Parental Guidance (Ice Knights #1)(42)
“I’m serious,” she said. “If I’m gonna consider this, I have to be able to depend on you sticking to the rules.”
Because she wasn’t so sure anymore that she could, and they both knew it would never work out between them. They were too different.
He held up one hand, three fingers extended toward the ceiling. His gaze slid down to the left as if he wasn’t sure, but he grinned at her anyway even if it didn’t look totally genuine. “I solemnly swear that I’m only trying to get into your pants and not your heart.”
The tension inside her broke, and she laughed, hard and until she couldn’t catch her breath. Anchovy wandered over from under her worktable and sat in front of them, squeezing his big body between the coffee table and the couch. As he switched his focus from her to Caleb and back again, she could practically hear the dog’s thoughts that the humans had obviously lost it.
“We are six kinds of fucked-up,” she said, once she finally got her lungs to function again.
“Probably,” he said.
“I need a show of good faith that I can trust you to stick to it.” Because she couldn’t shake the prickly doubt that she might not be able to, and that scared her all the way down to her pink-painted toenails. “I told you my biggest secret tonight. You should reciprocate so we keep this an even playing field.”
Caleb sat there for a while, scratching Anchovy under the chin until the dog nearly passed out from bliss. Finally, just when she thought he was going to call the whole thing off—and yeah, that may have been a little self-sabotage there on her part—he started talking.
“I can’t read,” he said, not looking at her.
She waited for the just kidding. It didn’t come.
Three words, one syllable each, and they stopped the world from spinning. Images flashed in her mind. Caleb standing in front of her TV picking out a Law & Order episode, his jaw tight and gaze narrowed at the screen. Caleb sitting on the Harbor City Wake Up set and his mom asking him if he wanted her to read the release form. Caleb’s teasing grin after they’d swapped from text to FaceTime, which they almost always did. Everything fell into place, and she had no idea how to react. Shock froze her.
“Okay, not technically, but it feels like it sometimes. I have dyslexia, but we didn’t realize until middle school. I’d just figured the letters danced around the page for everyone,” he said, continuing to pet Anchovy with slow, deliberate brushes of his palm over the dog’s head. “I was good at covering, plus I’d had really great teachers who made learning fun even though it was hard. Then, in sixth grade, I got a teacher who was counting down to retirement, and his big thing was students reading out loud in front of the class.”
Caleb paused, and she nearly reached out to him, but there was something in the hard line of his broad shoulders and the tight way he clenched his jaw that warned he didn’t want her comfort, her pity. She understood. Some old hurts did that, burrowing deep under the skin until they were a part of a person’s makeup, indistinguishable from what had been there before and what came after. And here she was making him pull back all the protective layers. Guilt and regret tugged her down low against the couch cushions.
“It’s okay—you don’t have to go on,” she said.
He gritted his teeth, his gaze going up to the ceiling for a few beats before he let out a deep sigh as if he’d made up his mind.
“He’d call on me every day,” Caleb said. “I’d get up to the front of the class and stumble through on a good day or freeze on a bad day. It pretty much sucked, and that feeling of everyone staring at me just waiting for me to fuck it up, it stuck with me. That’s why I love being out on the ice. While I might literally be in front of thousands, it doesn’t feel like it. During a game, it’s just me, the puck, and my boys. The letters might dance when I look down at a page, but when it comes to reading a play, everything is solid. It all makes sense at first glance.”
It took all of half a second for Zara to swap places with where Caleb had been earlier. She was more than ready to put on her shoes and go kick a stranger’s ass. To torment anyone like that was awful, but to do it to a kid who was at that age when the only thing they wanted was to fit in instead of standing out? Definitely a punch-in-the-junk-worthy offense. And it was one that stuck with a person, had them going into defensive mode even when they may not know they’re doing it.
“That explains your viral video.” She sat forward, realization pulling her spine straight. “You’re still trying to make sure no one sees you as that outsider standing in front of the class.”
“Nah, that’s just…” He let out a harsh breath and turned to her, his jaw slack. “Fuck. You’re right.”
What a pair they were. Totally blind to themselves and yet able to see the other so clearly. That was a disturbing thought. She did not need to go there with Caleb Stuckey. Five dates and done. That was the unbreakable rule, because there was no way they were compatible. She was a woman who craved stability, and he was a guy whose job demanded travel nearly ten months out of the year, plus he could be traded to another team at any moment. It was a bad mix in the long term. But in the short term? That no-emotionally-invested-sex rule? Well, that was on the table…or the couch…or the bed.
Caleb got up, the hem of his T-shirt raising above the waistband of his jeans when he stretched his arms, giving her a tantalizing glimpse of the top of his deep V-cut. She must have made a noise of appreciation because he let out a chuckle at the same time as Anchovy cocked his head to the side. Okay, could she embarrass herself any more tonight?