Zeus

If I have to lose, might as well lose to Ares. I can deal with that.

After the game, I get cleaned up, grab my twin, and head back to my place where Joey and the rest of the family are already waiting.

It’s family dinner.

A late-ass family dinner, but still a family dinner.

There are ten pizzas on the island between my kitchen and living room. Somebody stacked all my magazines—probably my mom—and somebody else put all the clocks on the right time—probably my dad.

He’s the reason we all have months as our middle names.

Don’t ask.

I squeeze Joey’s ass on my way to the pizza. “Good game,” I tell her.

“I think you mistook me for your brother,” she says.

We both look at Ares, in a purple shirt printed with some red penis rocks and Second Place Is For Lovers scrawled over his chest.

“Yeah,” I say to Joey. “I can’t keep you two straight.”

“Explains that kiss on the ice.”

“I really like her,” Ambrosia declares.

“She’s very eloquent,” Mom chimes in.

Dad hides behind a paper he must’ve brought with him. Dude’s outmatched and he knows it. But don’t challenge him to Cards Against Humanity.

Just don’t.

“Did I hear you’re remodeling your bathroom?” Ambrosia asks.

“Had a leak.”

“Again?”

Before I can tell my sister to fuck off, Joey’s phone dings. She glances at it—if it’s Gracie, she’ll text back. If it’s anyone else, she’ll put it away.

She doesn’t do either.

No, she cracks a grin so big I half expect her cheeks to split to her ears. “You’re just screwing with me now, aren’t you?” she says to Ares.

He twitches a single eyebrow and digs into the top pizza box.

And leaps back. “Shit.”

His phone dings.

He eyes Joey, pulls out the phone, and makes his that’s disgusting face.

In case you’re wondering, yeah, actually, it does take a fucking pile of disgusting to get any of us to make that face.

Joey takes the top pizza. “Anyone else want jalapenos? No? Just me? Damn. Guess I’ll have to eat the whole thing.”

This woman was fucking made for me.

“What’d she send you?” I ask Ares.

He flips his phone over to show me.

There’s a gif from him with—I’m going to fucking kill him. That’s me. It’s a gif of me falling on my face on the ice during the play-offs last year.

She replied with a spinning jar of—oh, fuck. That is disgusting. Who’d put jalapenos in ketchup?

“You’re fucking amazing,” I tell her reverently.

She shoves half a slice of pizza in her mouth. Pizza with all kinds of green shit mixed in with the meat.

“And there’s no fucking way I’m kissing you the rest of the night.”

“Your loss,” she says around a mouthful of food.

I fucking love this woman.

My mother’s practically in tears. “I’m so happy for you, honey,” she sniffles to me.

Ambrosia rolls her eyes. “Congrats, asshole. All I got when I fell in love was a warning about getting arrested again.”

Dad smothers a snort behind his newspaper.

The rest of the pizzas are sausage or plain cheese, and we clean the shit out of those boxes. Once everyone else is so stuffed they can’t move, all sprawled out on my sectional, I pull out my frozen cookie dough balls.

Yeah, balls. Heh. And I fucking made them myself. Secret family recipe.

“Six or eight?” I ask Ares.

He flashes two fingers, so I pluck out eight for each of us. He balances a dough ball on his nose. I snap a picture, set two in my eyeballs, and let him take a picture of me.

Season’s starting.

World’s got expectations.

He smushes six of his balls into a log, presses the two remaining balls to the top, and puts his cookie junk sculpture where it counts.

Yeah, that one’s going in Mom’s annual Christmas picture book.

So’s the one of me that looks like I’m shitting cookie dough across my counter.

“They were…interesting as children,” Mom says to Joey.

My mom? Instant pass to heaven.

“They still are,” Joey says. She’s been checking her phone every forty seconds. “Where’s his royal smiley ass?” she asks Ares.

He shrugs.

She pins him with a look that would make one or two of the rookies on my team cry, and they’re still fucking hard-ass hockey players.

He grins.

She makes a complicated hand gesture that looks like she’s asking for six fish to be delivered to the top of the water tower at midnight if he ever wants to see his chicken again.

Ares goes pale.

What the fuck?

Joey tilts her head and crosses her arms.

“Went out for cookies,” Ares says.

“Fuck,” she mutters.

“Break his dick?” Ares offers. He makes a hand gesture we all know that leaves me and Chase wincing, Mom crossing herself even though we’re not Catholic, and Ambrosia rolling with laughter.

Pretty sure Dad’s asleep behind his newspaper.

Joey sighs. There’s defeat darkening her eyes, which is a pretty fucking bad sign. She’s not saying anything out loud—not even looking at any of us—but it’s not hard to see what’s going on in her brain.

She’s worried. Knows Gracie’s a grown-up. Can’t let go.

Because Gracie’s hers.

Joey takes care of what’s hers. I don’t know her middle name—fuck, I barely figured out Joey’s short for Josephine until a week ago—but it’s probably something like Loyal or Dependable or Don’t Fucking Mess With My People.

“Wanna go find him?” I ask.

Yes, her eyes say. “She’s a big girl.”

“I’m sorry, did you just say Prince Manning is a girl?” Mom rubs her temples. “Men fornicating with pigs, my daughter in the slammer, and my sons beating up a bisexual hockey player. This year is going to heck in a handbasket…”

“He asked for it,” I say. “Said Ares wasn’t pretty enough for him.”

Ares grunts.

Ambrosia cracks up again, Chase smiles one of those sappy lover smiles at her, and I suddenly want everyone to get the fuck out of my apartment.

Because I hit the road with the team in a week. I’m out of town two days this week for pre-season games already.

Even less time with Joey while Mom and Dad go home together, Chase and my sister go home together, and me and Ares dig into the grind of the show.

He meets my eyes and nods. “Bedtime.”

Way more going on upstairs than people give that fucker credit for.

He pats Joey on the head, slugs Chase in the arm, noogies Ambrosia, and points to the door.

I miss that fucker during the season.

“You two disturb me,” Ambrosia says as she climbs to her feet.

“You two too,” Ares replies.

I snicker.

Joey snorts but tries to stifle it. And fails.

She’s so fucking everything when she smiles.

Pretty isn’t the right word for it, because Joey isn’t pretty. She’s a fucking wonder woman.

Mom hugs her. Don’t know if anyone else notices, but Joey’s eyes go shiny and she visibly swallows. Dad hugs her too, and now it’s time for everyone to get the fuck out, because I think my girl’s gonna lose it.

And I’m not having anyone see.

Ares notices though.

He notices everything.

He snags Chase by the collar and lifts him out of the chair, gives Ambrosia the you’re next if you don’t hurry your ass up look, and hustles everyone out the door.

“Getting old, Ares,” Chase says affectionately.

“Fucker,” Ares replies as I shut the door behind them.

Joey’s disappeared.

I find her taking deep, controlled breaths in the middle of my bed. Her knees are pulled up to her chin and she’s focusing on something on my wall.

Meatball stain?

Probably.

I climb onto the bed behind her and dig my thumbs into the hard knots in her shoulders. Been a long day. Sucky game. Normal night after a game, I’d be about to crash on my face about now.

But I don’t give two shits about me. Or the game. Or anything else.

“We all got your back,” I say to Joey.

“Why do you put up with me?” she whispers.

“You see me.”

Her shoulders loosen, and she leans back into me. “Everyone leaves.”

“Not everyone.”

She twists and looks up at me. Not at me. Into me. God, her eyes. There’s a whole galaxy in there. Strength and fears, balls and brains. “You won’t leave?”

“Will you?”

Her jaw tightens. I hit a nerve.

“I don’t fucking walk out on the people I…care about.”

I want to tell her the same, but she knows about the ten years Ares and I cut Chase out of our lives for screwing Ambrosia and getting her arrested. She knows it’s only been the last six months that I’ve seen my sister regularly again, even though I missed her ugly face a little more than I missed Chase.

Words don’t mean shit.

Action is what talks.

“You know why I fucked around so much every season?”

“Because that dick is a terrible thing to waste?”

Yeah, I get it. Easier to not talk about it. Fuck, I hate talking too. Not like Ares does, but I’m still a dude. No talk is in our DNA.

“Because I’m a fucking monster who’s too big, too loud, and too much of a freak to find forever outside of a circus or a zoo. Chicks don’t want me for this.” I tap my head. “Or this.” I tap my heart. “But you’re in both. To stay. I know what it’s like to stare down a lonely forever. You know what it’s like. I don’t want a lonely forever. I don’t want you to have a lonely forever. Not when we can have each other.”

She studies me, those dark eyes taking everything in, weighing me, measuring me, deciding if I’m worthy.

And I’m fucking holding my breath, because if I’m falling short anywhere—and fuck, I’ve fallen short everywhere with Joey—she’s gone.

She strokes my cheek. “You’re not a monster.”

My chest is swelling. Both because my monster heart’s getting bigger with every nugget of affection, and because it’s all hers.

Every bit of it.

“You might be the only woman in the world who sees through me,” I tell her honestly.

A frown creases her dark brow. “Am I the reason you’re struggling on the ice?” she whispers.

What? Where the hell did that come from? I’m shaking my head before I can find my voice. “No. No way.”

Even showing her vulnerable side, she can call bullshit with those eyes. “Are you sure?”

“I’m fucking sure.” I squeeze my eyes shut. Not because I’m avoiding the silent inquisition—she’s fucking good at asking questions with those hypnotic eyes—but because it’s torture to say it out loud. “I blew it in the play-offs last year. Tripped over my own two feet, took out two of my own guys, and we lost.”

Ares sent her the fucking gif.

Probably because he knew she needed to know, and he knew I don’t talk about it.

She’s quiet until I meet her intense gaze again. “That was last year. Let it go.”

Just like that.

No bullshit. Let it go.

She could do it.

I should fucking do it too.

I roll us so I’m pinning her to the bed. Her legs go around my waist, her fingertips go to my face, and I dip my head to kiss her.

I love this woman.

And I know she loves me.

I don’t care if she never says the words. She doesn’t have to. It’s in her touch. It’s in her kiss.

It’s in the way she comes to see me, sends me text messages, and calls to ask how practice went.

Joey doesn’t bullshit around. She doesn’t stroke egos. She doesn’t waste time with shit that isn’t important.

She’s here because she cares.

It’s my job to make sure she knows that’s all I need.