“Don’t make me regret this,” Shea said under her breath as we walked out of her office.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” I promised her. I was still shocked that she’d given in and let me mentor Elliott.

“We’re going to be fine, Mom!” Elliott declared as she spun on the sidewalk, her arms outstretched like she could capture the August sunshine in her hands.

“You have my number,” I reminded Shea, who looked like she might be sick.

“And you have my daughter,” she responded.

I hit the unlock button on my key fob, and my G-Wagon lights flashed. “Climb on in, Elliott,” I said without looking away from Shea.

“In the backseat!” Shea exclaimed. “You can’t let her ride in the front seat. Airbags deploy at like 200 miles an hour, and she could end up with a fractured face.”

I would have thrown back some snarky comment since I knew all of that, and I would never have let Elliott ride in the front seat, but the stark fear in her gray eyes made me think twice, and err on the side of kind.

“I was never going to let her ride in the front seat,” I promised Shea. “I’m an excellent driver, I promise. Great hand-eye coordination and all that,” I finished with a small smile.

“I know. I checked your driving record.”

“Of course you did. Check my registration, too?” I teased, trying to lighten the mood.

She shielded her eyes with her hand and stared at my car as if she had X-ray vision. As if she could see if Elliott was putting on her seatbelt or not.

“I did, actually.” She looked up at me. “I was both relieved to see that you’re entirely legal, and genuinely concerned for your sanity.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Because no one in their right mind spends a quarter million dollars on a car.” She quirked an eyebrow up.

“Hey, that thing is a tank,” I told her as I motioned toward my G-Wagon. “Seriously, I would have thought you’d be over the moon about the safety ratings.”

She shook her head at me. “I’ll never understand rich people.”

“Yeah,” I agreed with her. “I won’t either.” I threw her a grin and walked backward toward the car. “I’ll have her back in an hour and a half. That should give you time to finish up your day, right?”

“That sounds right.” She bit her lower lip, which then led me to thinking about biting her it for her. “Just… Just be careful with her, Porter.”

“I’ll defend her with my life,” I promised, putting a hand over my heart.

“Don’t put her life where you have to defend it!”

I didn’t bother answering her, just gave her a wave and climbed into the driver’s seat, quickly closing the door.

“You buckled in, kid?” I asked, checking my rearview mirror.

“Yep!” Elliott answered. “So where are we going?”

“My favorite place in the world,” I told her as we pulled into traffic.

Fifteen minutes later, she sat on the players’ bench as the Zamboni finished its run over the arena ice.

“How does that feel?” I asked her as I tied on the third pair of skates I’d brought for her. The first had been too small, the second too wide, but these were Goldilocks style—just right by my estimation.

“Great!” She wiggled her toes in the boot, and I nodded.

“I figured. Okay, let’s get your second skate on and get you out on the ice.” I quickly tied her second skate, remembering to keep it a shade looser than I liked mine. Not everyone liked their skates tied so tightly that they bordered on cutting off circulation.

“What’s this for?” she asked as I handed her a helmet.

“So your mother doesn’t kill me,” I told her in all seriousness, sitting next to her to put my skates on. I laced them up with the quick efficiency of someone who had practically been born in skates.

“How did you have all these extra pairs?” she asked, pointing to the small lineup of black hockey skates.

“Because I had the sales rep bring me all those pairs around the size your mom told me so we wouldn’t need to have skates fitted to your feet.”

“What will you do with them? The extra ones?” she asked, tilting her head just like her mother.

“Donate them to the Dorsal Club so other kids can use them,” I answered with a shrug. “Unless you had a better idea?”

“Nope,” she said with a grin. “I think that’s perfect.”

I snapped her chin strap, and then her cage.

“Why don’t you need your helmet?”

“Because I’m not going to fall.”

She gave me a look that said she was unimpressed with my answer, which made me laugh.

“Okay, if we get to puck work, I’ll put mine on. You need yours because you’ve never skated before, right?”

“Not that I can remember,” she answered.

“Right. So I need to protect you from you. Once we get to sticks and pucks, then I’ll get my helmet, because then I’ll need protection from you, too.”

“Ha, ha,” she teased as the Zamboni finished.

“Okay, kiddo. The ice is ours for fifty-five minutes. Any longer than that and I’ll be late returning you, and you might turn into a pumpkin or something.”

She nodded and stood, her knees wobbling for a moment before she steadied. A perplexed look crossed her face.

“You okay?”

She nodded, pulling a slim, black device from the front pocket of her jeans. “Just in case I fall,” she told me as she placed the device in the back pocket of her ever-present backpack.

“What is that?”

“My tracker,” she answered with a shrug.

“Your what?” There was no way she’d said what I thought I’d heard.

“My GPS tracker. It tells my mom where I’m at and lets her listen in if she’s worried.” She looked up at me with unflinching eyes.

Holy shit. Shea was so worried about Elliott that she’d put a tracker on her? For fuck’s sake, I wasn’t that bad of a guy. Had I gotten into fights? Yes. Had they all been justified? Maybe. Kind of. But did I scare her so much that she’d gone and bought a damn tracker?

“So she’s been able to hear every word we say?”

“If she wants to.”

Oh, this was rich. I put my finger to my lips and motioned for her to hand me the tracker.

She grinned, showing even, white teeth that were missing a couple a few rows back, and handed me the device.

It had a few buttons and a small speaker. I turned it over in my hands and then lifted it to my mouth. “Okay, Elliott, where should we start? Teaching you how to drive the Zamboni? Maybe bottle rockets at center ice? Oh yeah, explosives sound like the way to go.”

She smothered her laugh with her hand.

“And after we’re done with that, I thought we’d head to the bar. Maybe get you some bartending lessons? Then we’d cross the street without looking both ways—really live dangerously. What do you say?”

She snorted through the gaps in her fingers, scrunching her nose. “Sounds good to me!” she managed.

“Me, too!” I tossed the device into the small pocket of her backpack and headed onto the ice. “Step out carefully,” I told her in all seriousness.

She bit her lip and came out onto the slick surface.

“No biting your lip. You fall, and your teeth will go straight through it,” I warned her.

She nodded and then concentrated as I taught her the motions which were second nature to me.

The ice was my home. Out here, nothing could touch me. I was invincible in my element. Hell, I was more comfortable in skates than I was shoes.

“There you go,” I told her as she stopped trying to walk in the skates and began to glide, trusting her balance.

As odd as it was, I’d never taught anyone to skate before. I figured one day I’d teach my own kids, but since that train wasn’t leaving the station any time soon, I was glad I had someone as athletic as Elliott to teach.

It would be harder to fuck her up.

“What are you doing, Hudson? Not like that. Why can’t you get it right? You’d better skate faster boy, or I’ll catch you once you’re off that ice.”

I shut his voice out of my head with a quickness. He’d poisoned so many years, and he wasn’t getting any of them now.

“How do you feel?” I asked Elliott.

“Good! I think…” She pushed off the boards, gliding with sure, strong strokes. “I think I can let go!” she called back before quickly looking forward again.

I caught up to her with a few quick motions and smiled. “I think you can!”

My phone buzzed in my back pocket, and I slipped the device free from my warm-up pants. A text message from Shea flashed across the screen, and I thumbed the screen to open it.

Shea: No driving the Zamboni. No bars. Use the crosswalk.

A smile tugged at my lips, and I shook my head as Elliott skated ahead.

Hudson: You gotta learn to trust me. Also, your daughter is a natural.

I skated to center ice and then took a quick video as Elliott made her way around the rink. “There you go. Slow down for the turn. I’ll teach you to stop next,” I promised as the video rolled. “You should be proud of her,” I said quietly enough so only the video would catch it. “Seriously, a natural.”

I quit filming and texted it to Shea.

Then I started teaching Elliott the art of stopping.

Shea: She’s amazing.

Hudson: You should see her in person.

Shea: You mean it?

My stomach clenched. Hell yes, I meant it. I’d take whatever time Shea wanted to give me, but I wasn’t using Elliott to get it. I glanced over where Elliott was practicing shifting her weight so she could stop.

I also didn’t want Shea coming just because she didn’t trust me.

But maybe if she saw how well Elliott and I got along, she’d loosen the reins a little.

“Hey,” I called out to Elliott. “You care if your mom comes down and sees you skate?”

“Yeah!” she answered, throwing her arms up. “Then she’ll see how awesome I am and maybe let me go out for hockey!” She lost her balance and fell smack on her butt.

“Maybe we should work on that whole skating thing, first,” I suggested dryly.

She stuck her tongue out at me and got back up. Something told me she would always do that when knocked down—get right back up. There was some fight in that girl, the same as her mom.

Hudson: I bet you already know from her device, but we’re at the Shark Arena. Come to the players’ entrance on the south side and tell the security guard I told you to. He knows I’m here with Elliott.

Shea: On my way.

She’s just Elliott’s mom. Just Elliott’s mom.

I repeated my mantra as I worked with Elliott. “It’s all about trusting your own body,” I reminded her. “You have to commit. How are your feet?”

“They hurt a little, but it’s not too bad,” she told me.

I tapped her helmet. “Skates can be a bi—...pain to break in,” I barely caught the swearing slip. “It takes some hours to get them comfortable. We can bake them for you the next time we meet, and that will shave some of the hours off.”

“Cool! Hey, Mom!” She waved her hands over her head, throwing her body off balance. I caught her around the waist before she bit it.

“Way to show her how awesome you are,” I teased.

She rolled her eyes at me.

“Go show off,” I urged her, making sure she was steady on her skates before releasing her.

She nodded with an excited grin and took off down the ice. “Look at me, Mom!”

“I see!” Shea called from the bench.

“Watch the wall!” I instructed.

“Got it!” Elliott answered, and she did. She shifted her body weight, throwing it at the inside edge of her right skate and outside edge of her left, and skidded to a stop.

“Not bad!” I told her before skating over to the bench.

“Whoa,” Shea said, backing up as I stepped inside.

“What?” I asked, looking down at her. Damn, the woman was tiny when I was in shoes, but in skates, I had even more than my usual twelve inches on her.

“You’re fast,” she admitted.

“You haven’t even seen me try yet,” I told her with a smirk. This was my house, the one place in life I excelled, and I knew it. I’d never had to show off for a woman—they’d always come pretty easily to me, what with the star college player status and then the NHL contract and the millions that followed, but man, I wanted to show off for Shea.

“Show me,” she challenged.

Oh, I planned to.

“How much bigger are your feet than Elliott’s?” I eyed her heels.

“My Hobbit-like daughter?” she followed my line of sight to the row of skates lined up along the boards. “They’re not much bigger, actually. Not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of small.”

“Good things come in small packages,” I answered automatically.

“Then you must be pretty bad,” she fired back quickly before her cheeks tinged pink like she was embarrassed that she’d accidentally flirted with me.

“What? Never had a thing for a bad boy?” I fished out a pair of skates that looked like they might fit her feet.

“You have no idea,” she whispered.

I knelt at her feet and looked up at her. There was zero teasing in her eyes. Zero flirtation.

As certain as if she’d been wrapped in yellow caution tape, I knew I had to tread lightly here. She was haunted, and not in the way that I was—where my ghost was long dead and exorcised. No, her fear was real. Palpable.

“You didn’t just buy that tracker because I had Elliott today, did you?” I asked quietly.

She shook her head. “She’s had it ever since she started school.”

I tucked that bit of knowledge away and nodded. “Sorry. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have teased you earlier.”

“It’s okay, I needed it. I don’t...trust easily.”

That was an understatement. She was locked up tighter than the crown jewels.

“I get it. Do you need help with the skates?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got it.”

“Let me know if you change your mind. There are socks in this pocket of my bag.” I pointed to pocket, then rose and joined Elliott back on the ice, giving her the space I somehow sensed she needed at that moment.

Maybe it was because I was the same way. Not with the trust issues—I was a pretty good judge of character with one exception. But when I divulged too much of my past to someone, I tended to withdrawal. It always left me raw, like a wound that never quite healed because you kept picking at the scab.

In those moments it didn’t matter that I was twenty-nine years old.

I was trapped in the body of a much-smaller boy, facing the beast that alcohol turned him into, listening for footsteps on our porch. The turn of a key. The sound of my mother crying.

I shook the memories free and concentrated on the feel of the ice beneath my feet, letting the rink take it all away.

“I haven’t done this in years,” Shea admitted as she came out from the box.

“Need some help?” I asked across the blue line where I was helping Elliott.

“No,” she assured me, gripping the wall like a lifeline.

“You’d better help her,” Elliott whispered.

“She said, no.”

“She didn’t mean it,” Elliott assured me as Shea shuffled along the boards.

“One thing they teach boys is that when a girl says no, you believe her.” I kept my voice low as we both watched Shea struggle. My muscles involuntarily clenched as she slipped once. Twice.

Nearly landed on her ass.

“No exceptions?” Elliott cringed as Shea barely caught herself on the wall.

“No. Exceptions.”

“What if like...someone is drowning but swears they’re okay and tells you not to save them?” She shot a pleading look at me.

“She’s not drowning.”

“She’s...something,” Elliott muttered.

Yeah, this was pretty damn painful to watch.

“So, uh, are you sure you don’t want a little help?” I asked as she rounded the curve.

“I’m fi—ahhhh!” she shrieked as her left leg slipped forward and her right leg fell back, sending her sliding into some splits that she definitely hadn’t consented to. “Okay, help!”

I flew across the ice, skating faster than I ever did at drills. Hell, maybe even during a game. My heart and lungs pumped with the rhythm of my arms, and I came to a quick stop just behind her, careful that the snow I shredded didn’t hit her in the face.

“Gotcha,” I said, lifting her under her arms until she stood, wobbling, in front of me.

“Whoa,” she threw over her shoulder.

“Yeah, you’re pretty whoa. How are you feeling? Was that as painful for you as it was for me to watch?”

She scoffed. “I’ll have you know that I’m perfectly okay—Crap!” Her skates flew out from beneath her, and I barely caught her in time, turning her in my arms and hauling her up against my body for sheer stability.

I gripped her hands and placed them on either side of my waist. “Hold.”

“Uh-huh,” she said into my chest as her fingers dug into my obliques.

Elliott skated over and came to a perfect stop. Damn, that kid had some talent.

“See how awesome I am?” she asked her mom.

“Yep,” Shea said with the side of her face resting against my chest.

I didn’t need to see her face to know she was ten shades of red right now. Not when she was practically burning through my Henley.

“Does this mean I can go out for hockey? Please? Pretty please? I’ll do a month of dishes!”

“Can we talk about this once we’re back on land?” Shea begged.

“You do kind of suck at this, Mom,” Elliott whispered like there was anyone else around to hear her.

“Yeah, that point has not been lost on me,” Shea retorted.

“Hey, Porter! You and your girls about done?” Devin called out from the doors that led to the Zamboni.

Your girls. My. Girls.

Hearing that didn’t freak me out as much as I’d expected.

I gently used my fingers to tilt Shea’s chin so she was looking at me. “Are we done?”

“Out here?” she clarified.

Only out here, my instinct answered. I tossed that shit back in the Neanderthal cave and nodded instead.

“Yes. Please, God, yes.”

“Three minutes,” I told Devin, then chuckled softly as Elliott skated blue line to blue line. “Never thought I’d get those words past your lips.”

And now all I wanted was to hear them again and again. Preferably while she was under me or over me. Or even in front of me. Fuck, the thought of her curved ass in my hands while she clung to me like this was enough to send my body into overdrive.

Not now, asshat, I told my dick.

“Ha,” she said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. Her eyes drifted to Elliott, who fell trying to stop, but picked herself up and skated on. “What’s your favorite thing about hockey?” she asked me.

“Listen,” I told her.

The only sounds were Elliott’s blades against the ice.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly. I don’t hear anything outside this rink. Don’t think about anything that doesn’t exist in this rink. All the bullshit disappears, and all that’s left is who I am, or at least who I want to be.”

Her feet shuffled, and I wrapped my arms around her back to steady her, taking her slight weight into account with my own balance.

“Porter?”

“Shea?”

“Get me off this god-forsaken sheet of ice,” she ordered.

“Awh, come on, I thought you enjoyed holding on to me,” I teased.

“Now.”

“Right now?”

“As. Quickly. As. Possible.” She bit out every single word.

A grin erupted on my face as I bent, lifting her into my arms the same way I had outside Connor’s house.

She sputtered but wrapped her arms around my neck—unlike last time.

Damn, she felt so good, so right in my arms. All curves and a fire I knew would burn me if she ever let herself flare up.

“Porter,” she urged me.

“Hold on tight,” I warned her a split second before I pulled her even closer.

Then I launched across the ice with Shea in my arms, gliding with sure, strong movements that were only a hair slower than my earlier performance and coming to a sudden stop at the doors of the players’ box.

“Seriously?” she questioned, blowing a strand of auburn hair out of her eyes, but not letting go of her grip around my neck.

She was close enough to kiss.

“You enjoyed it.”

“Oh, really? And what makes you think that?” she tossed back.

“The giant smile on your face.” My own answered it.

She lifted one of her hands to her face, letting her fingers lay across her lips as if she needed to feel it for herself. “Huh,” was all she said.

I gently put her down inside the box.

“You’re crazy fast,” she admitted, sitting on the bench and unlacing her skates.

“I can outskate just about anyone,” I admitted. “I’ll fetch Elliott so you guys can get home.”

“Thank you, Porter. Not just for bringing her, or fighting me to mentor her, but for letting me see you in your element. I think you’ll be good for her,” she admitted quietly.

“I think she’s good for me. You both are.” I didn’t wait for her response before gliding over to Elliott. “Time’s up, kid.”

“Ugh. Already?” She sent a pleading look up at me that mirrored her mother’s. So much about them was alike. Except the eyes. Those, she must have gotten from her father—whoever he was.

“Yep. We’ll come back, don’t worry.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Promise.” My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I ran my thumb across the screen to open it as Elliott climbed into the box with Shea.

Natalie: I miss you. Please forgive me, Hud. Please? At least call. Text. Something.

My insides twisted, just like they did every time she reached out.

I’d been honest when I’d told Shea that I could outskate almost anyone, but then again, Natalie had always been my exception in the worst of ways.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever skate fast enough to outrun her.