In the Zone (Portland Storm 5) (25 page)

“Mr. Soupy said you have
three
dogs, Mr. Burnzie,” he said, his smile as big as his face. He had a green cape tied around his neck and a matching Santa hat on his head.

His sister Maddie came over a lot more slowly than he had, her hair the same bright red as both his and Rachel’s. “And Mommy said you have to be nice to the dogs because they’re big enough to eat you.”

His grin turned into a goofy expression, half scowl, half worry.

“They don’t eat superheroes,” I said to him with a wink.

That brought the grin back just in time for Soupy, Rachel, and Babs to join us. I hadn’t seen Babs get out of their SUV, but he must have since I didn’t see his car anywhere. He lived across the hall from them in a big condo.

He picked Tuck up and tossed him over his shoulder. “Come on, Ginger Ninja. Let’s get inside where it isn’t so cold.” They walked off with the little boy squealing with giggles.

Soupy rolled his eyes as he took Maddie’s hand, and the rest of them followed Babs and Tuck into the house, leaving me to finish dealing with Mrs. Stephenson in relative peace.

She was scowling when I returned my attention to her. “You just see that you keep the noise to a minimum,” she said, huffing as she stomped off back to her house.

Honestly, with all the party goings-on taking place inside and as much distance between our houses as there was, I doubted she ever heard anything more than cars coming and going. She liked to stick her nose in other peoples’ business, and issuing complaints about me allowed her to gather as much information as she could about who was coming to my house. I was pretty sure she was the source for a number of minor things that had leaked out into social media about me in the time since I’d bought the house, not that any of it was anything worth trying to hide or being ashamed of.

“And a merry Christmas to you, as well!” I called out after her retreating form.

When I turned to go back inside, I caught sight of Brie coming down the road from the direction of the bus stop. I had to curb the desire to rush over to her and pull her into my arms, instead shoving my hands into my pockets and walking like there was nothing of the sort on my mind.

“I’m glad you came,” I said when we were close enough to talk. Even though she’d said she would, I’d had my doubts.

“Me too,” she said, giving me a shy look. Then her eyes flitted over to the long line of cars parked in front of my place, and she took a deep breath.

“It’ll be fine.” I reached for her hand and then hesitated.
Just friends
, I had remind myself. That meant I couldn’t go all grabby hands and haul her up against my side. I shoved it back into my pocket so I wouldn’t be tempted. “There are a lot of people, but I think you’ll like them. I know they’ll like you.”

She nodded and walked toward the house. “I’ll be fine.” She shivered against the cold.

“I wish you had let me come to get you instead of taking the bus.” It took a hell of a lot of restraint to keep from putting my arms around her to warm her up.

“You needed to be here for everyone arriving.”

I could have left Shane to do that, though. But then, Brie didn’t know he was here. I’d forced myself to avoid calling her or texting her over the last couple of days, giving her the space she’d wanted.

“Well, at least let me take you home later. I don’t want you out waiting for the bus so late.”

She gave me another shy smile. “All right. I can do that.”

At least she would agree to that. It may have only been a small thing, but it was one brief way for me to spend a little time alone with her.

I opened the door and ushered her inside. Once I had closed the door behind us and the sounds of holiday music and laughter and chatter met our ears, I reached for her coat. She unbuttoned it and took it off, and my mouth watered at what she revealed underneath.

She’d worn a pair of black slacks that I’d been with her to buy, and she had on a green, white, and red checked shirt underneath. It was some sort of silky material that draped over her breasts in a way that made me want to toss her over my shoulder and carry her up to my bedroom, guests be damned. Her new bras must have come in, too. The cut of her blouse gave me a tiny peek at the top edge of her bra—a sage, satiny thing that looked completely different from anything I’d ever seen her in before.

She looked like a dream.

Of course, I should have known that the new stuff had arrived—the lingerie I’d ordered was here, too, sitting upstairs still unopened. I should probably give it to her, even if she wouldn’t let me see her in it. Not right now, though. That was going to be an awkward enough exchange even if we weren’t surrounded by a bunch of other people. How would she react when I gave it to her?

“Um…” She cleared her throat, and a gorgeous blush raced up her neck and cheeks. “Are you going to just stand there holding my coat?”

“Sorry.” I forced myself to stop staring at her long enough to hang her coat in the closet. This was going to be impossible, having her so close but not being able to touch her, to pull her into a private room and kiss her senseless, to take her to my bed and make her come until she realized that we weren’t meant to be
just friends
. Today was going to be utter and complete torture for me.

“You look amazing,” I finally said to ease the awkwardness between us.

“Thank you.” Brie didn’t look at me when she said it—she was too busy staring at the floor—but she didn’t try to deny it or shrug it off, either. So maybe it was starting to sink in. I hoped so, at least.

“The party’s this way,” I said, leading her toward the stairs down to the lower floors. Before we’d gone two steps down, my doorbell rang.

“Go get it,” she said. “I can find my way.” She kept going down the steps without waiting for a response.

I turned around and headed back up to find Luka and Vladdie waiting at the door along with Luka’s wife and baby—and an unexpected sight for sore eyes. Nicky Ericsson was standing directly behind them, his blond hair longer than normal and looking like it hadn’t seen a comb in a week.

I welcomed them all in, taking their coats and sending the Russian contingency downstairs so I could pull Nicky into a hug.

“How are you doing, man?” I asked, slapping him on the back because I was so glad to see him I didn’t know what else to do.

“Good,” he said. “Better.” He backed away a step and shrugged. “I just got out of rehab again yesterday. Kally said everyone was going to be here and that I should come.”

“Fucking right, you should come.” I started making mental calculations as to how much alcohol I had around and how I was going to keep it away from him.

“I’m not drinking,” he said, as though he could read my thoughts. “And I haven’t taken anything. I need to start getting back to life as usual. Kally and Noelle are going to stick right by my side the whole time I’m here,” he added. “It’ll be fine.”

Kally had arrived about fifteen minutes before. I nodded, and a big grin spread across my face. “All right. Sounds like a plan. I’m just so fucking glad to see your ugly face, I can’t even tell you.”

“My ugly face?” he scoffed. “Have you had a look in the fucking mirror lately?”

He headed down the stairs toward the sounds of the party. I went with him and helped him find Kally in the sea of faces. In no time, pretty much all the boys realized he was there, and he was surrounded by well-wishes and good-natured ribbing. The doorbell rang again, and I left him under Kally’s watchful eye.

Half an hour later, everyone had arrived and the party was in full swing. I was finally able to head downstairs and join everyone, and I immediately looked for Brie in the crowd. She was easy enough to find with her strawberry-blond hair. It called to me like a beacon, and I headed across the room to where she was seated near the fireplace in the corner. She had a plate of appetizers on her lap and a glass in her hand, and she was smiling like she always did in my dreams at night.

It was only when I reached her that I realized who she was sitting and talking to. She’d found Colesy, for which I was glad. He was someone she already knew, at least. But Shane was sitting with the two of them, and it was him she was smiling at.

My heart plummeted. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her to know my brother. I wanted that more than I could say. The problem was that I didn’t know what he might say to her, and I had no idea how long he’d already been sitting there talking with her. There was no telling how much he might have already told her.

She might never want to have anything to do with me again if he’d revealed how much I’d bullied Garrett, all the things I’d said to him and called him. If she knew how it was the way I’d treated him that had led to him taking his own life.

I swallowed hard, waging an internal debate over whether I should go over and join them or make myself scarce. Before I’d made up my mind, she looked up and her eyes fell on me almost immediately.

She smiled.

There wasn’t a chance in hell that I would be able to stop my feet from heading in her direction right then. She patted the seat beside her when I got close, so I sat—although not as close to her as I would have liked.

Shane gave me a look I couldn’t interpret. “Brie was just telling us how she’s going to be choreographing and dancing in a music video for The End of All Things.”

“Are you?” That was something I would have definitely remembered if she’d mentioned it.

She gave me an apologetic look. “Apparently so. It’s all happening out of the blue.”

At least that meant it wasn’t something she’d been keeping from me. There were definitely things I hadn’t been able to tell her, but as far as I knew, she was only prone to hiding her body from me.

“That’s exciting,” I said. “We should celebrate.”

“It’s terrifying, is what it is.”

“But well earned,” Colesy put in. “If you can teach me to dance…”

“You’re learning to dance?” Shane asked him.

“A little here and there to help my core and balance for skating.” He shrugged. “Some ballroom, a little ballet.” He kept his voice down.

I understood his caution, but I doubted anyone who wasn’t right here with us would hear him. “And it’s already paying off,” I said.

I felt Shane’s eyes fall on me, a thousand painful questions roiling under his stare.
So it’s okay for your teammate to dance, just not your brother, huh?

“When’s the next class you’re going to?” I asked. “I might join you again.”

That caused both Shane and Brie to turn sharp looks on me.

“You’re going to dance classes?” Shane demanded.

“He’s come to one,” Colesy said, definitely unaware of the tension between me and my brother.

“The academy is closed for the rest of the year for the holidays,” Brie said, but her tone had turned wary. She wasn’t so sure she wanted me to come to any of her classes, then.

Distance. Just friends. Fuck, this was going to kill me.

“I guess that means you’ll have plenty of time to work with Devin,” I said, trying to ease into a safe subject. If we were still seeing each other, it would mean plenty of time she could spend with me, too. She could come to my games. She could get to know my friends, the people in my life.

She could be a buffer of sorts between me and Shane. Not that I’d use her as one. There was already too much between my brother and me to warrant putting anyone or anything else in that chasm if I could avoid it.

“Yeah, I should. Thank goodness, too, now that we’ll be working on this project with The End of All Things.” She spent a few minutes telling us how that had come about, how they’d been at the concert last night and danced for the band. How it still felt surreal and she couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that something like this was happening to her.

Having watched her dance with Devin that day, I knew exactly how it was happening. There was no reason she shouldn’t still be dancing professionally as she had before her health had turned on her other than her own inability or unwillingness to see that she was still entirely capable.

I hung around with the three of them for a while, wishing that I could take Brie somewhere alone for a bit but not daring to try it. She didn’t seem inclined to ask Shane any questions about the past. She didn’t bring up Garrett. She made no effort at all to get him to tell her all the things that I’d been unable to. The conversation stayed on the present—her work, our game against the Wild yesterday, how embarrassed Babs had been at Darcelle XV last night—fully focused on safe subjects. At some point, I stopped worrying about what Shane might tell her and started noticing instead little things about my brother…and my teammate.

They’d stuck together a lot last night, so it was only natural for Shane to gravitate toward Colesy today. Out of everyone here, besides me, Colesy was probably the one that Shane already knew the best. But there were little things in the way they looked at each other that made me start to wonder.

After a while, I had to get up and mingle with the rest of my guests, playing the host. I went down to the game room and made sure that all the kids were having a good time. I brought more food down from the kitchen, making sure we wouldn’t run out of anything. I moved from group to group, from room to room, spending a few minutes with everyone that was here.

Even though Webs was one of the coaches now, not one of my teammates, I’d invited him and his family to come today, as well. They’d been part of everything with the boys for a long time, so it only seemed natural.

I found him hanging out with a couple of the older, married guys and their wives in the TV room, sipping on a beer. The TV was on, and it flashed to one of the images from last night of Katie with that guy on the red carpet. Webs glared at the TV. “Fucking dipshit better get his fucking hands off my little girl. She should have fucking stayed here and dated Babs.”

“I thought Babs was a dipshit, too,” Zee said. “At least you called him one a bunch of times.”

Zee’s wife, Dana, got up so she could stretch and walk around. She was seriously pregnant, near to bursting, and it looked like she couldn’t get comfortable. She put both hands on the small of her back for support, which made her belly stand out more than it already did. “You said she had to make her own choices,” she reminded Webs. “And she has.”