Page 2 of Making the Save

“Absolutely,” Liam said, and muttered out of the side of his mouth to me. “It wouldn’t kill you to smile.”

“It might,” I said, but I grinned anyway. A couple of pics later, the mom and the boys were gone without attracting any more attention.

“They were nice,” Liam said.

“You think everyone is nice.” I pulled open the door and we walked through the bar. Inside, no one gave us a second look. Which was kind of a miracle.

My brother and I were currently kind of a big deal. His hockey team just beat my team in the Stanley Cup finals. Brother playing brother in the finals wasn’t that big a deal in hockey circles, but people had gotten a little obsessed.

I hated that the Peaks lost. But I was glad the attention was off us. I hated attention.

“So what’s the plan?” Liam asked, once we were seated in a booth in the back. A server brought by glasses of water and didn’t look twice at us.

“For what?”

He blinked at me. “For telling the brother we never knew about that our mom died and he’s suddenly related to two hockey stars and his world is gonna get turned upside down.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“That’s your answer? We’ll figure it out.”

“Wing it.”

“Wyatt…” he groaned.

The dark inside of the bar was split by the front door opening and in walked a man in jeans and work boots.

He was tall, with sandy brown hair.

He had Mom’s eyes.

“Holy shit,” Liam breathed.

“Be cool,” I muttered. But seeing the guy was kind of shocking. A version of us. He didn’t have Dad’s height. But he had my build. My brother’s hair. Our chin.

Something painful lodged in my throat and I took a chug of water to ease it down.

“Try not to scare him off,” Liam hissed at me.

Liam stood up and lifted his hand in a wave.

“That’s not being cool,” I muttered.

Nick nodded his head once as if to say,calm the fuck down, I’m here.

“I like him already,” Liam whispered.

“You like everyone. That’s how you got fleeced out of your rookie check.”

My brother was currently in a ridiculous situation with the daughter of a financial investor who stole several hundred thousand dollars from him.

Did I mention my brother was a drama magnet?

Nick – our brother, holy shit,our brother– slowly approached until he was standing next to the booth. I found myself weirdly speechless. Looking at him, the way his eyes narrowed in the corners, how he clearly didn’t trust us one bit, all I could think about was how our mom hurt this guy. Left him.

And yeah, she stayed with us, but that hadn’t always been a picnic.

But compared to just walking away?