Chapter One
Evie
"You know you're goingto die on the ice, right? Just bam!" My sister smacks her hands together hard enough for the sound to echo around the small conference room we're using as a staging area. "Down you go."
Her diabolical grin should be studied in a lab. There's no way it's natural.
"Gee, thanks," I mutter sarcastically. "Why'd I bring you again?"
"Bring me? Please!" She crosses her arms, sinking down onto a plush chair at the head of the long table. "As if I gave you a choice."
She's not lying. As soon as Everly found out I was singing the national anthem at the game, she insisted on coming for "moral support".
Her support leaves a lot to be desired…you know, like actual support. She's just here to watch sweaty professional hockey players fight each other for the puck. But there was no way she was telling our father that.
Are you kidding? He just got out of the hospital and would have insisted on coming along, too. Kasen Alexander goes nowhere without causing a scene. After thirty-five years in the entertainment industry, that ability is encoded in his DNA. Actually…I think it's just who he is.
Everly is just like him—loud, dramatic, and destined to be the problem in any given scenario. Don't ask me how I ended up being the normal one in this family. It's a mystery to me, too.
"I'm not going to die on the ice."
I'll probably die on the ice. But I'll also die before I admit that to my sister. Singing, I can do. Hell, I can even dance with something resembling actual rhythm. But walking across a slippery surface? Yeah, not so much.
"We'll see," Everly says, her blue eyes shining.
I just ignore her and finish pulling my hair up into a high pony, studying myself in the mirror set up on the table. My nerves don't show on my face, thank God. The flush to my cheeks looks more like excitement than anxiety, and my blue eyes are calm. I look cool and collected, not at all like I'm ready to throw up.
I am so ready to throw up.
Singing on stage is easy. I have a band to back me up and room to move around. I can riff and cover little mistakes. There is no covering it if you fuck up the national anthem at a televised sporting event. You'll always be that one artist who screwed up the words or couldn't hit the right notes. No one wants to be immortalized in clips of a failed national anthem performance.
Someone taps on the door.
"She's decent!" Everly shouts.
I shake my head at her, which only makes her grin. There is no stopping her. It's terrifying, really.
"Ms. Alexander?" A man with a clipboard pokes his head into the conference room.
"Evie," I correct.
"Right," he says, not even looking up at me. "A few members of the team have asked to meet you before the game."
"They want to meet me?" I frown, caught off guard. This wasn't part of the plan. I'm just supposed to sing the anthem, not meet and greet people far more talented than I am!
"Yes, ma'am."
"She'll do it," Everly says for me, hopping to her feet with a bright smile.
Awesome. I guess I'm meeting the team.
The locker room pre-gameis basically a war zone. There are skates. There are men in skates. There are men shouting. There are men everywhere. None of them is normal-sized, either. They're all giant people, towering over me and Everly.
"It's like my own personal Chuck E. Cheese in here," Everly breathes, stopping just inside the locker room, her gaze bouncing from one giant to the next like she's trying to figure out which one she wants to play with first.
I stop beside her, not sure where to look. I never spent much time thinking about what a locker room looked like, but this place is fancy as hell. It also smells like they're trying—and failing—to use cologne to cover the stench of sweaty gym socks.
"Holy shit."