Worth the Risk (Carolina Rebels 5)

I quickly pull it off and get back to enjoying her body with my hands and my mouth. Off comes her bra and soon after, her panties. I tease her with touches, licks, kisses, and sucking. She squirms and sighs and moans and pulls my hair until she eventually says, “Elias, I love you, but if you don’t stop teasing me, you’re sleeping on the couch tonight.”

I laugh as I finish shedding my clothes so I can give her what she wants.

“Everything better?” Brayden asks as we change into our gear for the game today.

I nod. “Much better.”

“Good.” He frowns and I follow his gaze to see Collin Kessy sitting, hunched over, and half-dressed.

“What’s wrong with him?” I ask.

Brayden’s gaze snaps over to me. “Nothing.”

He’s lying. He looks concerned and Collin doesn’t normally act like that, not that I’ve seen at least. The guy’s chest is clearly laboring. His brother looks back and forth between him and everyone else in the room to see if someone notices Collin’s odd behavior. I’d definitely say something is wrong.

Collin suddenly stands and walks as fast as he can out of the room. Cal gives Brayden a look before he follows after him.

“You sure nothing’s wrong?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he replies. “I’ll be right back.” And then he follows the same path as Collin and Cal.

Obviously, whatever is happening isn’t any of my business. I hope it’s nothing serious. And it must not be because he goes through our stretches, plays a game of soccer, and warms up with us. However, the usual Kessy chemistry doesn’t exist today. Not at all. It’s almost painful to watch those two on the ice.

Collin runs into Cal once. He makes one of their famous no-look passes, and it goes straight to the stick of our opponent, nowhere close to Cal. He gets more penalties than he normally does. Some for hooking, some for slashing, and one for tripping. Collin even scores on Savage. It’s a terrible mishap. He stands in front of the net, tries to slap the puck away to the left of the net, but it goes straight past Savage’s skate and into the net.

He’s an absolute hazard out there. I’ve never seen the Kessy twins anything but composed out on the ice, but Collin falls apart. So much so that Coach Mike begins to double shift some of us to replace him so he can sit on the bench.

Collin looks absolutely distressed over his performance after the first. Cal seems disturbed by it. Like what I’ve seen at least once before, Brayden nods his head toward the door and he and Collin both stand and walk out. I don’t know what they do out there or why they leave, but it seems Collin could definitely use some words of wisdom from the captain.

Coach Mike gives him an opportunity to redeem himself in the second, but he nearly scores on Savage again when trying to clear the puck. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but it’s not good. We manage to play okay throughout the rest of the game, but we can’t slip a puck past their goalie. Savage plays awesome, making sweet saves, too.

We lose two to zero, one of their guys scoring late in the third. Not a fun day in the office, that’s for sure.

Afterward, I walk up to the box to meet Raelynn, Bree, and Jackson. As soon as Jackson sees me, he runs over and I bend to catch him.

“Sorry you lost, EJ.”

“It happens, J-man. We fought hard, that’s all that matters.”

I just hope whatever Collin’s going through gets fixed and fast, for his sake and ours.

Monday, Henry, Raelynn, and I sit together in the very facility I practice in. Why? Because this place does more than let us practice here. This is where I brought Jackson to skate and today is his first lesson. Bree struggles in Raelynn’s lap to get down, but every so often, she tries to navigate over to Henry. It seems she has developed a slight interest in him and she’s beginning to get pissed that she isn’t allowed to crawl on the floor or go to Henry.

Henry notices, though, and he glances to me after Bree pounds on Raelynn’s shoulder in anger. “Can I?” he asks.

“Yeah, sure.”

Raelynn gives Bree what she wants and she immediately claps both her hands on his cheeks and giggles.

“I can’t believe y’all signed my son up for this,” Raelynn whispers with a shake of her head. “That I approved.” She looks at me. “What if he gets hurt?”

Henry is the one to answer her. “He’s a boy. He’ll get hurt at some point with or without this. Trust me.”

Raelynn frowns, more so when I add, “He’s right. This will be good

for him. It’ll expand his world.” She can’t say no to that. And this will most certainly do that. He’ll make new friends, learn new skills, and so much more that he’ll remember for the rest of this life.

“He’s having so much fun already, too,” she points out.