Breakout Read online

  God, he liked this woman.

  “Okay,” he said, once his laughter had subsided. “Let’s start with the easy stuff. Favorite color. Go.”

  There that brow went again, and though she didn’t say the “Really?” aloud, that curve of her eyebrow said it clearly enough.

  “Yes, really,” he replied.

  A sigh then, “Gold.”

  Now it was his turn for a brow.

  “Yes, really,” she countered. “I can’t help it. I love sparkly things. And just to continue this ridiculous conversation, what’s yours?”

  “Pink.”

  Her jaw dropped open, and he smirked. “Kidding. I’m actually more of a lavender guy or maybe periwinkle.”

  She pulled out her phone, started scrolling through it, and he might have been insulted that she was so effectively ignoring him, if not for the fact that she said, “Aha!” and then shoved the screen in his face for a second before pulling it back. “Blue. I knew it. So cliché.”

  Kevin snorted. “You got me.”

  “I also know your favorite food, favorite movie, and whether you prefer the mountains or the ocean.” A smile that slid down his spine. “I know all the boys’ favorites.”

  “Hmm.” He turned right, sliding into a tiny parking lot, and squeezing his car into one of the spots. “So, you know all. Now you’ve got to share.”

  She froze. “I hardly know all.”

  “You know blue, lasagna, Die Hard, and that I’d love to live on the beach.” A shrug. “You know all.”

  Her cell slipped back into her purse, silence for a long moment as she seemed to be weighing her options. “Fine. But just so we’re equal. You know gold, pasta carbonara, Caddyshack, and definitely the beach.”

  “Mmm,” he said. “Tiny string bikinis.”

  The strangest expression crossed her face, but it was gone so fast that he almost thought he could have imagined that sliver of pain. But when it disappeared, her lips tipped up into a sexy smile. “Yes. Definitely teeny, tiny bikinis.” She popped the door, started to push out.

  He slipped his fingers around her wrist, stayed her motion. “You don’t have to dish, but”—his other hand cupped her jaw—“you also don’t have to hide, sweetheart.”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  “You’re really good at hiding, baby,” he said. “But I see it.” He released her. “Still doesn’t mean you have to share.”

  Her lips parted, tongue darting out to moisten the bottom one, and Kevin could have sworn he felt that flash of damp, pink heat on his cock. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t you?” he asked, eyes locked with hers.

  And the shadows in the depths of her chocolate ones told him that, yes, she did know exactly what he was talking about.

  “In your own time,” he murmured.

  “In my own time, what?”

  “Sharing,” he told her. “Pasta and movie preferences aside, it’s all on your terms, baby.” He opened his own door, sliding out and crossing around to hold open hers. He didn’t step back when she stood, hesitated, then ultimately slipped past him. Kevin would have been a fucking liar if he’d denied inhaling as she’d moved, soaking in some of the scent that was uniquely Rebecca’s.

  Cinnamon with a hint of sweetness.

  The perfect manifestation of the woman in front of him.

  He caught her hand as she started striding for the restaurant, lacing their fingers together. “Just so I know in order to fill our awkward silence on the way back to the rink, what’s your favorite type of music?”

  She turned, glanced up at him, mouth twitching. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  He stilled. “Is it that bad?”

  “There’s a reason that Brit and I get along so well.”

  A groan. “Boy bands?” The starting goalie was well-known for her affinity for the male-dominated groups and tormented the team often when it was her turn to control the playlist.

  Those fucking songs were catchy and as a result, Kevin often found himself humming them well into practice and the evening.

  A fact he was taking to his death bed.

  She patted his chest. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve got you covered. Brit stole her playlist from me.”

  “No,” he said. “No way. I’m not—”

  They’d reached the door, but before he could open it for her, she snagged the handle and pulled. Soft music filled the space, one of his favorite Italian places in the city. There were maybe ten tables inside, and it could fit a max of thirty people, but the pasta was fresh, the wine was local and off the charts, and the atmosphere was relaxed.

  No need for a suit and tie, but no strange looks if he wore one.

  Kevin didn’t mind wearing suits. It was just that he was required to wear them for games and events and fundraisers, and by the time all was said and done, it seemed that he wore little else.

  So not being required to wear one, but also not being out of place wearing one, was the ultimate win-win for him when it came to post-game pasta cravings.

  “Kev!” Vivian said. “I haven’t seen you in a few weeks.”

  “My mom’s been in town and keeping me busy.”

  “Busy that didn’t involve me?” Vivian plunked her hands onto her ample hips, red curly ponytail bouncing as she moved.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “She’s been running me ragged and cooking enough food while staying at my place that the team’s nutritionist would lose her shit if she knew.”

  Rebecca coughed, or maybe that was her smothering a laugh because she murmured, “Don’t make me confess all to the other Rebecca.”

  Kevin snorted. “That’s blackmail.”

  “You know it.”

  He turned to her, brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “Will it make things better if I agree to the playlist?”

  She pondered that for a moment then nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, it will.” A beat. “So long as the pasta carbonara is fabulous.”

  He turned to Vivian. “What do you think, Vivi? Can you promise fabulous carbonara?”

  “Is my hair red?” She laughed, picked up two menus, and nodded to the table in the back. “Or it used to be anyway. Go on and take your usual spot. I’ll bring you some waters and flatware.”

  “Thanks.” He squeezed Rebecca’s hand, led her to his favorite booth.

  “So, here’s another getting to know you question,” he said when they’d reached the table. “Left or right-handed?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m discovering that I know so much more than you, leftie.”

  He gently bumped his shoulder against hers, loving that she was only a few inches shorter than him in those sexy as fuck heels. “You spied on me with that questionnaire.”

  Silence.

  “It’s not from the questionnaire.” Her cheeks flared, and she quickly looked away, sliding into the booth.

  “Oh?” He sat next to her, ignoring her protest, running a finger across the bright red flush on either cheekbone. “So, how’d you know?”

  Her shoulders stiffened. “I know everything about the team.”

  He might have believed that if he hadn’t been sitting so close, but he was sitting close, and because of that, he saw the lie flash across her eyes. “No,” he murmured, sliding closer because he couldn’t stop himself. Her thigh was flush against his and while it was fucking glorious, he didn’t let the gloriousness of it distract him from the truth. “That’s not it. Try again.”

  Vivian came over then, plunking down the menus and a couple of waters in front of them. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “I’ll take a Cabernet,” Rebecca said. “Thank you.”

  “Make it a good one,” he teased, earning a smack on the arm from Vivian.

  “You know all of my wines are fabulous.”

  “Part of the reason I’ve brought Rebecca here,” he said. “I’ve been assured that the way to her heart is through a really good red wine.”
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br />   Rebecca snorted, but Vivian grinned. “Well, lucky for you, I do have a really good red wine.” A beat. “You want to share? Or your usual.”

  “My usual. Thanks.”

  She nodded. “Bring your mama by next week. Give her a night off from cooking.”

  “Deal.”

  Another nod. “Now, do you want a few more minutes with the menu? Or should I just skip the formalities and bring a lasagna and pasta carbonara?”

  “Carbonara sounds perfect,” Rebecca said.

  “Bread?”

  “The more carbs, the better.”

  Vivian reached across the table and squeezed Rebecca’s hand. “Woman after my own heart,” she said. “Make sure to save room for tiramisu.”

  “That sounds glorious.”

  “It is.” Vivian patted her hips. “My Robbie’s cooking is why I’ve given up on wearing a smaller pants size. I can’t resist it and—”

  Robbie came up just then, slipping a hand around Vivian’s waist and kissing her neck. “I love you just the way you are, my love. Now, let’s leave the two lovebirds to their meal.” He started to tug her away.

  “I’ll be right back with the wine—” She bustled away, and Robbie winked at them and shook his head, mouthing, “No, she won’t,” before taking her hand and tugging her through the swinging door into the kitchen.

  “I think I love them,” Rebecca murmured.

  “I know I do.”

  They’d all but adopted him from the moment he’d first stepped through the door to their restaurant. He’d eaten more meals here than his own kitchen, spent more quiet nights here away from his empty apartment, dawdling over a glass of beer, not wanting to be alone and finding that with Robbie and Vivian pausing at his table, shoving morsels of food onto his plate for his “approval” that life as a young twenty-something in a big city, on a new team seemed much less lonely when he was there.

  Rebecca glanced down at her hands, quiet for a long moment before a slow, shuddering breath seemed to escape her.

  “They remind me of my parents.”

  And that was the moment he realized that he wasn’t the only one who was lonely.

  Seven

  Rebecca

  Stupid. So fucking stupid.

  Why had she said that?

  She barely thought about her parents or her past or the fact that she’d spent more than a decade of her life in hospitals—first as a patient and then as a visitor and caregiver to her mother . . . then her father.

  Gone now.

  Them. The person she’d been.

  Her old life.

  Kevin shifted slightly, those gray eyes locking onto hers, and he didn’t ask anything inane, as she’d half expected a man of his age to. Something along the lines of: Oh, do they cook, too? Or perhaps: Do they work together also?

  Instead, he just studied her closely and asked, “How so?”

  She couldn’t hold on to his gaze, found her eyes drifting down to her nails, to the slightest chip in her gel manicure. She’d need to squeeze in time to get them redone this week before the travel and workload made it virtually impossible to schedule a full hour for something as unimportant as her nails.

  But they were important to her. She liked them to look put together. In fact, she preferred for her entire exterior to appear put together.

  It was easier to patch up the cracks that way.

  People didn’t look too closely if the exterior was without flaws.

  Except Kevin.

  And once again, she was reminded of how dangerous he was.

  Especially when he allowed the silence to stretch between them, nodding in thanks when a server—not Vivian, Rebecca noted—came by with her wine and his beer. He simply kept his thigh pressed to hers, the warmth of his leg not oppressive and yet also not fading into the background, not letting her off the hook.

  Time.

  He was giving her the gift of time . . . and patience.

  She wondered how long that patience would last if she deliberately avoided answering the question he so obviously wanted an answer to, how long that affable attitude would last when she didn’t give him what he wanted. When, instead of giving him the chase, the carrot at the end of the fishing pole, if she only gave him what she allowed him to have.

  “How did you find this place?” she asked, shifting in the booth so their legs no longer touched but playing it off by rotating so she faced him more fully.

  He mirrored her movement. “I live in the neighborhood.”

  “Oh?”

  “You didn’t know that?” he teased.

  She hadn’t known that. Well, she had she supposed. Or could have because she had all of the players’ addresses, but that was a piece of information she tended to only access when it was fully necessary.

  Read: when PR emergencies demanded she show up on their doorstep.

  Which was usually trailed by a verbal reaming that shaped them up in one visit.

  But Kevin hadn’t had any PR emergencies. He went to practice, showed up for games, didn’t get into trouble at clubs or run wild through the city’s female populace. He was her model player—studied the sound bites, was always open for an interview, and never anything but courteous.

  He played the game to perfection.

  Except with her.

  Except . . . maybe with her, too. Because despite her misgivings, she was sitting in a booth next to him about to share a meal.

  He rested his arm on the back of the booth, fingers so close to her nape that her skin prickled and she found herself shifting slightly, the intent to move away, and yet somehow finding that she’d actually eliminated the distance between her skin and his hand.

  Her reward was the lightest brush of those calloused fingertips on her neck before they captured a strand of her hair between his thumb and forefinger and began to absently roll it.

  One way. Then the other. One way. Then the other.

  She shivered.

  His expression told her he knew why, but he didn’t stop the action, just kept rolling that bit of hair between his fingers, heat rapidly trailing the shivers. Rebecca swallowed hard, shifting in her seat in an effort to ease the ache between her thighs and hoping all the while that he didn’t understand what she was doing.

  Probably too much to ask, based on the mischievousness in his eyes.

  But he didn’t comment on her thigh clenching or the goose bumps prickling to life on her skin. Instead, he kept his hand in place and . . . gave.

  “My dad died before I made it into the NHL. I’d been scouted, offers in the works, but he never saw it become official.” A sigh. “For a long time, I fought and scrounged to make it into the league because it was so damned important to him, because he sacrificed so much for my training, because I knew he’d have loved nothing more than me making it to the highest level.” Her breath caught when his fingers released the strand and his warm palm cupped the back of her neck. “Then I finally made the team, finally had a starting position, and . . .”

  “What?”

  “I found I didn’t know what the hell I was doing or who the hell I was doing it for.”

  Her brows drew down.

  “I know it doesn’t make sense—”

  “No,” she murmured. “It makes sense. When you live your life for other people for too long, you almost forget to know what you want, what kind of person you are inside. It’s like the version of yourself that you present to the world is only two-dimensional, and it’s a real struggle to become fully fledged again.” She bit her lip. “You’ve focused for so long on simply keeping your head down, on surviving and just pushing through to the end that . . .”

  “You forget who you are.”

  She nodded.

  Their food appeared at that moment, and it was probably a good thing because Rebecca didn’t know what else she could have said in that moment.

  She probably would have just blurted, “You’re twenty-four. Twenty-four! How could you know that?” And yet, she was beginn
ing to understand how unfair it was for her to misjudge Kevin just because he was younger than her. So instead, she said, “I’m guessing that Robbie’s lasagna helped you find yourself again?”

  He grinned. “Not really. Though the homemade noodles, sauce, and ricotta are akin to a religious experience. It was more like they saw I was alone and lost then firmly tugged me into their circle.”

  “That sounds lovely.”

  “It was fucking incredible.”

  Her heart skipped a beat at the sincerity in his words. She took a bite of the carbonara, closed her eyes as the flavors coalesced into bliss on her tongue. “All in all, based on the food alone, it seems like a lucky place to be tugged into.”

  “Definitely.” He cut into his lasagna, scooped up a bite onto his fork.

  “What happened to your dad?” she asked softly.

  And he gave again. “Heart attack. I was fourteen.”

  Her own heart ached for him, and she found it wasn’t so scary to give him something in return. “Both of my parents passed away when I was in my early twenties.”

  “I’m sorry.” The hand on her nape squeezed.

  She’d forgotten it was there at all, and that probably should have concerned her. Instead, she found herself enjoying the warmth as she scooped up some pasta and sauce and offered it to him. “Want to try?”

  His lips parted and she slipped the tines inside his mouth, his low rumbling growl of approval making her nipples harden.

  And she found herself giving just a little bit more.

  “My parents were like them.”

  “Like Robbie and Vivian?”

  She nodded.

  He didn’t ask her for more details, just squeezed that hand again and smiled down gently at her. “It sounds like you were lucky to have two incredible people in your life.”

  Her heart stilled, lungs freezing, throat tightening for one long moment.

  Then her body began working again.

  “Yes,” she murmured, seeing the truth in his words, understanding them as truth for perhaps the first time in her life. “Yes, Kevin. You’re right. I was so lucky to have them, even if just for a little while.”