Connell (Carolina Reapers 3)

“She’s beautiful.”

“She is.”

“Everyone is so...happy,” she mused as she walked down the hall with slow steps, looking at all the pictures.

“Well, I wasn’t going to hang pictures of sad friends.” I laughed, and she rolled her eyes.

“I’m not sure you have sad friends. It’s like you either attract happy people or you make the people around you happy.” She paused at another photo. “When is this?”

“Last fall. It was our first month of practice.” I grinned at the shot, where Axel was full cringe as a bucket of ice water fell on him from where I’d set it on the locker room door. Lukas, Logan, Hudson, and Nathan were all open mouth in shock and laughter. Even Cannon had deigned to smirk. “It was the first time I felt like I’d found a team where I belonged. Not that I didn’t love Miami, but we were a team of skaters there. Here, we’re more like a family.”

“Wasn’t he mad at you?”

“Axel? No. He cursed at me and then got me back with itching powder in my pads. Fucker ruined about five hundred bucks in gear, but damn if it wasn’t funny—looking back, of course.” I shrugged.

“Have you always been like this?” she gestured down the wall of smiling, laughing faces.

“With the pranks?”

She nodded, moving down the wall.

“Gods, no. My mother would have killed me if I ever pranked her. But I spent a lot of time making her laugh. My dad leaving was really hard on her, and so I felt like if she was laughing, she couldn’t be sad. But she’s really happy now, and I’m glad for it. She deserves it.”

She looked up at me with an appraising look but didn’t speak.

“So ye made me a cake?” I inquired, caught between trying to figure out why she was here and simply being happy that she was.

“Oh, yes!” Her smile was fast and bright. “I meant to give you a little send-off at the office, but we got all caught up taking those pictures at the reserve, and by the time I got back, you were gone. And of course, you should have been gone. It was five o’clock. So I went home and baked.”

“That was sweet of ye.” She was sweet. All of her.

“You did a lot more than you signed up for. And I almost added a ball and chain—you know the jail type, not the married type—but I wasn’t sure you’d appreciate that.”

I laughed. “Just knowing you thought of it is enough.”

“You know, this is probably the most traditional house on the block,” she said as she peeked around the corner at the formal living room that I never used. “I don’t know why I expected you to have one of the modern ones, but this one is actually my favorite.”

“Is it?”

“I walked around all of the floor plans while they were being built. I’m the one who set up all the covenants so Mr. Silas would feel comfortable building here.” She touched a puck that sat on the entry hall table and then looked at me quizzically.

“Of course, you designed the rules,” I teased. “That’s my first game puck from when I was nine years old.”

“Really?” She looked at it again.

“Yeah. I keep it to remind me just how damned lucky I am to be here. That this is the dream of every nine-year-old boy on skates, and I can’t take it for granted.”

“I never thought of it that way,” she murmured. “You’re all so confident—cocky even. It’s hard to think of you as little boys with big dreams.” She looked up the staircase that led to the second floor.

“Would you like a tour now that the house is complete, Annabelle?”

She seemed to think about it for a moment and then nodded. “I would.”

I led her up the stairs. “I chose it for the porch. I really liked the porch. It has four bedrooms upstairs and a guesthouse in the back, which I thought Mom might like if she comes to visit with Callum.”

“What do you do with the other bedrooms?” she asked as we passed the first guest room.

“I have a giant bounce house set up in one, a ball pit in the other, and—” I tried my best, but I burst into laughter when her jaw dropped. “Och, Annabelle. They’re guest rooms.”

She scoffed and shook her head in obvious relief that I wasn’t that immature.

“Besides, I keep the bounce house in the basement,” I told her over my shoulder as I walked into my bedroom. “And this is my room.”

She took in the massive, sturdy furniture and calming blue tones I’d had it decorated in. “And how many women have taken this...tour?” Her tone was relaxed as her hand ran across the dark blue comforter, but there was a tension I didn’t like.

“Quite a few, I imagine.”