Attached to You (Carolina Rebels 4)

“I’m out to lunch with Raelynn.”

“Oh, well, I’ll be quick then. Mom wants us to fly out to see her for Christmas. I told her I would ask; I don’t know what you want to do about Otis.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “Do you want to go?”

“I guess.”

“Okay. I’ll figure something out.”

“Call me later.” I pause. “I love you.”

She giggles. “Love you too.”

I smile as the call disconnects. She either gets a goofy smile on her face or laughs when I tell her, as if she still can’t quite believe it. It’s one reason why I tell her as often as possible. I want to soak up her reaction for as long as possible. I want to imprint it in my brain for the inevitable tough times. It’s the kind of memory I want to bring up when we’re old and forgetting what we had for breakfast, but can somehow remember these snippets from our younger days. Her reaction is something to savor and remember.

“You smiling freaks me the fuck out.”

I glance over at Liam Irving, our goalie, as he takes a seat next to me in the hotel’s restaurant. “If you smiled too much, it’d freak me out, too.”

He smiles, and I laugh. “You seem more relaxed than usual,” he says.

“How so?”

“The smile is a dead giveaway.”

I chuckle. “I don’t feel any more relaxed than usual. How’s your daughter doing?”

The mention of his daughter brings a real smile to his face. “She’s fine. I’m ready for Christmas, so I can spend some time with her.” He talks about his daughter, Ainsley, for the next thirty minutes while we eat. These parents, I swear, all you have to do is mention their kids, and off they go. I’m not so sure Scotty is as bad as Bruiser, Savage, and EJ. Come February, Marco will be just like them, I’m sure.

“Hey, would you want to dogsit over Christmas?” I ask him later when we’re walking to the locker room.

He shakes his head. “Ainsley is scared of dogs. Sorry.”

“You need a dogsitter, Hook?”

I turn around and see the Kessy twins. I have no idea which of them spoke since I didn’t see which one did it. Their voices are too similar in that regard. The only way I can tell them apart is because Cal is a tad taller and Collin keeps his face clean-shaven, whereas Cal rarely does. There are other ways to tell them apart, but those are the easiest for me.

“Yeah. Over Christmas. I’m going back to Michigan, but Deanna has Otis. He’s a Rottweiler, so he’s a big dog, but he behaves. You two want to do it? You can watch him at my house if you’d rather.”

The twins glance at one another for a moment, and I get that creepy feeling that they are communicating without talking again. Then, they both nod and say, “Sure, we’ll do it.”

I shake my head. “I thought you stopped that.”

The fuckers grin. “Not yet. Are we getting paid?”

“Yeah, in food.”

They nod, seemingly satisfied with that. After the game, I need to tex

t Deanna that I found a solution for Otis and confirm with my mom we’re going. Tomorrow, I’ll email my travel agent to book our flights. It’s all falling into place.

If only I can figure out why Mom wants me home in the first place.

The next couple of weeks sail by without a problem. Something I didn’t notice before was how constantly suspicious Deanna seemed to be over her life and how that affected her. Granted, I didn’t know she worried and wondered if she was making the right decisions as much as she did. But I can tell a difference in her.

She seems more relaxed. She lets go of things. For example, I haven’t heard about her mother’s notebooks since our argument. I’ve been to her house, too, and I haven’t seen them lying around anywhere either. She checks in with her dad here and there, but his continued dismissal of her makes her shrug her shoulders in a what-can-I-do kind of way instead of making her worry. Best of all, I haven’t heard her mention how she makes bad decisions.

Maybe she’s finally realized she once made terrible decisions, but slowly grew up over the years and the number of bad decisions diminished as she did. That’s what I believe, at least. Once, she listed a bunch of shit she did that wasn’t good, but it was all either in high school or prior to or just after her grandmother dying, if I’m not mistaken. She has grown up; she just didn’t see that.