Page 9 of Season's Schemings
“I recommend you stop eating that, then.” His gray eyes are dubious. “It doesn’t look right.”
I hug my bowl of vegan caramel and dark chocolate chia seed pudding tighter to my chest. “It’s not the pudding making me sick. Or even Adam. It’sher.” I point at myself—or I should say my very dumb, former self—on the screen. “How was I ever so stupid?”
“Not stupid.” Jax gives me an only slightly awkward pat on the shoulder. “How were you to know?”
Jax has been my brother since I was six years old and he was eight; when my mother married his father. The fact that we are not blood related is glaringly obvious—I’m short and freckled and pale, with smooth hands from all that time I spend baking in warm, cozy kitchens, while Jax is tall and broad, with a weather-beaten perma-tan from all that outdoorsy stuff he likes to do. Camping and hiking and fishing and the like.
Weirdo.
However, Jax and I are as close as a biological brother and sister. Have been from around the time we both realized that, despite our obvious differences, we were firmly united on one thing: our parents’ marriage was a total sham, and the two of them would be much better off going their separate ways.
Almost twenty years later, they’re still married and still very much not in love. I think my mom likes Richard Grainger’s platinum credit cards, and Rich likes having a trophy wife by his side who makes him feel, well,rich.
But I can’t complain too much. My real dad was out of the picture, and Richard was a decent stepdad in that he taught me how to ride a bike and was always happy to give me twenty bucks when I asked for it. Jax, on the other hand, has a serious disdain for his father. He will never accept a cent from him. Or be anything like him.
Case in point: rather than trying and failing at relationships, Jax simply opts not to have them. Ever.
“I wish I could be more like you and swear off love forever,” I tell him.
“No, you don’t.”
He’s right. While Jax looked at our parents’ loveless marriage and decided he didn’t want marriage at all, I looked at it and decided I wanted marriage very much—but a loving one. I wanted to put love on like a sweater, feel it all over my skin and snuggle up into the warmth and security of it.
So I did.
And every day for a decade, I did everything I could to keep that sweater fitting me.
But my work was in vain. Adam pulled a loose thread and unraveled the whole thing anyway.
Which means that, at some point—when I’m ready to acknowledge that men exist again—I need to begin the work of knitting a whole new sweater. An unbreakable one, this time.
“You’re right, I don’t,” I tell him. “And I also don’t need to sit here wallowing any longer. It’s freaking Christmas, dammit.”
“Stop with that,” Jax grumbles as he sets his beer down on the coffee table. “It’s freaking November.”
“Thanksgiving is next week and then it’s officially Christmas. The best of all the holidays, back to back.”
And my first of each in over a decade without Adam.
I push down the sour thought and wipe my mouth with my sleeve.
“Enough of this!” I declare and flip the channel… only to find myself staring at a close-up of Sebastian Slater. Number 19. Leading scorer in his division. LovesHome Aloneand my yogurt parfaits.
Jax laughs, mistaking my ogling at my bathroom buddy for me taking actual interest in tonight’s game against the D.C. Eagles. “Four days of working for the Cyclones and the sports-hater is a hockey fan?”
TV Sebastian Slater is skating backwards, looking absolutely dashing in his maroon and white jersey—even as he’s yelling something to the guy on his left.
I nod at the image, thinking it weird that the guy on my TV screen currently has a bellyful of wild rice and monkfish I cooked for the pregame meal this evening before my shift ended. “I met him on Monday.”
“Slater?” Jax snorts. “Was he a jackass or what?”
“Kind of.” I remember him fleeing from the men’s restroom in horror, but then, I think of his apology in the kitchen… before we had an actual, albeit very weird, conversation. Like, we talked about freaking Christmas movies together. No idea why he was calling me “Lady M” though.Lady Maddie?That would be weird. “No, he was nice enough.”
Definitely not the monster I half-expected Adam’s favorite player to be. And, surprisingly, even more handsome in real life. Those glinting blue eyes and full, smirky lips were nothing short of… well, hot.
“I thought you said you don’t really see the players.”
“I don’t. I haven’t met anyone else, but Seb came into the kitchen on my first day looking for food because he missed lunch.”