Page 5 of Off The Ice

I inhaled, taking her words into consideration. “And what about you? Why isn’t she staying at your place?”

“Because Mom’s already staying with me, remember?” She referenced a detail I apparently was supposed to have known. “And there’s barely space for the two of us, never mind adding Cassie to the mix.”

Maggie’s apartment was outrageously small. I had to give her that.

“Unless you’d rather have Cassie move in with me and Mom stay with you,” she suggested with a pointed look.

“No thanks.” I visibly shuddered.

Our mom was… fine, as far as they go. Overbearing but kind. Not to mention the way she got way too involved in my personallife whenever the smallest window of opportunity opened for her.

Besides, there was something extremely unappealing about being a twenty-six-year-old man who had his mother living with him. Even if it was just for a few months.

“I’ll pass on that. Why can’t you just stay with me and let Cassie crash at your place?”

Maggie let out the most dramatic huff before exclaiming, “She’s heartbroken! I’m not going to make Cassie stay with our mom while she’s trying to get over a breakup.”

“So, you’d rather have her be heartbroken atmyhouse?”

“You’ll give her plenty of space. And you’re, like, never there. It would help her out a ton. It’s not just the breakup. She has a lot going on, and trying to immediately find a place to live would be too much right now.”

“Mags.” I groaned. “I really don’t want to do this.”

My place was the only privacy I ever got. It was my safe harbor. The only place I knew I wasn’t being watched, commented on, or criticized. Having some random girl there would take all that away.

“Please, Liam.” Her green eyes widened in a silent plea. “It’s really important. And I swear to you, it’s not for long.”

I thought about it, considering every aspect. Truth was, I’d been a shitty brother to Maggie for the last few years. And for some reason, she still cared about me, which said a lot about the type of person she was. If there was one small thing I could do for her, maybe it would show her that the old me was still in there somewhere. The brother who had always been there for her, who was able to pick up the pieces of whatever mess she’d found herself in. The brother she had before the NHL and the media, and the fans drained the life out of his soul.

“Fine,” I said shortly, causing an ungodly-sized grin to take residence on the lower half of Maggie’s face. “But here are the conditions. She starts looking for a placeimmediately.”

“Of course.” Maggie bobbed her head in agreement.

“I mean it. I don’t want her to think she can sit back and take her time looking for her dream home or whatever. She needs to get on top of it because Iamgoing to be enforcing that one-month rule.”

“One month. Great. Two tops.”

“Onemonth, Maggie. I mean it.”

“Fine, whatever.” She waved my concerns away. “I’ll help her look myself. But I’m sure that’ll give us plenty of time to find her somewhere safe and cheap to live.”

“And you better give her the rundown. I like my space. I like my privacy. Absolutely no pictures in the house. No telling people my address. Really, I’d like to keep my interactions with her to a bare minimum.”

Maggie rolled her eyes dramatically. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I really think you actually might get along with her. You know, if you take your head out of your ass, that is.”

I put Maggie in a light chokehold, rubbing the top of her head the way I had when I was just a regular big brother who liked to torment his little sister for the fun of it.

“Okay, okay.” She laughed, wriggling in my grasp. “Get off of me, you meathead.”

I let her go, feeling the foreign sensation of a smile on my face. God, it’d been so long since I’d done something as simple as laugh.

“Really, Liam,” Maggie said, fixing me with a sincere look as she leaned on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek, scraggly and rough from a few days of not shaving. “Thank you so much. I knew I could count on my big brother.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I shrugged off the thanks. “Just give me a heads up of when she’s planning on coming.”

“Oh, yeah.” Maggie bit her lip guiltily. “About that… she might already be there.”

“Jesus, Maggie!” I swore under my breath.

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