Centuria Books · Man Advantage 7
Man Advantage 7 — Read the First Chapter
Two unbeaten hockey stars walk into nineteen-year-old Zella Ainsworth’s game shop carrying the kitten they pulled from a tree.
Chapter 1
The shirtless firefighters admitted they were afraid of the tree. Zella Ainsworth might have respected the honesty if a kitten had not been screaming sixty feet above them.
“The trunk is hollow,” Firefighter Calendar Mr. April said. Rain-bright oil shone across his chest, and a red suspender crossed one large shoulder. “Lightning split it last summer. If I put my weight above that seam, the whole crown may peel toward the wires.”
“Then use the ladder.”
He pointed. The engine’s aerial ladder sat below three black utility lines, trapped between Checkpoint Games’ striped awning and a delivery truck whose driver had chosen this exact moment to vanish. A ground ladder leaned against the brick next door. It was four stories too short.
The kitten cried again.
Zella tipped her head until the loose end of her dark-blonde braid brushed the back of her patched skirt. At nineteen, she had learned that petite made strangers expect caution from her, and she had learned to disappoint them quickly. The morning joint still left rain silver at the edges of her vision, but the tree’s lean, the power lines, and the kitten’s shaking branch all stayed brutally distinct. The black scrap of fur clung to a narrow branch above the plaza. One front paw was white, and the rest seemed made from soot and bad decisions.
“We can get an animal crew here,” April said.
“How long?”
“Twenty minutes if they’re clear.”
The branch sagged.
“He doesn’t have twenty.”
“Maybe she,” another firefighter said, and he had been posing as August beside a plastic hydrant five minutes ago. “Hard to tell from down here.”
Zella looked at the pink cardboard carrier beside her boots. Its bottom seam had torn when a woman from the bus stop tried to lift it. The woman had run after the kitten, then after her bus. Through tears, she swore it was a stray she had meant to take to a shelter.
Zella had promised nothing. She had climbed onto the flower-box wall, shaken treats, and offered tuna. The soot creature preferred death to any deal. The cottonwood gave a dry crack.
Every firefighter looked up.
“Clear the plaza,” April called.
The calendar photographer gathered his lights, and two assistants carried the folding backdrop inside the coffee shop. A woman with body glitter across her collarbones kept filming until Zella put one hand over the phone.
“Back up.”
“I can stand here.”
“You can stand behind the planter, where the dying tree has to work harder to kill you.”
The woman went.
Zella measured the lean. The main split aimed toward the shop awning; a smaller limb hung over the alley, close to the iron fire escape fixed to the building next door. The fourth-floor landing nearly touched a thick branch on the healthy side.
Nearly.
“Can someone cross from there?” she asked.
April followed her finger. “The branch won’t hold a firefighter in gear.”
“Without gear?”
“The trunk may roll.”
“So you’re scared.”
His jaw set, but he answered her. “Yes. A smart person should be.”
“Good,” a deep voice said behind Zella. “That saves time.”
The crowd changed before she turned. Phones lifted, and a teenager in an Ironclads cap made a sound like someone had stepped on him.
Two men crossed the plaza in dark team warm-ups, each too large to fit the word pedestrian. The first had black hair brushed back from a square face, gray eyes, and the stillness of a locked door; a pale scar touched the left edge of his jaw. The second moved as if every path had already offered itself to him. Dark auburn waves reached his collar, and a crooked smile made his broad face look cheerful in the manner of a wolf near an unlocked pen.
Zella knew them—everyone in Detroit knew them.
Jace Bramwell had denied twenty straight hockey teams a win; Damon Twyford had helped him do it by putting thirty-eight pucks behind other goalies and treating each one like a personal insult.
They were also lovers; publicly, stubbornly, and for long enough that an online rumor about either man dating an actress had become useful only as comedy.
Damon looked at the firefighters, their discarded costume axes, and the kitten above them and said, “This calendar has a strange plot.”
“Go away,” Zella told him; his blue eyes found her, and interest landed with the quick force of a body check.
Jace looked past her to the tree. “Fire escape.”
“Too short,” April said.
“Not for the stronger branch.”
“The trunk may split when your weight transfers.”
Jace took off his warm-up jacket.
Damon caught the collar. “You heard the man explain death.”
“I heard the kitten.”
“Of course you did.”
Their eyes met; seven years of private language passed in one hard beat. Damon swore, pulled off his own jacket, and pointed at April.
“Maintenance line?”
April’s brows rose. “You don’t get to order my crew.”
“Then save the animal.”
The firefighter looked up, and the branch dipped another inch under the black kitten.
“We can’t put a city employee on that trunk.”
“Good thing hockey players are private idiots,” Zella said.
Damon grinned at her. “You understand us already.”
“I understand workplace accidents.”
Jace was already at the alley door; April caught him by the arm, and Jace stopped and looked down at the hand until the firefighter released him.
“No climbing without a line,” April said. “Harness, roof anchor, and one of us controls the ground. If the split moves, you come off the branch. You don’t reach twice.”
“Agreed.”
The firefighters became fast once they had a plan they could live with; August carried a harness upstairs. April found the building manager, and Damon tested a bright maintenance rope between both hands, rejected one clip, and made them change it.
Zella opened Checkpoint Games and took the shop’s folding tables into the plaza and laid them on their sides to block the awning entrance, then dragged two canvas shipping bins beneath the tree.
Damon came down the fire escape with one end of the line clipped to his harness, and he told her, “Move.”
“No.”
He stopped close enough that she had to lift her face; six feet six, the team page claimed. It had failed to describe his shoulders.
“That crown comes down, it crushes this spot.”
“The bad split runs toward the awning. The kitten is over the outer bed. If Jace lowers the bag and the branch goes, the bag swings here.”
She pointed between the shipping bins.
Damon followed the angle, then studied her with all humor gone. “You repair things.”
“For a living.”
“Can you track the split while I watch him?”
“Yes.”
He handed her a piece of white sidewalk chalk. “Mark where it moves. You see fresh wood past this line, you shout down. Not his name. Down.”
She drew one clean mark across the gray tear in the trunk. “Bossy.”
“Alive.”
The answer moved beneath her skin and stayed there.
Above them, Jace stepped from the fire escape onto the thick branch. The entire tree shivered, and his harness line ran to Damon, up through the roof anchor, and back down to a firefighter belay. Damon braced in the alley with both hands closed around the working end.
Jace crawled instead of standing. His black shirt tightened across his back, and the kitten flattened against its narrow branch and screamed at him.
“Good judgment,” Damon called. “It hates you.”
“Most forwards do.”
“Forwards have reasons.”
Jace reached the fork and stopped; eight feet separated his hand from the kitten.
April passed up a red rescue bag on a second line, and Jace hooked it to his belt and edged farther; fresh pale wood appeared below Zella’s chalk.
Her stomach dropped. “Down.”
Jace froze.
The split widened with a sound like a gunshot, and April shouted, “Back.”
The kitten leaped, and it landed two branches lower, struck the trunk, and vanished into the leaves.
Zella heard herself swear, and Jace looked down once, then moved sideways instead of back. He wedged one knee against the fork and dropped the rescue bag below the leaves.
“Bramwell,” Damon said.
Jace ignored him.
Damon’s whole body changed; the smile left, and every loose line became force. “You get one reach.”
A black paw struck the bag rim; Jace closed his hand around the kitten’s scruff and shoulders, took a bite through his glove, and pushed the fighting animal inside; the crown began to peel.
“Down!” Zella screamed.
Jace kicked away from the branch—Damon hauled.
The safety line snapped tight, lifting Jace clear as the cottonwood split beneath him. The outer crown fell toward the awning, and Jace swung into the brick wall hard enough to shake the fire escape.
The rescue bag dropped on its line, and it swung past the shipping bins.
Zella ran.
Someone shouted at her; she caught the bag against her chest as the branch struck the plaza behind her. The impact drove her to both knees. Leaves and dead wood covered her braid, and a sharp weight thrashed inside the canvas, alive and furious.
Above, Damon pulled Jace onto the fourth-floor landing with the firefighter’s help; Jace landed on one knee, rolled to his feet, and looked over the rail; not at the fallen tree.
At Zella.
“Open the bag,” she called. “Slowly.”
Damon reached the plaza first and dropped beside her, one palm coming toward the back of her neck before he stopped himself.
“May I?”
“Hold the rim.”
His hand obeyed.
Jace came down the stairs with blood across one knuckle where the kitten had torn his glove; a red mark crossed his cheek from the brick. He crouched on Zella’s other side while she opened the rescue bag one inch.
Round amber eyes glared from the dark.
“Hi,” Zella whispered. “You horrible little bug.”
The kitten launched into her chest. She caught warm bones, claws, and a hammering heart, and one white front toe pressed against her nose.
“Bug,” Damon said. “That appears settled.”
“Nothing is settled.”
Jace touched the kitten’s scraped pad with one careful finger; Bug bit him again and said, “Emergency vet.”
“I know.”
“Now.”
“I know what that word means too.”
Damon picked up the ruined cardboard carrier, and the bottom fell out in his hands.
“We’re buying a carrier.”
“You are not buying me anything.”
“The kitten.”
“The kitten currently owns one white toe and a criminal record. I haven’t agreed to the rest.”
Jace stood—his shadow covered Zella and Bug together. “We’ll drive.”
“No.”
Both men looked at her.
The firefighters, photographer, assistants, and half the plaza watched the three of them among the wrecked branches; April had one hand over his mouth, either hiding relief or a laugh.
Zella rose with Bug against her breast; her knees shook once, then held.
“I have a car. I have a veterinary clinic, a first-year biology lab at noon, and a business I need to lock, and neither of you gets to turn one bad tree into a command structure.”
Damon came closer and smelled of rain, rope, and clean male sweat. “We get the first report.”
“You get nothing.”
Jace lifted his bleeding glove, and Bug watched it with murder in her amber eyes, and Damon said, “We were bitten in the line of duty.”
“He was bitten. You stood on a roof and developed opinions.”
“I hauled two hundred thirty pounds of disobedient goalie out of a dying tree.”
Jace’s gaze stayed on Zella. “First report.”
She should have refused on principle. Instead, she noticed the scrape on his cheek, the rope burn crossing Damon’s palm, and the way their shoulders touched without either man checking whether the cameras still watched.
They had not rescued her and had listened when she marked the split, used the drop zone she cleared, and trusted her to catch what mattered.
That earned a fact—not access.
“Give me one number,” she said.
Damon offered his phone—Jace placed his over it.
Zella entered her contact into both and returned them. “One kitten report. No surprise visits—no cars sent to my shop. No team posts, mascot nonsense, or interviews using my name.”
“Daily reports,” Jace said.
“One.”
“The kitten needs daily checks.”
“From a vet, not a goaltender.”
Damon leaned close enough that his crooked smile filled her view. “We can learn.”
The quiet certainty in his voice made her body imagine lessons that had nothing to do with kitten care; Zella tightened her hold on Bug.
“You are very bossy for men who just lost a fight with a tree.”
Damon looked at the ruined cottonwood, and Jace looked at the black kitten in Zella’s arms and said, “We got the girl down.”
Jace’s gray gaze rose to Zella. “Both of them.”
The answer followed her into the shop while Bug purred against her heart and two undefeated men waited outside for the first report.
Chapter 2
Jace trusted numbers because they stayed where a person put them; Bug’s heart rate did not.
“Again,” Zella said.
The veterinary technician moved the small blue scanner across the kitten’s ribs; Bug lay inside a warm towel on the exam table, black ears flat and one white toe hooked around Zella’s thumb. A green line climbed the screen, blurred, then settled.
“Two hundred six,” the technician said. “Fast, but she is frightened.”
“Temperature?”
“Ninety-eight point four after ten minutes in the warmer. Coming up.”
Zella entered both figures into a note on her phone, and her hands had stopped shaking in the car. Jace’s had not.
He kept them closed behind his back.
Damon leaned against the cabinet beside him, wearing a clean shirt someone from the team had delivered to the clinic. His rope-burned palm rested open over one folded arm, and he watched Zella instead of the kitten.
Jace understood the mistake—he made it too.
The intake form gave Jace a number he had not expected: nineteen. She had changed from the flowing green skirt she wore in the plaza to patched jeans and an old game shirt that read CONTINUE? She was petite and lean, a Korean American woman with green eyes, freckles across a straight nose, and dark-blonde dye braided over one shoulder; one cottonwood leaf still clung near the tie. Nothing about her missed a movement around the table.
She had caught a falling rescue bag hard enough to bruise both knees and had apologized only to the kitten.
“Scraped pads, mild dehydration, no broken bones,” the vet said, and she turned the screen toward Zella. “No fluid where it shouldn’t be. We’ll clean the feet, give fluids under the skin, and watch her until she can hold a normal temperature.”
“Any sign she belongs to someone?”
“No chip. Her coat and teeth suggest she has been outside for a while, and the shelter can open a stray hold tonight. You may foster her through it if you choose.”
Zella looked at Bug.
The kitten bit the towel.
“That sounds like a yes,” Damon said.
“Nobody asked you.”
“She did. With her face.”
The vet hid a smile. “The estimate includes tonight’s emergency care, vaccines after she is stable, stool testing, parasite treatment, and the foster deposit.”
She placed a tablet in front of Zella, and the total was six hundred forty dollars.
Jace reached for his wallet.
Zella caught his wrist, and her fingers did not close around half of it; he stopped anyway.
“Don’t.”
“The tree put her here.”
“The tree is insolvent.”
“Our appearance brought the crowd.”
“The calendar brought the crowd. Your team sent you to smile beside a fire engine, not seduce gravity.”
Damon glanced at him. “The contract was vague.”
Zella released Jace and checked each line of the estimate. She asked what the shelter covered after the hold, which vaccines could wait, and whether the foster deposit came back after adoption; the vet answered without hurry.
“I can pay the medical care,” Zella said.
“And tomorrow?” Jace asked.
“Tomorrow also exists inside my budget.”
“You don’t know what tomorrow costs.”
“Neither do you. A blank check is not foresight. It’s a very expensive way to stop listening.”
He held her gaze; she had chosen the exact weakness before he could hide it inside generosity.