I’d been with them when she died, felt their devastation at her loss, so maybe that was it. I was anxious to secure this last little piece of their family for them. It might be the thing they needed to start healing and shake off the heavy cloak of their grief.

However, as much as I tried to pretend that was it, I knew it had more to do with the girl herself. Nova. She tugged on something deep in my chest, and whatever it was, I couldn’t shake it. When she’d cried at the cafe, I’d wanted to pick her up, set her on my lap and promise I would make everything better.

Which I guess I kinda did. Minus the lap sitting.

There was something about the brokenness she tried so hard to hide that spoke to me, and it definitely didn’t hurt that she had a body that was perfect. Soft curves and a juicy little peach butt. Those big hazel eyes that were so damn captivating, it was hard to drag your eyes away.

Logic told me that lusting after her was a bad fucking idea. Like, really bad. We wanted her to be comfortable here, and sex made shit messy. So she’d stay in the spank bank, and outwardly I’d try and be her friend, patch up her broken bits.

My mother always said I was empathetic, even when I was a little kid. Always bringing home the kids who everyone else picked on, or abandoned kittens, or broken things I’d found on the side of the road so I could fix them and make them work again.

I was self-aware enough to know that it was this pattern that had drawn me to River in the first place, way back when we were both rookies for the Atlanta Lightning. He hid it well, but some wounds never healed, and even if they weren't visible, they were still there, festering below the surface. It was in the way he eyed every other man around him as a possible threat. The way he struggled against direct orders on the ice, even though he knew he couldn’t make it far without following the coach’s demands.

He’d isolated himself from the other players. But I was persistent as fuck, and I made him love me. It was basically my superpower. He eventually introduced me to both Devan and Alana, his family, and it was the beginning of a great friendship, until I was traded away to Minnesota.

Somehow, five years later, we were both back on the same team after a bunch of years being traded around, and we made a great fucking team out there. The friendship grew, and when I bought this big-ass damn house, I’d asked if he and Dev wanted to move in with me. I hated being alone.