“Did you forget you already have plans or something?” He hadn’t eaten yet, which she could probably figure out since she’d picked him up at the rink.
“No, I just…it’s dumb, but I realized I’ve already monopolized your time. Just because we’re having some fun and told the world we’re dating doesn’t mean we have to actually spend time together. It’s not like the paparazzi is hiding in bushes, waiting to take pictures of us together.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past Joel,” he muttered. “He thought he had a much juicier story, and he’s probably really bummed right now. But on a serious note, I haven’t eaten and there’s nobody in this city I’d rather spend time with than you.”
Even in the dark interior of her car, he could see the flush across her cheeks in the flashes of streetlights. “What are you in the mood for?”
He chuckled, because he could think of a few things.
“Fordinner, smart-ass,” she said. “We’ll talk about dessert later.”
“Tell me about moving to Boston,”Will said.
Kristen looked up from the haddock she was squeezing lemon juice over and cocked her head. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s a little weird, I guess, that I know a little bit about you already because of your brother. I know your family’s from Michigan, for example. But I don’t want to know the stuff that’s in his bio. I want to know aboutyou,if that makes sense.”
“I guess it does, because I felt the same way when I decided not to do a Google search for your name,” she said, smiling at him. “Though I have read your hockey bio, of course.”
“There’s honestly not much more to know than what’s in my hockey bio, I guess. Parents and a younger sister and her family in Ontario. Remind me to show you the twenty-thousand or so pictures and videos of my nephew I have on my phone.” His face lit up when he talked about his family, and she liked that about him. “His name’s Billy because he’s named after me, and he’s four. Already a bruiser on skates, of course.”
She laughed. “Of course he is.”
“So, did you move here when your brother did?”
She nodded. “Well, not right away. I stayed with friends to finish high school when Erik signed with the Marauders.”
“Because your dad went with him even though you were still in school.”
“Stop making that face or people will think you’ve been sucking on this lemon. But yes, Lamont came to Boston with Erik. I hated being so far away from him—my brother, not my dad—so I applied to Boston colleges, and here I am.”
“I’m surprised you and your brother are so close.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “We just are. Just like nobody knows the badass Cross Lecroix likes to read biographies and squeals like a guinea pig when in the passenger seat of a car, there’s a side of Erik Burke nobody else really gets to see, either.”
“Hey, now. I did not squeal like a guinea pig and, even if I did, it was merited. You drive like you were born in this city.”
“Thank you,” she said, even though he clearly hadn’t meant it as a compliment.
“If he got traded, would you have moved?”
That was a tough question. “I don’t know. I know I didn’t like being half a country away from him, so I would have considered it. But I also fell in love with Boston pretty quickly, so it would have been hard, so let’s just be thankful for the Marauders.”
“No,” he said, and they both laughed.
“You were with a couple of teams before the Harriers, but you’ve been there a long time. Has your family considered moving to Baltimore?”
He shook his head. “No, because even to me, Baltimore isn’t home. I mean, it’s a great city, and I’ve enjoyed living there, but home is home. Throw in the fact it’s an entirely different country, and it was never really considered. They come down for big games, though, and stay in a hotel or get an Airbnb near my condo.”
“Do you own a house in Canada?”
“No. I live in Baltimore full-time. But I go home a lot, when I can, and I just stay in my old room.”
“Tell me it has a twin bed and all your high school trophies on a big bookshelf.”
He blushed, which was cute as hell. “The twin bed went away in the remodel, and the shelf of trophies got banished to my dad’s den.”
He told her about his family while they ate, and she loved how relaxed he looked when he talked about them. She noticed he kept the conversation away from growing up a hockey player, and talked instead about fishing with his dad and his mother trying to teach him to bake, and how his sister had been better at car maintenance lessons than he was. It was hard, a little bit, to hear and see the love between father and son when he talked about his dad. Obviously she didn’t have that relationship with Lamont, but Erik didn’t, either. Their father’s obsession with making Erik the best didn’t leave time for fishing trips or changing the oil in the car. Hell, she didn’t even know if her father knew how to fish. She’d never asked him.
