Breeding My Stepsister on the Ice novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Family Box
At Tate's game Lainey watches the team doctor inject his torn shoulder again on his father's order, pulls him off the bench in front of the cameras, and that night, icing the shoulder, finds testosterone vials in his bag that his father set up.
The team doctor slid the needle into my stepbrother's shoulder for the second time that week, and his father stood there checking his watch.
I wasn't supposed to be in that tunnel.
I wasn't even supposed to be at the game.
Twenty-six hours earlier I'd been in the library with a neuro textbook and a cold latte, and my phone wouldn't stop buzzing.
Mom: Lainey honey, you're coming to Tate's game tomorrow, right? Family box. The twins are losing their minds.
Mom: He's been playing so well lately. We need to show up for him.
Mom: Don't make me come drag you out of that library.
I put my forehead down on the open book.
Across the table, Gemma Benning lowered her flashcards. "Is that your mother or the hockey man?"
"Both. Neither. The family box."
"Bring me nachos," Gemma said, and went back to cranial nerves.
Ten years of this.
Ten years of family boxes and matching jerseys and Doug calling me "kiddo" in front of people.
I typed back with one finger. Fine. One period.
I stayed for all three. I always did.
The family box sat above the blue line, all leather seats and free nachos.
The twins pressed their faces to the glass. They were nine, and they thought their big brother was a superhero.
Mom held my hand.
Doug stood at the rail with his GM lanyard and his championship ring, shaking hands with people who wanted things.
Halfway through the second, Tate took a hit into the boards behind his own net.
He got up.
He always got up.
But his right arm hung wrong for a second before he tucked his stick under it.
Nobody in the box noticed.
I'd been a paramedic for four years before medical school. I noticed.
"He's fine," Doug said when I stood up. "Sit down, kiddo."
I had a student badge for the team clinic. My clerkship with the team doctor started Monday.
I used it to get downstairs.
The tunnel smelled like rubber and cold. Trainers moved fast between the doors.
Tate sat on a folding table with his jersey half off.
He was thirty-one, six foot four, with a nose that's been broken twice and the kind of quiet that made rooms lean toward him.
Right then his face was gray.
Dr. Alan Dunne stood over him with a syringe. Trim, silver at the temples, the doctor every sports channel in Milwaukee called for a quote.
Doug had followed me down. He stood by the door.
"He finishes the game," Doug said.
"That's the second injection in six days," I said.
Every head turned.
Dunne didn't stop. He pushed the plunger and pulled the needle out clean.
"Miss Molloy." He smiled at the trainers. "You start my rotation Monday. Try to pass it."
Someone snorted.
"You can't keep shooting a joint you haven't scanned," I said. "If that's a tear, he's going to rip it the rest of the way."
Doug put a hand on my back and steered me toward the door.
He said it pleasantly, loud enough for everyone.
"Go sit with your mother, kiddo. Down here you're not family."
Tate looked at me over Dunne's shoulder.
He didn't say anything.
He pulled his jersey down and went back out.
I watched the third period from the end of the bench, behind the trainers, where nobody had told me to leave yet.
Four minutes in, Tate went into the corner for a puck.
He reached with his right arm.
The shoulder came out of the socket. I saw it go from twenty feet away.
He dropped his stick and skated to the bench holding his elbow against his ribs.
Dunne was already on his feet.
"Pop it back," Doug said into a trainer's phone. "He's got two more shifts in him."
Dunne took Tate's wrist.
I climbed over the trainers' bench and got between them.
"Don't touch it," I said. "Not here."
The cameras were right there. The bench was right there. Twenty grown men in pads stared at a woman in a gray hoodie.
I put my face close to Tate's.
"You go back out on that, you lose the arm. Not the season. The arm."
He looked at me for a long second.
Then he stood up and walked off the bench, down the tunnel, with me beside him.
He didn't look at his father once.
At one in the morning we snuck into the house in Whitefish Bay.
We met at Mom and Doug's wedding. I was nineteen. He was twenty-one and drunk on one beer.
Mom and Doug were asleep upstairs.
The ER had set the shoulder. It was already swelling.
I sat him on a kitchen stool and wrapped a bag of ice in a dish towel.
"Lean forward."
He leaned. I held the ice against the back of the joint and kept my other hand flat on his chest.
His heart was going hard.
"You shouldn't have done that tonight," he said. "Dad'll make you pay for it."
"Why'd you walk off with me?"
He turned his head. Our faces were very close.
"Because I always have," he said. "Trusted your hands."
My heart hit my ribs.
For a second I thought he might kiss me.
I wanted him to.
I was terrified he would.
He pulled back and winced.
"Shoulder's acting up again," he muttered. "You still remember how to ice it properly, future Dr. Molloy?"
I rolled my eyes, grateful to be back on familiar ground. "Unfortunately."
I went to get him a dry towel from his gear bag by the back door.
There was a small white box tucked into the side pocket.
Ten glass vials inside, rubber caps, a printed label.
Dunne's clinic. Tate's name. Testosterone, two hundred milligrams.
I carried the box back into the kitchen and set it on the counter in front of him.
"What is this?"
He looked at it.
"Recovery protocol," he said. "Dad set that up."
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