My headshake is so slow because I’m half tempted to blow off practice and the gym for whatever she might want me to do.
She scrunches up her face like she knows what I’m doing and isn’t cool with it. Don’t blame her—if all she’s known of hockey is misery, there’s probably no changing her mind.
Have I blown my chance? “Next night?”
She nods. “How do you feel about tenderloin?”
A woman after my own heart. “It’s a date.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. It’s a commonly used phrase, but here and now, in this context, it’s more, and we both fucking know it. So does Eloise by the small gasp that escaped from behind her fingers as she tried to cram it back into her mouth.
Victoria’s bright red face almost matches her hair, but she nods and my soul takes flight. “It’s a date.”
CHAPTER 23
Victoria
“So Raffi, Raffi Shaw, from the Raccoons hockey team, is Wyatt’s—your son’s—father?” Eloise points at me across the table in Bitches Brew, her words half whispered and half mouthed so the kid in question doesn’t hear or repeat her words back to her. “Oh, wow. I mean, it makes sense. I can see it now you’ve pointed it out to me. But considering I still struggle to tell Ares’s brothers apart that doesn’t say a lot.” She smiles, picks up her large hot chocolate and blows the cream on top before taking a sip and hissing. “That’s…a lot, Tori.”
She stays quiet for a long moment before she opens her mouth. Nothing comes out, and she snaps it shut again. Takes another sip, more carefully this time. “And you didn’t know? Like…this whole time? That he was right here? Playing hockey?”
Biting my lips between my teeth to stop the threatening tears from falling, I shake my head.
“Wow.”
Yeah. She’s about where I’ve been since I found out who Raffi is.
“And he wants,” She points at me, then at Wyatt, who’s sucked into Blippi on his tablet. Yes, I’m that mom, so sue me. “To be a family.”
Another nod.
“And you hate hockey, hockey players, and all things connected—loosely or otherwise—to the sport?”
I’m starting to feel like one of those nodding toys people put on the dashboard of their car.
“But there’s obviously still chemistry between you.” She holds up her palm to my face. “Don’t even try to lie, Tori. The whole hockey store felt the sizzle. If you couldn’t feel it you need to get your—” She looks around. “Girl parts checked out,” she finishes in a whispered hush.
“Mama?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“What are girl parts?”
Eloise turns a shade of red I’m not sure I’ve seen before and drops her head into her hands muttering “Sorry,” over and over again.
“Nothing you need to worry about until you’re older, kiddo.” I ruffle his hair as he goes back to staring at his screen.
“Of all things he picked out to repeat, it had to be that one?” Eloise is beet red.
“Kids are dicks, man.”
“I’m not a dick, mama!” My son swats indignantly at my hand caressing his hair.
For fuck’s sake. He can multitask when it comes to parroting cuss words but not when I tell him to turn his screen off or come for dinner?
Kids really are dicks.
Eloise groans, her whole body now shaking with laughter.
This is first class parenting right here.
