didn’t reach all the way to her eyes again, taking me back to the moment she’d won the gold medal and should have been on top of the world. Seeing her like that crushed a bit of my heart. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand her.

  But damn if I didn’t want to know her well enough to figure out everything about her.

  “You’re a web of secrets, Cadence.”

  She ducked her head down and stared at her lap. “Only a few.”

  “A few big ones.”

  “Could be.”

  The light turned green. Soon, we were in the parking garage.

  “There’s no hockey game tonight, is there?” she asked.

  I parked and flipped down my sun visor, grabbing the two tickets I’d stashed there. I handed them to her.

  “The End of All Things?” There was a hint of awe in her tone.

  “Katie hooked me up.” I winked. “There are perks to having a famous sister-in-law.”

  I reached for her hand as we headed into the arena, not sure if she’d let me touch her or not. She didn’t cringe or flinch away, so I wrapped her hand in mine and held on as we made our way through the crowd.

  There was a war going on in my head, though.

  A part of me was crowing like a rooster, because Cadence Johnson was on an actual date with me. She was even more famous than my famous sister-in-law, and now that she’d agreed to give me a chance, I had the opportunity to turn our relationship into something more. That was the asshole part of me, and right now his voice was becoming seriously loud in my head.

  Another part of me simply wanted to figure out what secret
s she was keeping…and find a way to make that smile reach her eyes. I didn’t know what to call that part of me. His voice was quiet but persistent.

  I had no earthly idea which side would win.

  “CAM’S NOT GOING to bed until I get back,” Cadence said. “You know that, right? It’s one of those overprotective big brother things. I don’t think he’ll ever outgrow that. Even once all his little sisters are married off to men he approves of, he won’t stop…he’ll end up shifting all the focus to Cassidy.”

  She was smiling. A real smile, even. One that reached all the way to her eyes. There was something magic about her eyes. The hazel in them seemed to change color with her mood. When she was wary, they were almost brown, dark and intense like a cup of rich coffee. When she was focused on something and thinking hard, they turned to a light golden color. But now, when she was relaxed and enjoying herself, they were morphing into something soft and green. So far, I’d seen each of those colors tonight, only sparking my curiosity to learn how many other hues might be found in them at different times.

  “Yeah, I know. Poor Cassidy.” I stretched my hand out across the table at Shari’s, a twenty-four-hour diner we’d come to after the concert, tracing my fingers over Cadence’s upturned palm and memorizing the curvature of the lines and the softness of her skin. I knew how late it was—already well after midnight. We had a game tomorrow, so I had to be back at the Moda Center early for morning skate, and the last thing I needed to do was stay up all night talking to Cadence. But it was exactly what I wanted to do.

  As the night had gone on, she’d gradually loosened up around me, visibly relaxing. The music had been the first thing to help her let go of whatever had her all bound up tight. Katie had hooked us up with tickets on the floor, only a few rows back from the stage, and the speakers were so loud that even now, more than an hour after we’d left, the drum beat was pulsing through my body. I could still feel it, but Cadence was practically vibrating with excitement and energy. It was as if her true self had been in hibernation, but the bass and guitar had spoken to her soul and brought her back to life.

  “What’s it like being teammates with your brother?” she asked, giving me a smile that was at once both sweet and coy. She took a sip from her coffee to hide it, but that didn’t do anything to mask the teasing expression in her eyes.

  “You realize that’s a loaded question, right?”

  She gave me a blatantly unapologetic wink.

  “Jamie’s been my best friend for twenty-four years. But he’s also had two years on me through my whole life, so he’s always been a few steps ahead.”

  “So you compare yourself to him?”

  “Not on purpose. The comparisons simply happen. And he always comes out on top.”

  “It can’t be always. There has to be something you’re better at than him.”

  “Yeah? Like what? Help me sort it out.”

  “Well, there’s that dimple you’ve got on your left cheek.”

  I shook my head. “They’re a Babcock family staple. Jamie’s got two of them, one on each side.”

  “Oh,” Cadence said, deflating. “Well, maybe one is better for some people?”

  “Some people?” I cocked my head to the side. Yes, I was fishing for the answer I wanted, and I wasn’t too proud to admit it.

  “I kind of like your single dimple.”

  “Only kind of?” I gave her an exaggerated pout. “So now you can see where I’m coming from.”

  “Well, who’s taller?”

  “Me, but only by an inch. Really a half inch or so. But he’s got five pounds on me.”

  “You could spend some time bulking up in the gym this summer.”

  “So could he.”

  “Now you’re just being contrary.” She flashed a fiery glance in my direction.

  I chuckled. “I think I like being contrary if that’s all it takes to earn me looks like you’re giving me now.”

  Cadence blushed, which only made her hotter to me. All night, she’d looked like some kind of golden sex goddess in that sweater dress, but the addition of the blush brought out something protective in me. I couldn’t decide how I should think of her.

  Considering Jonny was her brother, the safer course of action might be to avoid thinking about her at all. I definitely needed to move away from the whole golden sex goddess line of thought, no matter what.

  “When you figure it out,” I said, trying to redirect my thoughts to some safe area, “let me know. In the meantime, I’ll be over here playing catch-up so I’m not completely left in Jamie’s dust. Didn’t you ever feel like that with your siblings?”

  “Never. We were always close, but as different from each other as possible. Cam was quiet, determined, and completely focused on hockey. Corinne’s the smarty-pants, so no one was surprised when she went into nursing. She tends to keep her thoughts to herself. Chloe was always playing school with her dolls and as many of her dozens of friends as she could gather together. She did a lot of babysitting over the years, as often as she could manage it, and now she’s an elementary school teacher.”

  “And you were the life of the party,” I said, since she left herself out.

  Cadence shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess so. I think Mom got me started skating because I had so much energy to burn. She needed something to help me focus, because I was all over the place, otherwise. Bouncing from one thing to the next in the span of a breath. I might be undiagnosed ADHD or something. With figure skating, I loved how I could have an activity of my own, similar to what Cam was doing, but still different. It was my own thing.”

  “Maybe I should have done that—looked for something of my own instead of doing what Jamie was already better at.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. We all followed in Jamie’s footsteps, right down to the seventh Babcock boy. I don’t know if any of us will ever be able to hold a candle to what he’s accomplished, though. Definitely not me.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. You’re still playing for one of the best hockey teams in the best professional league in the world, and it’s not like you’re a slouch out there.”

  I raised a brow. “You’ve been watching me?”

  “I’ve been watching my brother’s team,” she clarified, but I didn’t miss her blush. Maybe she had been paying some attention to me, not only paying attention to her brother’s team.

  “Still, Jamie’s the golden boy. He’s the cream of the crop.”

  “And what does that make you?”

  “Cream of wheat?” I joked.

  She pursed her lips in what appeared to be a determined effort not to laugh. “Defensemen take longer to develop. That’s what they always say. Besides, he wasn’t captain of the team and earning a spot on Team Canada the day he got drafted, you know. You’re still coming into your own.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said, smiling despite myself, because she was so determined to be a cheerleader for me. I got the sense she was like that with everyone. Always rooting for them. Always finding the brighter side of things. Never allowing herself to get dragged down in the kind of self-defeating negativity I’d been living in for a while. But whether she did it for everyone or not, right now, she was doing it for me.

  I could get used to having someone like Cadence Johnson in my corner.

  “I got an idea during the show,” she said, dropping her voice down to barely above a conspiratorial whisper, despite the fact that there wasn’t anyone around us to hear. The place was a ghost town at this hour. She took another bite of the pie we were sharing.

  “What kind of idea?”

  “I want to see if Anthony and I can obtain the rights to use one of the songs from their new album. ‘Sunset Wave.’ It would make for a killer free program. I’m thinking strings. Only an orchestra, no winds or brass or whatever. But maybe it should be something like Trans-Siberian Orchestra, you know? With the full orchestra plus all the electric guitar and drums and stuff? I don’t know. Won�
�t matter if we can’t get the rights, anyway.”

  “Why not use the original The End of All Things version?”

  “I still prefer not to skate to anything with lyrics. Used to be a rule that you couldn’t.”

  I grinned and forked the bite of pie she’d been going for. “Learn something new every day. So Anthony is the guy you were skating with yesterday? Big blond guy?”

  “Yeah. We’re trying each other on for size to see if we’d be a good fit as partners. Connor was practicing feeding him to the alligators today.”

  “Practicing?”

  “For you.” She winked.

  I chuckled. Something told me Jonny had something much worse in mind for me if I fucked up. “So you only stay in Portland if that works out? Or are you staying here regardless, and finding some other partner here?”

  “This is going to work out.”

  I didn’t point out the fact that she hadn’t answered my question, but I definitely took notice of the change in her eye color. They were darkening again, going back to that near-brown they’d been when I’d first picked her up. I was fishing too much. Time to back off.

  How the hell was I ever going to convince her to tell me what I needed to know, though, if every time I got close to finding answers, she closed herself off? This back-and-forth between us was starting to feel like an episode of Tom and Jerry. Every time I thought I had her caught, she slipped out of my grasp.

  “So you’re sticking around, then,” I said, brushing off my frustrations. I smiled, hoping to help her relax. “Maybe you’ll let me take you out again?” I left the suggestion hanging as a question.