Ryder and I grunt in agreement.
“Back to Frankie,” Willa says. “Did you see how she demolished that burger at Louie’s? I want a woman in the family who destroys bar food like me. Freya’s too health-conscious, and Ziggy eats like a bird. So go back to that front door, find your inner Viking, throw her over your shoulder, and tell her she’s stuck with us.”
Willa and Ryder aren’t engaged, but it’s only a matter of time. She’s family now and is clearly making plans for in-laws down the line. Wiggling into a new position, she sets her feet on the dashboard and gives me a saucy grin.
I can’t afford to even indirectly acknowledge my interest in Frankie, because if I tell Willa, it’s telling the world, which is the last thing I want to do. I change the radio station, so we don’t miss bluegrass hour. “I don’t care how well-insured those feet are, Winnifred. Get them off my dash.”
Willa sighs and drops her feet. “Focus. Talk about Frankie.”
“I’m focusing. On the road.” Clicking on my right turn signal, I check my mirrors and turn off of Frankie’s street onto Hawthorne Boulevard.
“Dude,” Ryder huffs. “Left onto Hawthorne, then right onto Inglewood. It’s so much faster.”
I glare at him through the rearview mirror for a microsecond. “Will you ever not backseat drive?”
“Nope.” Willa grins over her shoulder at him. “When we first moved to Tacoma, we had so many fights because he was telling me my business from shotgun. Now I just let him drive and pretend he’s my chauffeur. It was that or dismember him.”
Ryder smirks. “I didn’t mind fighting in the car with you. It generally led to consequences I was more than happy to suffer.”
“Okay.” I throw up a hand. “This van is a G-rated space.”
That makes Willa snort-laugh. “I still can’t get over the fact that you bought a van.” She sighs happily. “It’s so you.”
“Between the guys on the team and Shakespeare Club, I’m always driving a handful of people somewhere. Plus, it has tons of room for my equipment—”
“And those babies you and Frankie are going to make.”
If I weren’t a freakishly coordinated athlete, I would have crashed the car.
“Willa,” Ryder says from the backseat. “Go easy on him.”
“Easy? I don’t know what that word means.” Poking my shoulder, Willa leans in. “So, tell me, how far do you two go back?”
“She started working for the Kings one year before me.”
“So, you’ve known her your entire professional career. Hm.” Willa narrows her eyes and strokes an invisible goatee. “Interesting.”
“Willa,” Ryder says warningly.
She makes a shooing motion at Ryder, as if he’s an annoying gnat, not a guy built like a linebacker who has no problem tickling her until she pees herself. “And have you or have you not refrained from dating since you signed with the Kings?” she prods me.
I studiously focus on the road. “Like most rookies, I’ve spent virtually every moment since I signed focused on my career.”
“But you’re not a rookie anymore.”
“Doesn’t mean I suddenly have time for romance.”
She scowls. “I don’t buy that. You got your kicks in college, didn’t you? You balanced the demands of Division I hockey, academics, and romance then.”
“I didn’t have a girlfriend in college.” Pressing a bunch of buttons without breaking my focus on the road, I finally find the one that lowers my window. Willa’s interrogation is making me sweat.
“That’s an evasion if I ever heard one. The point is you made time to date. Or, shall I say, for the benefit of your Renaissance romanticism, thou didst woo and court.”
I roll my eyes. “Forsooth, Wilhelmina, sometimes ‘I desire that we be better strangers.’”
Willa scrunches her nose. “Huh?” She works it out and smacks my chest. “Hey, that’s rude. And untrue. You love me. I’m your favorite almost-sister-in-law.”
“You’re my only almost-sister-in-law.”
“Renny Roo, I will not be distracted. You like her, don’t you? It’s why you haven’t dated anyone since you joined the team.”
I stare at the road. Why does it take this long to drive a few miles to Manhattan Beach?
Willa sighs dreamily. “Gah. It’s romantic as hell. You’re pining for her.”
Ryder pats my shoulder sympathetically from the backseat. I don’t expect him to chime in. He’s the quietest of all of us, and when Willa’s on a roll, there’s no stopping her, anyway.
“Willis.” I glance over at her as we wait at the red light on Sepulveda. “Frankie is incredibly serious about her work. I’ve known her for three years, and in that entire time, it’s been clear that I’m just one of the guys to her, a part of the job. A job with clear rules discouraging staff-player dating, at that.”
Willa stares at me as the light turns green, which saves me from meeting those intense amber eyes. “Interesting answer.” She sits back and opens her window, letting in a new gust of warm spring air.
“Why was that interesting?” Ryder asks.
Willa grins. “Because it really wasn’t an answer at all.”
Unlike most of my peers—and trust me, they hate me for this—playing professional hockey wasn’t my childhood dream. I come from a big Swedish-American family of footballers, as Mom’s side of the family says in Europe, or here in the US, soccer players.
Ryder, who’s next in birth order after me, was playing for UCLA with deserved confidence he’d go pro after, but bacterial meningitis damaged his hearing and equilibrium so severely his freshman year, his career ended there. Freya played at UCLA, too, but hung up her cleats afterward, got her doctorate, and began practicing physical therapy. She didn’t love soccer enough to make it her life, she said. Axel, my older brother, kept up with it through high school and still enjoys playing on a competitive co-ed league.
My two younger brothers, Viggo and Oliver, are both excellent, but only Oliver is playing college level, while Viggo decided not to go to college and now plays competitive rec like Axel. The baby in our family, Ziggy, is eons beyond her high school peers’ skill level and plays for the U-20 Women’s National Team. She’s determined to be on the Women’s Olympic Team one day, and if I doubted her ability—which I don’t—just her persevering nature would convince me that she’ll get there.
As for me, I played and liked soccer. I was good at it. But I never loved it. When I hit high school, I wasn’t close with anyone on the soccer team, and while I excelled at goalie, my heart wasn’t in it. I was a recent transplant from Washington State. I didn’t fit in with the Cali boys, this gangly, dorky, six-foot ginger who liked poetry and live theater, who didn’t feel comfortable talking about girls the way the other guys did, who hated the petty power games and awful way guys treated each other in the locker room and hallways.
During my sophomore year, at some party my parents were hosting, my dad’s colleague took a look at me, apparently saw potential, and asked if I was interested in trying hockey. In his downtime, Dr. Evans coached a league of guys my age and said he’d give me personal lessons, see if I liked it.