The regular season started the first week of October. We’d battled for a spot through the last two weeks of preseason games in September. Now it was showtime.
Axel raised his glass and grinned at us. Half of his beer sloshed over the side and soaked our nachos. We didn’t care. We raised our glasses for our tenth toast of the night.
“To the”—Axel paused, deep in thought, mostly because his inebriated brain was soggy with alcohol—“the Puck Brothers! Long may we puck and fuck and have lots of luck.”
“Hear! Hear!” we said in unison.
“The Puck Brothers. I like that.” Ziggy burped and bumped fists with Axel. “And as the first official meeting of the Puck Brothers”—Ziggy held up his right hand, and the rest of us followed his lead—“we’ll hit our pucks in the net, keep our dicks well exercised, and live life to the fullest.”
“Hear! Hear!” I slurred.
Steele, who rarely said much, raised a hand like he was in fucking grade school. All heads turned to him, because raising his hand was just plain weird, even to our alcohol-muddled brains.
“What?” Axel, our self-appointed leader, asked over the rim of his beer glass.
“We might not all make the team.”
Axel frowned and narrowed his eyes. “We’re making the team. All of us. We’re inseparable.” His gaze swiveled to two women walking by in tight dresses so short a guy could see the bottoms of their delectable asses.
Steele blinked a few times, as if confused, and shook his head. “If you say so.”
“I say so.” Axel’s eyes stayed glued to the blonde’s ass.
“Skate and party till we drop. We’ll play the field and enjoy every minute of it. We are the Puck Brothers,” Kaden shouted and raised his glass. Answering shouts of agreement and clinking glasses solidified our Puck Brotherhood.
“Let’s sweeten the pot. First one to bite it, we’re gonna take it out on their ass.”
More drunken shouts of agreement, even though most of us had zero idea what we were agreeing to.
Steele raised his hand again. “Bite what—monogamy?”
We all stared at each other and roared with laughter. Was this guy for real?
“Yup,” Ziggy said.
“How will we determine if someone has bitten it? And who chooses the penalty?”
More eye-rolling and groans and snickering.
“Don’t know. We’ll decide when we need to.”
“But—” Steele still took issue with our lack of clear rules.
Kaden emptied the last of the pitcher into his glass and took a long swallow before answering, “Whatever. We don’t need rules. We’re having fun here.”
“Hear! Hear!” Axel raised his glass, and we did another toast. Steele didn’t ask any more dumb-assed questions, so I guess he was mollified.
We toasted one more time. I guzzled the last of my beer and looked to the future. Life was fucking good.
Caroline point of view
The first week of October, Fran called me over to her house. The results had arrived.
When I got there, Fran was pacing back and forth in front of the desk in the den, and Howard was seated in front of the monitor. The screen was dark. He had the patience of a saint and was solid as a rock.
He winked at me and indicated one of the chairs placed in a semicircle in front of the monitor. “Are you ready for this?”
I nodded and slumped into my seat. Fran sat next to me, fidgeting. I clasped my hands in my lap so tightly my fingernails dug into my palms, but the pain didn’t distract me. I was edgy and nervous for reasons I couldn’t explain. I didn’t know Mark’s biological relatives, and there was nothing to worry about, but worrying was my middle name.
“Did you peek?” I asked them.
Howard gave me one of those looks that said, I can’t believe you’re asking me this. Fran shook her head.
“He wouldn’t let me,” Fran said.
“All right then.” Howard woke up the computer and navigated to the home page of the genealogy app. He logged in. “I took the liberty of reading through their instructions. Let’s jump right to the meat of the matter. We’ll review the closest DNA matches to see what we can find. Everyone ready?”
I chewed on my lower lip, and Fran gripped the arms of her chair. We both nodded.
Whatever was inside had the possibility of profoundly affecting my twins’ lives, and I hoped we were doing the right thing. As my grandmother used to say, sometimes it was best to let sleeping dogs lie. What if we awoke not just a dog but a monster? What if my twins’ grandfather was a criminal? Or even worse, a serial killer? My imagination took hold and threatened to run wild. I forcibly tamped it down.
“Let’s do this,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
Howard clicked on the menu option for viewing possible DNA matches. We held our collective breaths, and even Howard’s hand shook ever so slightly. The list was somewhat long and arranged by highest level of DNA shared to lowest.
The first name on the list hit me like a punch to the gut. I blinked several times as the screen swam in front of me. I stared hard at the top name, certain I was hallucinating or having a bad dream or needed to be locked up in the psych ward. All those options were preferable to the truth screaming through every brain cell in my skull. The room was so hot, so very hot. I was being smothered by the heat.
I’d expected to see a list of names I didn’t recognize. That wasn’t the case.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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