Losing an Edge (Portland Storm Book 13) (8 page)

“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.

“Maybe.” Her eyes were still dark. Cautious. She picked up the last bit of pie and chewed thoughtfully. “Levi, I—”

“Don’t tell me no. Not yet. I mean, we’ve had a good time tonight, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“And we’re both going to be in Portland. Your brother is one of my teammates. We’ll be seeing each other every now and then, surely.”

“We will, but—”

“But you only came out with me because you felt the need to lie to your brother about something, and not because you actually wanted to be with me,” I finished for her.

She didn’t deny it, which was a step in the right direction. Truth was better than evasiveness and lies. “Putting it that way makes me sound like a jerk.”

So now we were on equal footing. I might not understand what was behind it, but at least she wasn’t trying to lie to me as well as her brother.

“I don’t think you’re a jerk,” I said. More like the exact opposite, whatever that might be.

“Maybe you should.”

“Never gonna happen.”

She chuckled, gracing me with a wry smile. “I won’t hold you to that.”

“So will you let me take you out again?” The question had barely left my lips when she was already shaking her head, preparing to shoot me down, so I kept going. “As friends. Doesn’t have to be anything more than that. We could do something with your family. Take your niece and nephew out or something, like you did today with Anthony. Anything you want.” That was good enough to start, and we could feel our way out of the friend zone later.

“Friends?” she repeated.

I nodded, never taking my eyes from hers, watching for any sign of change.

“I suppose we could try that.”

The color of her eyes remained unwavering, but at least now I had my in.

LEVI BABCOCK MIGHT
just prove to be more trouble for me than I’d bargained for. As soon as I’d met him, I’d realized he had the potential to be problematic. I mean, add a dimple to tall, dark, and handsome, and I’d always been a goner. But the better I got to know him, the deeper my problem became.

The guy had an addictive, self-deprecating sense of humor. Yeah, he probably got down on himself a bit too much, but he also didn’t take himself too seriously. He would make a joke at his own expense a heck of a lot sooner than he would do something like that to anyone else.

So maybe Sara was right. Maybe he honestly was a good guy, and someone I could trust myself to be around. If nothing else, the more I got to know him, the less like Guy he turned out to be.

But was he truly different, or was I only trying to make him so in my head, in order to convince myself that starting up some sort of relationship with him—even a friendship—would be all right? I honestly wasn’t sure.

That was the primary reason I scheduled an appointment for next week with the counselor my sports psychologist back in Winnipeg had referred me to, and I did it only a week after I’d arrived in Portland. I’d made a ton of progress with Dr. Trivedi back home, but I was far from being in the clear. I wished I could see this counselor sooner, but at least the appointment was already on the books. It was coming. I simply had to keep myself together long enough to reach it.

I was an emotional wreck, both on the ice and off it, when it came to trusting any man who didn’t share my last name and genetic makeup. Not only that, but I was smart enough to know this was no way to go through my life, constantly on guard with every man I came into contact with. I couldn’t live that way. Not for long. Someday, somewhere along the line, I would have to choose to trust again.

To start, I was choosing to trust Anthony as my partner. Sara liked him. Connor absolutely adored him. I wasn’t sure their judgment was better than mine, but it couldn’t be worse.

Ellen had talked to both Anthony and me separately after we’d spent some time together with Sara and the kids, and we were both on board with moving forward. As far as I was concerned, it was a done deal. Ellen was still moving slowly with it, though. She wanted us to keep skating together several days a week for about a month, on top of acquainting ourselves with each other off the ice, despite the fact that we already knew each other. Well, we were more than acquaintances, at the very least.

The delay left me frustrated. I wanted to move on with this arrangement. I’d made my choice. I wanted to put that decision into action before I could chicken out and let my fears and insecurities creep back in and sever the bit of trust I’d decided to give Anthony.

But he agreed with Ellen.

And neither of them were aware of the whole truth of why I’d left Guy.

Was it fair of me to keep them in the dark?

They knew only what the rest of the world did: Guy had dropped me while we’d been practicing an overhead lift, and I’d been injured badly enough that I’d required several months off; I’d never taken the ice with him again after that; and the personal relationship I’d had with him had ended at the same time as our professional relationship had come to a close. Surely that was enough for them to understand there were some deep-seated trust issues I needed to work through in terms of building any new partnership. Something kept nagging at me, pushing at the back of my mind, telling me I needed to give them more than that, though. But how could I broach it? When was the right time? I wasn’t sure, but I figured it would have to be soon.