Twisted Collide: The new sports romance in the Redville Saints series
Twisted Collide: Chapter 47

With today being an off day, I show up at the practice arena to get some work done. The guys are practicing, and I’m supposed to take some videos of them. Nothing crazy, just hockey players training before a game to rev up the crowd. When I started working, despite Laurie’s and my father’s doubts, I started a TikTok page, and it has since gone viral. Fun fact: viral videos equal more sales.

Today, I’ll be taking fun shots of the guys getting ready for the game against the Bulldogs. Apparently, they played them last year during the playoffs. I figure I can do some fun training montages and set them to music like they did in the Rocky movies.

As I approach the ice, I lift my phone and start to film them. A few videos of the team running drills should do. Nothing too crazy, but if I can get the right angle, it will work.

Hudson, of course, is showboating.

Currently, he’s flexing his muscles in front of me while the rest of the guys are stretching.

“Cut that shit out, Wilde,” Dane grumbles.

“She loves it. Don’t you, Josie?” The smirk on Hudson’s face is ridiculous. He looks like the cat that got the canary. Whereas Dane is more like a shaken can of soda . . . destined to explode.

“Wilde! Sin! Enough,” my father barks at them. “Now split into three groups.”

I watch as the guys move the puck quickly through each group, taking turns, each one eventually taking a shot.

The videos are longer than I’ll need, so I’ll have to edit, but I think it will be a really fun clip. And yes, I’ll conclude it with Hudson flexing. The fans will get a kick out of it, even if Dane did not.

“Josie?” My father snaps a pen into the teeth of his clipboard, lowering it to his side. “A word, please?”

“Is it urgent? I have an appointment.”

His brows furrow, and suddenly, he’s aged ten years before me. “Is everything okay?”

Serves me right for blurting out the first excuse I could think of.

“A-ok. Just, ya know, girl stuff.”

With that, I dart out of the rink and head to the back offices.

Ditching my father? Not my finest moment. Of course, the universe punishes me with a boatload of work.

I spend the rest of the day rewatching footage and marking timestamps for highlight worthy clips. When I can’t put it off anymore, I make my way to my father’s office to start editing on his computer.

I close the door behind me and walk over to his desk. Even though I’ve worked here for months, I’ve never actually looked around. Who am I kidding? This has nothing to do with looking around and everything to do with snooping. Despite my best attempts to want to know nothing about my father, I’m curious, so I replace myself rummaging through his stuff now. I start to thumb over the items lying haphazardly on the wood surface, leafing through the documents.

I’m not sure what I thought I’d replace, but when I see the paper in front of me, I wish I hadn’t snooped. DNA paternity papers. The words blur as tears fill my eyes. I didn’t even know this was a question. My mother made it sound like it was a done deal that Robert was my father, but Robert must not have been a hundred percent certain.

Chatter outside the door breaks the silence, and I drop the letter. The letter shouldn’t affect me as much as it does. Why does it anyway? It just confirms what I already know: he’s my father.

But I never doubted my mom. Only he did. But that’s not why I’ve been upset all this time. I’ve been upset because I thought he knew about me and never presented himself in my life.

Wait.

I grab the paper I discarded and look at the top right corner. One week after I was living with him already. He got the test when I was already in his house.

Why would he let me come live with him if he didn’t know for sure that I was his daughter? And does this mean he was as blindsided by the turn of events as I was? My chest feels like it’s caving in as I struggle to breathe. It’s almost as if a hand squeezes my throat, each inhale more painful than the one before. Why does it have to be so complicated?

Talk to him.

The only answer is to ask the painful questions I don’t want to ask, but if I don’t, I’ll never know. Could there be a chance that maybe I can have a family? I have my mom, but her lies have eaten away at me, leaving me utterly alone. Not true; you have him. Dane. My grumpy, forbidden lover. It’s only temporary, though; he can only chase the pain away for so long.

The door flings open. Letter still in hand, I turn to face whoever has caught me in the act. There he is, in the flesh, the man I had only just been thinking about. The sound of the door closing echoes in the office. Then he steps farther into the room, crossing the small space that separates us.

“What are you doing in here?” I clutch the paper closer to my chest. His gaze flicks down to my hands as he slowly approaches me. “I followed you.” There’s a brief silence. “And before you give me shit about it, this is what we do. We follow each other.”

He’s right. We’re really bad at boundaries when it comes to one another.

“Shouldn’t you be in practice?”

“Yes,” he says as his strides eat up the remaining distance between us until he’s only a breath away. He should leave. I should tell him to leave. I don’t, though.

For a moment, we don’t talk, but then his hand reaches out and removes the paper from my hand. I close my eyes, tears forming behind my lids. I know he’s reading it, and I feel naked before him and can’t bear to see what the look in his eyes will be. The rough pads of his fingers lift my jaw. “Please look at me.”

I shake my head.

“Hellfire.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Unshed tears feel heavy behind my lids.

“And that’s okay. We don’t have to.”

I take a deep breath and open my eyes. A lone tear runs down my cheek as I watch Dane place the paper back on the desk. “Come here.”

“No.”

“Please.”

I scrunch my nose and shake my head again. He lifts his brow, but then he doesn’t wait for me to move. Instead, he steps up and wraps his arms around me. It feels good to be encased in his arms. The comfort he gives feels real; it makes us feel real.

I shouldn’t allow myself to think these thoughts, but as I exhale the pent-up emotion inside me, I fall into him. A wrecked sob escapes my mouth, and fresh tears fall, and he never lets me go. He holds me as my world crashes to the ground, and everything I thought was real disappears into a fog that has now lifted.

When my sobs stop, he pulls back and looks down at me. We stare at each other for a moment, and nothing matters at that moment but him holding me.