Page 16 of Fake Shot

“Sorry about that,” I say.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” she says. I can tell she’s curious while trying not to be nosey, and she confirms it when she asks, “Want to talk about it?”

My gaze stays locked on her, and I say nothing for a moment, then I clear my throat. “Nah, it’s fine.”

“Okay.” She raises those perfectly arched eyebrows. “But I’m here if you change your mind.”

I’m oddly touched that she cares enough to offer, but simultaneously terrified to open up to anyone about my brother. “We should go.” I nod my chin toward the glass doors, then turn to head back into my condo.

Adrenaline has me already across the now-dry plywood subfloor of the living room and taking the few steps up to the dining room when I hear her shut and lock the doors tothe balcony. I pause, trying to get a handle on my emotions before turning to face her. I know I don’t owe her an explanation, but for some reason, I feel like I should give her one all the same. “I don’t normally get worked up like this. My brother’s just ... an asshole.”

She freezes. “You have a brother?” Her eyebrows dip with the question, like she’s trying to figure out how she’s known me since she was ten years old and didn’t know I had a brother.

I’m a very public person—somewhat showy, always smiling, happy to raise a ruckus. But there’s a whole other part of my life that almost no one knows about. As time went on and my status rose to one of the best players in the league, I often worried that my past would resurface. And I’m not sure how it hasn’t. Someone could have sold this story to the tabloids and made a small fortune, except obviously the small town I grew up in is protecting one of their own.

“Yeah. We ... don’t get along well.” I try not to think about how he used to be my best friend. He was the role model I looked up to before he double-crossed me.

“Do you see him much?”

“I haven’t seen him in almost fifteen years.”

Her mouth drops open. “What about when you go home to visit your family?”

I never talk about this. I don’twantto talk about this. But somehow, as she walks across my barren living room, with her look of concern, those big blue eyes boring into me and her light blond ponytail falling over one shoulder, I want to talk toherabout it.

“I ...” I struggle over the words, because I don’t even know how to explain everything that went down after I leftfor the NHL. I don’t want to revisit this, but I’m also so damn tired of it living rent free in my head. And it makes me wonder if talking about it would help me stop thinking about it? “I had a big falling out with my brother after I moved to Boston. There was ... a lot of drama, and I haven’t been home since.”

“So when do you see your parents?” Her voice is casual as she comes to a stop in front of me, but I can tell by the way she squints her eyes at me that she recognizes the significance of this conversation.

“They come down to Boston a couple times a year,” I tell her. And now it’s my turn to try to decipher the look that passes over her face. “What’s that look?”

She glances up at me, and now that she’s only feet away, I can see that her eyes are glassy. Holy shit, did I say something?

“It’s nothing,” she says, shaking her head and moving to walk past me. “So tell me more about your brother.”

I grab her wrist, gently enough that she could break free and keep walking if she wanted to, but instead she freezes.

“Not until you tell me why you just had that look on your face,” I say, instantly regretting it—because if she tells me, I’m not sure I’m prepared to say anything more about Gabriel in return.

“It’s nothing, Colt.” She glances away again, and her throat bobs as she swallows.

It’s not nothing, and my voice indicates that I know she’s lying about this. “Jules.”

She looks back at me. “I was just thinking about my own parents, and that feels shitty because here you are telling me about your situation and I’m bringing my ownexperiences into the conversation when it’s not even relevant.”

“Of course it’s relevant. There’s nothing wrong with you bringing up your parents when we’re talking about family relationships. What were you thinking about, exactly?”

Her words are quiet when she says, “I was thinking about what I wouldn’t give to see my mom again or have my dad back in my life ... if he could be the person he was before she got sick.”

I barely knew Jules and Audrey before their mom died and it wasn’t too long afterward that their dad left. But once Jameson retired to stay home with his half-sisters, I spent a lot more time with them. Jules was probably twelve or thirteen then, and she was way more torn up about their dad leaving than either Audrey or Jameson were.

Jules was always his favorite. Jameson used to say how she’d follow him around on job sites, with her pink steel-toed work boots and tool belt, and everyone called her Tinker Bell because with her light blond hair, it was like Tink following Peter Pan around. At the time, I didn’t realize how apt the Peter Pan analogy was.

“What was he like, before she got sick?” I ask. Jameson never talks about his father. I only know him as the asshole who walked out on his two teenage daughters, and from what I can gather, he wasn’t much of a father to any of them before that. Jameson was much closer to his stepmom and his two younger half-sisters than to his dad.

“He was ...” Jules sighs and looks at the ceiling. “He was always kind of a hard-ass. Like, he was this salty old Irish guy who worked long, physical hours and came home to unwind with too much alcohol. But he was also sweet in his ownway. He’d pick up a charm bracelet for me because it had a hammer on it, or bring me saltwater taffy if he saw it in a candy store. And he loved that I wanted to learn how to do what he did. Carpentry has always been second nature to me. I always knew I wanted to be able to create things with my hands, and he ate that up. He loved showing me how to do things.” She pulls her lower lip between her teeth quickly, her eyes getting a sad, distant look, and says,“I guess I loved that he paid attention to me.”

She’s all piss and vinegar most of the time, but I get the sense that Jules could use a good hug and a shoulder to cry on—not that she’d want me to fill that role.

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