by Skye Jordan
His head snapped sideways. Pain cut through his cheek, jaw, mouth. Blood squirted over his tongue. Again, not exactly new to Rafe. The real pain came from knowing Tate was on the delivering end. Knowing it came out of fury and hate. A deliberate intent to inflict pain. Not an adrenaline-induced burst of anger over a play.
“Hey!” Beckett’s voice came from across the room. “Knock it off.”
Everything inside Rafe surged toward fighting back. He wanted to reach for Tate’s jersey, jerk him around, pound him wherever Rafe could reach. But he didn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
All he could do was protect himself as best as he could until Tate backed off.
When Tate hauled back to take a right hook to Rafe’s face, he blocked with his hand only to catch a gut punch from Tate’s left. And when his other arm dropped automatically toward the pain, Tate’s fist was there to ram his knuckles into Rafe’s eye.
The force slammed Rafe’s head back against the concrete wall. Pain stabbed his skull. Another punch whipped his head sideways.
“Tate,” Beckett yelled, closer now. “Back off. Right now.”
Beyond that, Rafe lost track of things. His head split with pain. His gut ached. When he tried to focus, everything blurred and spun.
“What the hell is going on?” Tremblay’s booming voice rattled Rafe’s brain.
Suddenly, Tate was off him. Tierney’s voice came quiet near Rafe’s shoulder. “Are you still with us, man?”
“Yeah,” he breathed. “I think.”
“Get the doc,” Beckett told someone.
“He’s bleeding pretty good from the back of his head,” Tierney said. “Throw me a clean towel.”
Rafe forced his head up. It swam and threatened to float off his neck. He searched the room with his blurry vision for Tate. Found him standing ten feet away, flanked by Tremblay and Beckett, shoulders sagging, hands on hips, head hung.
“I love her, man,” Rafe said. When Tate’s head came up, Rafe said it again. “I really love her.”
“I love her too, but I don’t fuck her.”
That sparked another flare of anger. “She’s your sister.”
“She’s your sister too, asshole. She’s family. We’re family. You don’t fuck family.”
“I told them.” Kilbourne’s voice came from somewhere in the room. “Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?”
Tate turned and lunged, but Beckett caught him and shoved him across the room the opposite direction. “You’re testing my patience, Tate.”
“Deal with this outside the rink,” Tremblay told them. “Back on the ice. Everyone.”
Tate turned away, pushing through the rest of the team toward the rink. The team doctor crouched beside Rafe while the other guys filed through the tunnel. Leaving Rafe to wonder if instead of finally finding the woman he was meant to be with, he’d finally screwed up the best family he’d ever had.
17
This had been the longest hour and a half of Mia’s damn life.
She paced the exterior tunnel leading from the stadium to the team parking lot, waiting for someone to emerge from the locker room. She’d been down here for forty-five minutes. Rafe hadn’t come back out onto the ice after the first period, and he wasn’t answering her texts or voice mails. Mia was so worried, she wanted to chew the hinges off that damn door to get inside and check on him.
Rafe’s hat trick had been wasted when the Rough Riders tanked in the second period, ultimately losing to the Ducks four to three.
The first family members wandered into the tunnel, and dread tightened Mia’s belly. She didn’t want to make this tension—tension that had obviously become ugly between Tate and Rafe—public.
She uncrossed one arm and rubbed her forehead. Maybe she should wait for Rafe at the hotel. But if he needed to go to the hospital, she wanted to go with him. Tate sure wouldn’t go, and she didn’t want Rafe to be alone.
“Hey.”
The soft, worried, female voice startled Mia and brought her head up. She found Eden there.
“Sorry,” Eden said, her gaze worried. “What happened to Rafe? Why didn’t he come back after the first period?”
She shook her head. “I’m not—”
The hard pop of the metal door echoed through the cement tunnel like a gunshot. Mia swiveled toward the sound as Tate stormed out the door, his dress shirt untucked, blazer flapping open, no tie, bag slung over his shoulder, head down.
Any hope Mia had been holding on to evaporated.
She offered Eden a quick “Excuse me,” before cutting into Tate’s path.
He stopped short, and the look he leveled on her—eyes dark, nostrils flaring, mouth tight, pain and disappointment and anger draining the light from his expression—stabbed her heart and dragged her back an entire year. To the days after Lisa’s betrayal.
“I think he’s associating the two and linking your move with some of the junk he’s still carrying around from Lisa leaving him.”
“What did you do?” she asked, her stomach filling with dread.
He huffed something that was probably meant to be a sarcastic laugh but didn’t come close. “You and Rafe are the ones doing everything.”
“Where is he? Why didn’t he come back after the first period?”
Tate’s jaw flexed with the grind of his teeth. The look in his eyes, so dull, so cold, gave her an eerie tingle. “Don’t call me when he hurts you. When he leaves you like all the others.”
Fear bloomed in the pit of Mia’s stomach. “Tate, I’m not—”
“Leaving you” never got out of her mouth. Another boom sounded, followed by Rafe’s voice. “Tate. Talk to me, you fucking coward.”
“Good luck with that,” Tate said, tipping his head toward Rafe before sidestepping Mia and continuing on even as Rafe started toward them in a pained stagger, hand pressed to his side.
Mia got two steps toward Rafe when she heard Joe’s voice behind her. “What in the hell is going on here?”
Mia looked over her shoulder. And when she saw his expression, she saw so much similarity between him and Tate, an icy chill filled her stomach. Joe took hold of Tate’s arm as if his son was three, not thirty, and dragged him to where Mia stood and Rafe approached. And when Mia looked at Rafe again, she gasped.
“Holy shit.” She scanned the cuts on his mouth, his cheek, his eye. The bruises on his chin, his cheek… And spun on Tate, launching herself at him. She pounded both hands against his chest. “You fucking asshole.” The fact that he didn’t move even a millimeter only added fuel to her infuriation. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Stop it, Mia.” Joe’s curt order shocked her to a stop. With his gaze on Rafe’s face, he threw Tate’s arm away with a sound that was part sigh, part disgust. “Did you do that to the man who’s been your best friend for two decades, Tate?” When Tate didn’t answer, only glared at Rafe, Joe barked, “Tate, I asked you a question.”
“Yes, sir.”
Joe pried a pained gaze off Rafe’s face and stared at his son for a long time. Tate never met his father’s eyes. His gaze was pinned to the ground, holding on to belligerent anger. The pain reflected on Joe’s face seemed to radiate through the group. They all stood silent, reflecting in the disgrace they’d created among themselves.
She and Rafe might not have gone about it the right way, but Mia wouldn’t go back and change her decision. After last night, after knowing how it felt to be truly loved by Rafe, she knew without a doubt she’d never want to go through life missing out on that.
Then Joe turned to Rafe. “Rafe, did you deserve that beating?”
Rafe’s lips compressed, eased, compressed. He shifted on his feet. His knee bounced. Head dipped. Never once did he meet anyone’s gaze. And Mia’s heart fell to the pit of her stomach.
She pulled in a breath to answer for him. But Joe held up a hand to her, index finger raised.
Mia pressed her lips together and crossed her arms.
“Rafe?”
He
cleared his throat. Winced. And rasped, “Yes, sir.”
The knife in Mia’s heart dragged down the center of her body, filleting her open. Her lips parted to ask him exactly what the hell that meant, but Joe spoke first.
“We. Are. Family,” he said, his voice rough and livid. “This”—he gestured to Rafe’s face, speaking to Tate—“is not how family treats family. I don’t care what he did or what he thinks he deserves. I expect better of you.” Then he addressed Rafe. “This is a talk I never thought I’d ever have to give you in my lifetime, Rafe.”
Mia was watching the bottom of her world slide out from under her. She dropped her arms, fisted her hands, and looked at the three men standing there. All three of them breaking her heart.
“Do any of you care about me?” That brought all their gazes to her. And it was so too little too late. “You all seem awful caught up in this friendship bullshit.” She gestured to Tate and Rafe. “And this father-son bullshit.” She gestured to all the men. “Where do I fit into this puzzle? Or am I still just that dangling little leftover who will forever be an afterthought? Secondary to friendship or a convenient tool to winning fatherly approval?”
Joe angled toward her with a confused frown. “What are you—”
This time, she was the one to lift her hand to Joe for quiet, while giving them both one last chance to do the right thing—both apologize for being assholes and show their love for her—as a sister to Tate and a lover to Rafe—was more important than some bromance they’d clung to since puberty. “Either of you?”
Joe glanced at the guys. When neither Tate nor Rafe spoke, Mia’s heart broke. For the millionth time.
“Well, that’s just perfect.” She looked at Tate and smiled through the tears in her eyes. “Bet that happened even faster than you thought it would. Only it wasn’t just him.” She made a careless gesture at Rafe. “It was both of you. You both abandoned me. How lucky can a girl get?”
“Mia?” Joe asked, concerned and confused, his hand on her shoulder. “I don’t understand—”
“I’m done.” She turned away from the men who would obviously always choose each other first, and looked at Joe. “I won’t accept anything less than 150 percent in any of my relationships anymore. And this time, I’m going to be the one to walk away.”
She kept her head high and her pace steady as she finally put the past behind her.
Rafe tried to doze in the ER, but no matter how he positioned himself, he couldn’t get comfortable. Something hurt almost everywhere. But he’d refused the painkillers, because, well, the physical pain was a distraction from the far more debilitating emotional pain slicing away at his insides.
His head felt like a watermelon. Rafe forced his eyes open to look at his watch, but when he lifted his arm to put his wrist in front of his face so he didn’t have to move his head, pain stabbed at his ribs.
“God, I hate the ER,” he groaned, gritting his teeth until he could read the time. One a.m. “Everything takes so damn long.”
Rafe closed his eyes and rested the back of his hand on his forehead. He’d only returned because he’d discovered the team doctor had missed another cut on the back of his head. And he’d only discovered the doc had missed another cut because he’d been yelling at Tate and the blood had come gushing out all over the back of his shirt. And he’d only been yelling at Tate because the asshole had been walking away—again—as he’d been trying to talk to him after Mia had left.
Rafe winced. That sensation of being kicked in the gut returned. His eyes stung.
He had no idea what he was going to do now. And it wasn’t the hockey Rafe was worried about. He’d played with plenty of guys he’d hated and who’d hated him. Tate could go on hating Rafe until the end of time if he wanted. If it interfered with the game, Tremblay would just change lines or keep them off the ice at the same time or trade one of them. Rafe didn’t give a shit anymore. It was too late to care anyway.
But he didn’t know how he was going to live with Mia hating him. And he didn’t have to see her or talk to her or interact with her. Ever. Yet every time he thought about the hurt on her face when she’d all but begged him to claim her, and he’d kept his mouth shut.
The sting developed into tears, and Rafe turned his hand over, pressing his fingers to his closed lids. “Fuck.”
The slide of the curtain sounded on the metal rings, and Rafe gave a mental eye roll. If he had to turn down painkillers one more time…
“So.” Joe’s voice surprised Rafe, and he lifted his hand from his eyes, blinking to focus. He’d brought Rafe to the hospital, then gone in search of Tate once Rafe was settled in the ER. Now, Joe strolled to the side of the gurney, leaned folded arms to metal railing, and quirked a humorless, lopsided grin at Rafe. “You and Mia.”
Dread, shame, and self-disgust for all the pain he’d caused coalesced in Rafe’s gut. His eyes slid closed again, and he let his hand fall back over his eyes. “Should have known. That fucker.”
“That fucker says you love her,” Joe said. “That true? Love her as in you’re in love with her, not as in you love her the way we love her.”
Rafe exhaled, his overwhelming emotions making the effort shaky. “Yes.”
“Look at me, son.”
He licked at his swollen, burning, throbbing lips, moved his hand to his forehead, and met Joe’s eyes. “Yes, I love her. I’ve been in love with her for…God, I don’t even know how long. I just couldn’t…”
“Because of Tate.”
Rafe nodded and lowered his gaze. “And…you.”
Joe was quiet. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I can see why that little girl is so pissed with all of us.”
“She’s not pissed at you.”
“She should be. She’s right. She’s so sweet and amiable. Always just wanted to be part of the group. Just wanted to be included. To be loved. And we’ve all been so concerned with our relationships with each other, she’s been popped around between us like a ping-pong ball.”
Rafe wiped his eyes. “I don’t want to drive a wedge into your family, Joe—”
“Our family, Rafe. Our family. You are as much a part of this family as Mia and Tate.” He sighed and smiled a little. “I knew you were special the first time I met you. And it had nothing to do with hockey and everything to do with the way you and Tate clicked. I always thought you two acted a lot like twins. I’ve never felt obligated or pressured to do anything for you, Rafe. And I’ve never regretted one minute or one penny invested in any of you kids. Everything that you and Tate and Mia have done over the years is a source of great pride to me. Pride I thrive on. Pride I brag about at every opportunity. So, don’t think for one minute that your part in this family is even a sliver smaller than Tate’s or Mia’s.”
More emotions spilled in and overloaded his circuits. His system couldn’t process them all, and he shut down, numbing them down to a point where he could function without imploding.
“Thank you, Joe.”
Joe reached over the side and covered Rafe’s hand with his own. “The only way I could be disappointed in you is if you didn’t go after what really makes you happy. And I think Mia makes you happy.”
Rafe frowned, confused. “But Tate, the team…shit, the playoffs.” Their loss that night filled Rafe’s mind, swamping him with guilt. “God, what a mess.”
Joe smiled and patted Rafe’s hand with his own. “I like to see it as a challenge. And if there is one thing I know about Rafe Savage, it’s that he excels at facing challenges.”
18
Rafe didn’t feel up to any challenge as he walked the hall toward Mia’s hotel room several hours later.
Joe had brought him back to the hotel from the ER, and Rafe had passed out in his room sometime around three a.m.
Only seven a.m. now, he knew it was too early to be pounding on Mia’s door, but he couldn’t sleep. And he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Couldn’t stop spinning all his mistakes around in his mind. Couldn’t stop trying to find a w
ay to ease the pain he’d caused and repair the damage he’d done.
And when he wound his way around a laundry service cart in the hallway and approached Mia’s door with no answers, he surveyed a spot on the floor at the bottom of the wall beside her door and prepared to sit. But when he put his hand against the wall for support to help him get to that spot without falling on his face, he noticed a gap between the door and the frame. Following that space to the door handle, he found it ajar.
Alarm jumped in his chest. He checked the room numbers first, and when he was sure it was hers, Rafe put his fingertips against the door and eased it open. “Mia?”
A female voice with a Spanish inflection returned some sort of answer Rafe didn’t understand, and he opened the door wide enough to find a woman in a housekeeping uniform pulling sheets from the bed.
She smiled at him. “Oh. Hello. Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.” From the short hallway leading to the room, he scanned the space. All her things were gone. Her suitcase, her computer, all her charging cords.
She was gone? Mia was gone?
“Is your room?” the housekeeper asked in broken English. “You need be here? I go?”
A wave of sadness hit him so hard, tears flooded his eyes in an instant. He blinked fast to hold them back and rubbed a hand down his face. “No,” he told her, his voice rough. “Thank you. It’s fine.”
Rafe backed out of the room and kept on moving until he hit the wall across the hallway, where he stood and stared at the floor, trying to figure out what the hell was going on inside him.
He’d assumed the texts and voice mails he’d left after talking with Joe at the hospital had gone unanswered because she’d been asleep. But that obviously wasn’t the case. And while he knew she had every right to be hurt and angry and even to move on with her life and never look back, he never realized until this moment that he never thought she really would.
