Keeping Casey (Keeping Him #1) - Amy Aislin Page 0,30

what they had.” She handed it back. “Did it come as a necklace?”

“No, my— My dad did that.” Slipping it back around his neck, he added, “He used to drag me antiquing, and I hated it until we found this at a garage sale and started digging into its history. It’s how my love of old things with stories started. I’ve been trying to find this one’s ever since.”

Joyce hummed, flipping through the inventory log, a thick binder divided by item type, then further subdivided by decade. That Casey could appreciate.

“That’s difficult to do with coins,” she said. “Impossible, for the most part.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Do you still go antiquing with your dad?”

A fist gripped Casey’s heart. “No, he— He died. About five years ago.”

“Oh.” Eyes turning down at the corner, Joyce squeezed his shoulder. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“It was an accident,” he blurted. “At his construction site. He was working on some kind of platform and . . . It hadn’t been built to code and . . . it came apart and he . . .” Rubbing the old ache in his chest, he blew out a slow breath. “Ethan’s mom died in the same accident.”

“I’m so sorry, Casey.” Joyce sounded it too. Like she’d experienced loss and understood. “You’re lucky you have those memories of antiquing with him to cherish.”

“Yeah.”

He could picture his dad here, in Ansel’s Antiques, picking up a delicate china teacup and saucer and presenting it to Casey with wide-eyed joy. “Who do you think owned this one?” he’d ask. “A rich immigrant? A child learning tea-time etiquette? Was it a gift for a beloved aunt?”

“Are these on hold?”

Joyce’s voice jolted him out of his thoughts and the ghostly mirage of his dad disappeared, replaced with the pile of things Casey had collected, sitting on the end of the cash desk. He cleared his throat. “No. I had time between customers and got curious, so I was looking them up in your log. I’ll put them back now.”

“You’re welcome to bring your class reading or homework,” Joyce said as he headed for the stairs to bring an antique guitar back to the second floor. “I know how boring it can get between customers when there’s no inventory to unpack.”

Where would she put new inventory anyway?

“Yeah?” He paused at the base of the stairs. “That’d be helpful, thanks.”

Upstairs, he hung the guitar back on the wall next to the others, the floor creaking beneath his feet, and smiled fondly at what his dad would say if he could see this place, even as a lump of old sadness formed in his throat.

Fortunately, Roman had been wrong about having to live with Britton’s slurs and derogatory comments.

Unfortunately, Harkrader had been right about Ethan having to put up with Britton’s attempts to convince him he was straight.

It had started earlier this week when Britton had brought a friend to the House and pointedly introduced her to Ethan as a fan.

A fan of what? They hadn’t had their first game of the season yet.

Then, at the gala, Britton had made sure to intercept Ethan during one of the few moments he’d been alone to introduce him to his plus-one, another friend who’d been so excited to meet him after Britton had talked him up as the best freshman on the team. Thank god for Yano, who must’ve seen the distressed smile on his face, because he’d come right over to steal him away to talk about his work with Sport U Apparel’s charitable foundation.

And finally, this afternoon, Britton had plopped into the seat next to him on the bus ride to UMass Lowell about half an hour into the two-and-a-half-hour drive, while Ethan had been struggling through chemistry homework with his headphones on. He’d expected a pep talk from his team captain about tonight’s game. Instead, he’d gotten an earful about all of Maggie’s best qualities—yet another friend he was trying to foist on Ethan.

Was he going to have to endure this until spring?

Probably. He’d gone into this arrangement with that expectation, anyway. It was just annoying that he had to keep repeating himself.

Shaking himself out of his thoughts, he forced his head into the game—the real game. The one happening right in front of him.

Near the end of the third period of their first game of the season, the Mountaineers were tied with UMass Lowell 1–1. Ethan sat on the bench awaiting his next shift. He’d misapplied the tape on his left wrist and it