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“Hey, be careful. You’re hurt, remember?”
“I can hardly forget. It might be time to go to the hospital, now that the game is over.” He grinned. “You were watching, right?”
“Yes, and yes, you played amazingly tonight…so well I’d never have suspected that you have a hole in your side. You really do have to be the best at everything, don’t you?”
“Hmm, why are you here?”
His sudden question took me off guard.
“Why do you think I’m here?”
“Your flight was cancelled? You decided you don’t need a campus tour and already accepted the offer?”
“Wow, you need to work on your pessimism.”
“True, so…why are you here?”
I took a deep breath and brought my chin up. “I’ve decided that HHU is my destiny, and my home, and everything I want, really. It’s my turf. If you’ve got a problem with that, then you should go…not me.”
Cayden stared at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “You’re not fucking with me, are you? I don’t think I’ll ever recover if you are.”
I laughed. “I’m not fucking with you. HHU is mine. If you have a problem with that, you need to go somewhere else.”
He chuckled and leaned in, hugging me tightly, his forehead pressed hard against mine.
“You’re hazardous to my heart health, Freckles,” he murmured. “I just played the most intense hockey game of my life and barely felt it, but this conversation is giving me a heart attack.”
“Sorry,” I teased.
He shook his head. “Don’t apologize to me. You never need to apologize to me. You – I don’t have all the words to describe you. Everything I think and write falls short.” Then he grinned, and it was stunning. “You should know, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I was never planning on letting you leave me here alone. I was going to be where you were, even if I was just driving the Zamboni at your fancy school.”
I burst out laughing at that image. “I thought you wanted to go to HHU? It was your dream,” I reminded him.
He stared down at me, smoothing his thumb over the apple of my cheek. “Dreams change…I have a new dream, and if she wanted to be in California, then I’d be in California.”
I was lighter than helium. “A person can’t be your dream. What if they disappoint you?”
“Impossible.” He leaned in and kissed me lightly, brushing his lips over mine. “I know everything about you, good, bad, and ugly, and you know everything about me…there is nothing you could ever do, or say, or feel that would disappoint me. It’s impossible.”
What could I say to that?
His lips met mine, and he tugged me against him, lifting me off the ground and spinning me around. He kissed me hard and then pulled back, only to stare at me and kiss me again.
I laughed at his dazed expression, my heart feeling like it was bursting out of my chest.
“Put me down before everyone sees,” I murmured to him.
“Let them. Let everyone know you’re mine and I get to keep you.” He grinned.
“Even my dad?” I wondered.
His lips stretched into a sideways smirk, and he gently lowered me to the ground. “Maybe I’ll put you down, for now.”
“Hmm, good idea. If he finds out, he might make you move out for the rest of the year, or at least put a padlock on my door so you can’t creep in there at night.”
“But you love it when I creep in there,” Cayden protested softly. “I’m just making your dreams come true.”
“Let’s not explain that to my parents,” I laughed.
