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“I…” I trailed off.
This didn’t help. This was a step backward. I was trying to get over him—and failing, but whatever—and this wasn’t going to do that.
But, fucking hell, I missed him.
And that was crazy. I knew it was crazy. How could you miss someone after only a few days? It was meant to be a fling, nothing more and nothing less. Yet here I was, three weeks after said fling, with a severe case of feelings-itis.
“If you don’t want me to, say the word and I won’t. I can be busy. It’s not a problem,” Adam said. “That’s why I asked you.”
“No, I…” I sighed. “Do you think it’s a good idea?”
“No. Absolutely not. But I think we should do it anyway.”
“Okay,” I said quietly. “Pick me up at five-thirty.”
“You got it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE – ADAM
A Series of Bad Ideas
“You’ve lost your mind,” Warren said, shaking his head. “One weekend was bad enough.”
“He ain’t wrong,” Kyle piped in, putting down the weight he’d been using.
I stared at them both. “I like her, all right?”
“We know. You’ve been a miserable bastard ever since you got back from that wedding. I told you to just fucking call her.” Warren snorted.
“I didn’t want to. She made it perfectly clear that what we do, all the traveling, all that shit, isn’t for her,” I said.
“Then why the fuck are you having dinner with her family on Saturday?” Kyle sat on the weights bench in front of me and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Just…why?”
“If you had the chance to see Keisha one more time, would you?” I said, referring to his girlfriend. “Poppy was pretty clear that she’s not the kind of woman who can hack what we do. That’s fine. But I didn’t exactly tell her that I wanted to try it.”
“So that’s what you’re gonna do? Pretend to be her damn boyfriend and tell her how you really feel?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I just wanted to see her again, ‘cause fuck me, I missed her. I missed her mouth and her laugh and her sass. I missed fucking everything about the feisty redhead who’d barreled into my life like a tornado.
Warren smacked his lips. “It makes sense, but only if you’re gonna be honest with her. You have to get closure on this chick, because she’s been distracting you since you got back.”
And wasn’t that the truth. Poppy Dunn had consumed my mind. I’d thought about her every single day, and it’d done nothing but piss me off that I hadn’t had the balls to call her.
It was easier to walk into her damn restaurant and see her in person than it was to pick up the phone.
“Makes sense. I’ll do dinner, then after, we’ll get a drink and I’ll tell her how I feel. If she tells me no, fine. She can leave without being under pressure.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “If she tells me yes, we’ll figure it all out.”
“Okay, but you’ve never had a relationship with anyone since you got drafted,” Kyle pointed out. “It’s not like Keisha and me where we’ve been together since college. By the sounds of it, Poppy doesn’t even like hockey.”
“She didn’t know who I was when we met,” I reminded him. “Of course she doesn’t like hockey.”
“See, that’s my favorite fuckin’ thing about this,” Warren said. “All the girls in the world throw themselves at Mr. Fuckin’ Superstar over here, and he picks the one damn girl in the world who has no idea who he is.”
“She’s the most genuine one.” Kyle shrugged and got up to adjust the weight of the machine. “She just saw the lovable asshole we’re so fond of, not the mega-rich superstar.”
“She didn’t know, and she doesn’t care.” I leaned forward and rubbed my hands down my face.
“How do you deal with the fact you don’t know how to have a relationship on the road? She has a life here, right? A job? An apartment?” Kyle sat back down. “It’s a big change.”
“I can make it work.” I knew it. I knew we could if we tried. “I just never found anyone worth trying for until her.”
My two closest friends on the team shared a look.
“Well, fuck,” Warren said simply.
“You make it sound like I’m a playboy bachelor,” I grumbled,
Kyle paused. “No. But you’ve always put hockey first. Not that it’s a bad thing,” he added quickly. “We all do it, but nobody as diligently as you, man. If you’re willing to push it aside, even just a little, for a girl you’ve known less than a week in the total time you’ve spent together, she’s gotta be somethin’.”
Somethin’.
That was one way to describe Poppy Dunn.
And, weirdly, probably the most accurate.
Because she was. She was something.
I just wanted that “something” to be mine.
