Losing an Edge

by Catherine Gayle

  He jumped to his feet as soon as Levi and I came through the door, though. “What? What happened? You look white as a sheet.”

  “Guy was in the parking lot when we were leaving the rink,” I forced out. Then, after a moment to let it all sink in, I added, “I think we should call the police.”

  I WAS STILL at Jonny’s house hours later. They’d invited me to stay for dinner after Cadence and I had given our report to the officer who’d come to the house. Even if they hadn’t, I might have invited myself. The last thing I wanted to do was walk away from Cadence right now. The way I saw it, the more people she had around her, the better.

  Yeah, the officer said they were going to immediately send someone to talk to Guy again. That said, the emergency order hadn’t stopped him from showing up at the rink, so I doubted another visit from the cops would do anything to deter him. Not unless they were putting him in cuffs and taking him to jail. Didn’t sound like that was going to happen, though. Apparently, waving and blowing a kiss from a distance wasn’t quite enough.

  It was entirely possible I didn’t want to leave more for me than for Cadence. To calm my own nerves. Seeing how pale Cadence had gone the instant she’d realized the bastard was standing there had left me shaken and unnerved. I needed to be near her. To assure myself that she was safe.

  But now, the kids had been put in bed and it was late enough I ought to go home. Especially after the debacle of last night. We had morning skate early tomorrow, followed by a game, and I needed to be rested and in top form.

  Jonny’s line of thought must’ve been headed in the same direction, because he stretched and yawned, glancing over at Sara. “Ready to call it a night?”

  “You have no idea.” She glanced over at me and Cadence with bloodshot eyes. “Get all your late nights in while you don’t have kids. Everything changes once you do. It’s like someone flips a switch and you go from twenty-five to eighty, just like that.” She snapped her fingers to emphasize her point.

  “I don’t think we’re planning on having kids any time soon,” I said without thinking.

  The glare Jonny shot in my direction was enough to melt my bones.

  Cadence stifled a snicker.

  “You’d fucking better not be planning on making babies with my sister any time soon,” Jonny growled. “Not if you plan on ever being able to make more of them. We’re heading to Florida next week, you know. Lots of gators down there.” But then he took Sara’s hand and led her toward the stairs. “Be sure you lock up when he’s gone,” he said to Cadence.

  Then Sara winked at me as they disappeared.

  “You’re probably exhausted, too,” I said once we were alone.

  “Yeah. It’s been one heck of a day.”

  “So I should go?” I wasn’t sure why it came out as a question, but I said it again with much more certainty. “I should. Go, I mean. I should go home.” Okay, maybe there still wasn’t a lot of certainty in it. In fact, I was still hoping she would want me to stick around for a bit longer.

  “You don’t have to. Not yet, at least.”

  “No?”

  “No.” She met my eyes. Hers had been all sorts of colors all afternoon and evening, mainly in the dark and intense brown realm since the incident with Guy. But now they were lightening. Shifting into something softer and almost green.

  I remembered that night at the diner after the concert. They’d been green a lot that night. When she’d been relaxed with me. Not on her guard. They’d been golden during most of Sophie’s skating lessons, with hints of green peeking out every now and then.

  But now? They were as green as I’d ever seen them, kind of like moss.

  We were both sitting on the couch, but there was still a big gap between us where Connor had been. For the longest time following his bath, he’d stretched out between us, his head on Cadence’s lap and his feet bopping me in the nuts in time to the song he was singing about agilators. Wearing nothing but his Spider-Man Underoos, of course, because what else should a four-year-old wear at any point in the day? I hadn’t been sure if Jonny had orchestrated it or if it had been Connor’s idea, but it had very effectively kept me from trying to snake my arm around Cadence’s shoulders or her waist, to draw her closer to me.

  Now that we were alone, it was all I could think of, though. Touching her. Being close to her. Holding her and breathing in her scent.

  “I wanted to thank you,” she said.

  I shook my head, baffled. “For what?”

  “For thinking clearly this afternoon. For putting me in your car and driving me home, since my head had gone blank and I didn’t know what to do.”

  “All I wanted was to take you away from that son of a bitch as soon as possible,” I said. The thought of what might have happened if she’d been alone had been racing through my head ever since. Would he have tried to talk to her? To grab her? What if he’d had a weapon of some sort? The way I saw it—the way Cadence had reacted to his presence—the asshole didn’t need a weapon. Simply showing up and surprising her was all it took. It left her shaken, terrified, unable to act.

  She gave me a shy smile and ducked her head. “I’m just glad you were there.” Then, before I was prepared for it, she reached across the empty space between us and took my hand. Hers was tiny, barely bigger than her nephew’s, it seemed. Almost fragile. She twined her delicate fingers through mine, and my pulse jackhammered out of control.

  This was the first time she’d been the one to make a move. Every other time, it had been me.

  “I’m glad I was there, too,” I said, trying to keep the words steady, despite the fact that all my nerve endings were going haywire. I rubbed my thumb over the back of her hand, and she tugged. Not away, though. She drew me closer to her by an inch or so, which seriously set me into overdrive. “I always want to be with you.”

  “I know you do.”

  There was something odd in the way she said it. Something that left me wondering what was coming next.

  Cadence bit her lower lip, but she still didn’t try to take her hand out of mine. “I’m sorry I tried to push you away, too.”

  “You are?”

  “I am. Because it was the exact opposite of what I should have done. I realize that now.”

  All the hyperactivity going on in my body slowed to a trickle. I was fairly certain I knew where she was headed with this, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. I needed to hear the words straight from her mouth. I needed it as much as I needed air.

  “You do?” I said. “And what do you think you should have done instead?”

  She started to shrug but stopped herself, visibly forcing her shoulders down. “I should have run to you, not away from you. I should have recognized that you’re nothing at all like Guy, at least not in any of the ways that matter. I should have figured out that instead of pushing, you were letting me take things at my own pace. You were already giving me time. Giving me space. Letting me figure it all out on my own, even when I was being an idiot.”

  She inched closer to me, closing the space between us. Then she took my hand and lifted my arm up and over her, wrapping it around her shoulders. She burrowed into my side, letting her head drop back onto my ribs. If she were taller, she might fit against my shoulder. This felt right, though. It felt so damned right I thought I might burst.

  “Cadence?” I asked, hesitant because I didn’t want to spoil the moment.

  “Hmm?”

  “What does all this mean?”

  “All this?” She lifted her head away from me for a moment, and I thought I’d gone and fucked everything up. I should have kept my mouth shut.

  But I hadn’t, so now I had to fix it. “This,” I said, using my free hand to gesture toward the way she was snuggled up to my side. “What’s happening here? Because to me, this feels like more than something we’d do if we were still only friends, like we agreed.” A hell of a lot more, actually. I’d been very careful all along to keep my hands to myself. To avoid touching her eve
n though it was one of the few things I was capable of thinking about when we were together.

  Gradually, she nestled against me again. Then she lifted her chin to stare at me. Her eyes weren’t moss green anymore. They were dark green with golden flecks making them appear to be on fire. Alive. There was so much life and energy flowing through them it floored me. Bedroom eyes—that was how I’d thought of them before. And that was definitely what they made me think of now. She was back to being the sex goddess of my dreams.

  “You still want this to be more?” she asked. Slowly, but not like she was afraid of my answer.

  “More than I could ever put into words.”

  “Then maybe we should be more than just friends.”

  Addictive warmth shot straight out of my belly and spread through to all my limbs in no time. “Like what? Are you ready to be my girlfriend?” Because Lord knew, I was a hell of a lot more than ready for that.

  She bit that lower lip again, and my eyes were glued to that spot. I wanted to taste her there. If I had to guess, I’d think she tasted like fire, too.

  “I think so.”

  Fuck me, that wasn’t good enough. “You only think so?” Talk about a guy deflating like a flat tire.

  But she smiled, and it lit up the entire room. A real smile. Not one of her fake, forced ones. It was like she was coming alive in front of me. Before I had an inkling of what to expect, she put a hand on my jaw and turned my face toward her. And then her lips were on mine.

  They were like molten silk, heated and smooth and so fucking perfect. I breathed in the scent of her, clean and feminine, and held it deep in my lungs so long I might have passed out if not for her gliding her tongue along the seam of my lips, begging entry.

  She tasted like sweet cinnamon candy. I wanted to devour her, but I forced myself to hold back. To accept what she was giving instead of taking what I wanted.

  She twisted and tucked one leg underneath her. Almost greedily, she moved her hand behind my head and dragged me down. Down. Down still some more until I had to brace my arms on either side of her to avoid crushing her. She wrapped her thighs around my waist and tugged me closer, like she wanted to be crushed.

  “Not so fast,” I murmured against her lips. Not that I wanted to stop what was happening—I’d have to be a crazy man in order to avoid reveling in the sensation of having her beneath me, writhing against me—but this was taking things from one extreme to the other.

  Cadence dug her fingers into my hair. “But I want—”

  “Not so fast,” I repeated. I pushed myself up to keep from continuing. “You’ve had a lot happen in the last couple of days. The last thing you need to do is jump into something without thinking it through.”

  “I have been thinking it through, though.”

  “I know. But one day we’re only friends, then the next you need space and can’t even be friends with me, and now you’re mauling me on your brother’s couch with his kids sleeping upstairs. Not that I mind being mauled.” I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. “I actually like it way too much. But I still think it’s better if we take things one step at a time like we were before.”

  She pouted. It looked so damned cute I wanted to nip her nose.

  “Fine,” she said. “You’re probably right.”

  “I know I’m right.” I had to be. Otherwise, why the hell would every nerve ending in my body be screaming that I was wrong, that I should ignore all that shit? There was a part of me that wanted to carry her out to my car and take her home with me, and screw the rest. But I was smart enough to recognize that part of me was behaving like a fucking idiot.

  “Don’t get used to me agreeing with you, though,” she said.

  I chuckled and climbed off her—reluctantly as all hell, but it had to be done. Otherwise, I’d be the one doing the mauling. “I should probably head home. Come on and lock the door behind me.” I grabbed my coat from the hall closet. When I turned around, she was standing there, her lips puffy and swollen and pink, which made it incredibly difficult to keep myself from pushing her back up against the door and kissing her again.

  Instead, I opened the door. The snow I’d expected earlier had apparently been falling for a while. There was a thick blanket of the stuff all over my car that I’d have to clear off before I could leave.

  “Let me grab my coat,” Cadence said. “I’ll help.”

  I started the car and put the defrost on high to help things along. With the two of us working, it didn’t take us too long to clear the snow away. At least it was still soft and not packed down like it would be by morning. When I took the scraper from her, I couldn’t resist drawing her in for another kiss—one that warmed me up in no time.

  Breaking away from her wasn’t easy. “Go back inside and lock the door. Get warm.”

  “I am warm,” she said. “With you.”

  I pecked her on her nose. It was as cold as the snow. “Liar.”

  She grinned and ducked her head against my chest, drawing me into an embrace. “’Night,” she said.

  “’Night.”

  But she didn’t move.

  “You need to go in, you know.”

  “I do. But it feels too good to be standing here like this. With you.”

  I forced myself to nudge her toward the door. When she got to the top of the porch, she turned around and waved at me. Then I got in the car and waited until she was inside and the porch light went out before backing out of the driveway.

  Moments later, as I turned from their street to another, I could have sworn I saw a man sitting in a car that wasn’t running. Just sitting there. Not doing anything.

  Once I was past it, I glanced in my rearview mirror. The street lights illuminated it enough that I could tell there wasn’t anyone in that car.

  Must have been my imagination.

  MY HEAD HAD never been filled with such a jumble of things at once. I was scared out of my mind about Guy and what he might do, excited and a little nervous about the relationship I was building with Levi, energized by the progress Anthony and I were making, fulfilled from being able to put my skills and training to use in order to teach Sophie, and gutted that I’d come between my brother and sister-in-law—even if they seemed to be getting back on track now. On top of all that, I missed Mom and my sisters like crazy, and I felt like an absolute idiot for not speaking up about everything that had been happening with Guy, going back for years, when he’d first started treating me like garbage.

  Yeah, I’d been young and stupid. Maybe I still was. But that didn’t mean I had to stay that way.

  Cam took me to the gym up at the Storm’s practice facility with him early the morning after my first lesson with Sophie. Well, technically it had been the first lesson with Sophie and Levi, but I’d promised Levi my lips were sealed about that, at least when it came to being around his teammates. Yep, one more secret to keep from my brother, but at least this one didn’t have anything to do with my safety. Those days were over.

  The team had to be at the Moda Center for morning skate at ten, but Cam said there was no time like the present to work on self-defense, especially since the team was leaving for a road trip in a couple of days. “I used to work with Dana Zellinger on this stuff,” he said, tossing me some sparring gloves before putting those boxing pad target things on his hands. “You can start working with me, and maybe take some kickboxing or Krav Maga classes when we’re out on the road.”

  “Krav Maga?” I asked.

  “It’s a kind of self-defense they started up in Israel, I think. For their special forces guys. It’s what they’re encouraging women who’ve been victims of assault to learn to take care of themselves.”

  That didn’t sound like the worst idea in the world. I nodded and focused in on the instruction he was giving me. We’d been at it for about twenty minutes when he got frustrated with me. I was becoming frustrated with myself, too, come to think of it.

  “Harder, Cadence. You’ve got to put all your force behind it. Try
to hurt me.”

  “I am putting all my force into it.” I huffed, and it blew my hair out of my face. I stripped the gloves off and adjusted my ponytail holder, mainly to buy some time to catch my breath. Cam had been working me hard, and none of this was familiar to me.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but I’m all of five foot nothing and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. I seriously doubt I can do anything that will hurt you.”

  “Get him with an uppercut under his jaw,” said someone with a deep voice. “While he’s distracted, knee him in the nuts. That’ll hurt him.”

  I spun around to see who it was.

  Chris Hammond winked at me. “It’ll work every time.”

  “But I don’t want to kick my brother in the…” I couldn’t even finish the thought. That was just plain wrong. It was on par with thinking about Cam and Sara’s sex life. It belonged squarely in the do-not-go-there department.

  “That much is clear enough.” He came in closer, letting the door swing closed behind him. “Right now, he’s not your brother. He’s the son of a bitch who’s trying to attack you. So you distract him with an uppercut, knee him in the nuts, and then you escape.”

  “But…”

  “Here.” He reached for the hand targets Cam had been using and put them on himself once my brother relinquished them. “Do it to me instead.”

  “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “You can,” Cam said. “If you hurt him, Hammer and I can sort it out later.” He waited a moment, then crossed his arms. “Pretend he’s Guy.”

  “But he’s not Guy.” It was a great idea, in theory. I wasn’t sure how great it was in actuality. I didn’t think I could ever do the things they wanted me to do to anyone. Maybe not even the real Guy.

  “Oh, I’m not?” Hammer lunged toward me, tossing the targets away. He grabbed at my waist with one arm and put the other hand over my mouth.

  My brain went straight to panic mode. I screamed for Cam to help, but my voice was smothered in Hammer’s hand. In seconds, he was dragging me across the room, no matter how much I flailed.