Everything inside Rafe surged toward fighting back. He wanted to reach for Tate’s jersey, jerk him around, pound him wherever Rafe could reach. But he didn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
All he could do was protect himself as best as he could until Tate backed off.
When Tate hauled back to take a right hook to Rafe’s face, he blocked with his hand only to catch a gut punch from Tate’s left. And when his other arm dropped automatically toward the pain, Tate’s fist was there to ram his knuckles into Rafe’s eye.
The force slammed Rafe’s head back against the concrete wall. Pain stabbed his skull. Another punch whipped his head sideways.
“Tate,” Beckett yelled, closer now. “Back off. Right now.”
Beyond that, Rafe lost track of things. His head split with pain. His gut ached. When he tried to focus, everything blurred and spun.
“What the hell is going on?” Tremblay’s booming voice rattled Rafe’s brain.
Suddenly, Tate was off him. Tierney’s voice came quiet near Rafe’s shoulder. “Are you still with us, man?”
“Yeah,” he breathed. “I think.”
“Get the doc,” Beckett told someone.
“He’s bleeding pretty good from the back of his head,” Tierney said. “Throw me a clean towel.”
Rafe forced his head up. It swam and threatened to float off his neck. He searched the room with his blurry vision for Tate. Found him standing ten feet away, flanked by Tremblay and Beckett, shoulders sagging, hands on hips, head hung.
“I love her, man,” Rafe said. When Tate’s head came up, Rafe said it again. “I really love her.”
“I love her too, but I don’t fuck her.”
That sparked another flare of anger. “She’s your sister.”
“She’s your sister too, asshole. She’s family. We’re family. You don’t fuck family.”
“I told them.” Kilbourne’s voice came from somewhere in the room. “Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?”
Tate turned and lunged, but Beckett caught him and shoved him across the room the opposite direction. “You’re testing my patience, Tate.”
“Deal with this outside the rink,” Tremblay told them. “Back on the ice. Everyone.”
Tate turned away, pushing through the rest of the team toward the rink. The team doctor crouched beside Rafe while the other guys filed through the tunnel. Leaving Rafe to wonder if instead of finally finding the woman he was meant to be with, he’d finally screwed up the best family he’d ever had.
17
This had been the longest hour and a half of Mia’s damn life.
She paced the exterior tunnel leading from the stadium to the team parking lot, waiting for someone to emerge from the locker room. She’d been down here for forty-five minutes. Rafe hadn’t come back out onto the ice after the first period, and he wasn’t answering her texts or voice mails. Mia was so worried, she wanted to chew the hinges off that damn door to get inside and check on him.
Rafe’s hat trick had been wasted when the Rough Riders tanked in the second period, ultimately losing to the Ducks four to three.
The first family members wandered into the tunnel, and dread tightened Mia’s belly. She didn’t want to make this tension—tension that had obviously become ugly between Tate and Rafe—public.
She uncrossed one arm and rubbed her forehead. Maybe she should wait for Rafe at the hotel. But if he needed to go to the hospital, she wanted to go with him. Tate sure wouldn’t go, and she didn’t want Rafe to be alone.
“Hey.”
The soft, worried, female voice startled Mia and brought her head up. She found Eden there.
“Sorry,” Eden said, her gaze worried. “What happened to Rafe? Why didn’t he come back after the first period?”
She shook her head. “I’m not—”
The hard pop of the metal door echoed through the cement tunnel like a gunshot. Mia swiveled toward the sound as Tate stormed out the door, his dress shirt untucked, blazer flapping open, no tie, bag slung over his shoulder, head down.
Any hope Mia had been holding on to evaporated.
She offered Eden a quick “Excuse me,” before cutting into Tate’s path.
He stopped short, and the look he leveled on her—eyes dark, nostrils flaring, mouth tight, pain and disappointment and anger draining the light from his expression—stabbed her heart and dragged her back an entire year. To the days after Lisa’s betrayal.
“I think he’s associating the two and linking your move with some of the junk he’s still carrying around from Lisa leaving him.”
“What did you do?” she asked, her stomach filling with dread.