Morgan is crying. Actual, real tears, streaming down her face, her foam finger pressed against her chest.
"That was thebest thingI haveever seen," she sniffs, her voice wrecked.
Everyone is on their feet.
Everyone except us.
Zoey and I are still sitting with our hands still intertwined. I don't want to let go, but I finally turn to look at her.
Her cheeks are flushed from the cold arena air, her eyes bright, her lips parted in a breathless half-smile.
Morgan is above us, waving the foam finger at a group of kids three rows up who are waving back. Her attention is completely consumed by the post-game mayhem, so I lean across the armrest, pressing my lips to Zoey's ear.
"Thank you for coming tonight," I say, letting my breath tease her skin.
Her fingers tighten in mine. "Thank you for inviting us."
"I have one more surprise."
Her eyebrow arches, and there's the flicker of suspicion I've grown to love. "I swear to God, if it's more frozen soda—"
"It's not more soda." I grin, pressing my lips to her knuckles. Her breath catches and her eyes go dark. "It's for Morgan. You'll see."
She stares at me, and I watch the war play out across her features. The push and pull. The wanting and the fear.
Then she leans in with a smile and a shake of her head, closing the distance between us, and presses her lips against mine.
It's nothing like the kiss in the bakery that nearly knocked us both sideways. This one is gentler. A choice made in broad daylight, surrounded by thousands of strangers who don't matter at all.
But when she pulls back, her smile is the brightest thing in the entire arena.
Above us, Morgan spins, foam finger raised to the rafters, her voice soaring with the crowd.
"HUNT! CLAIM! STRIKE!"
And somewhere in the noise, in the chaos, in the gold confetti falling like snow around us, Zoey laughs.
And Iknow…
This is the sound I've been looking up into these stands for my whole life.
Chapter 10
Zoey
The arena is still vibrating around us when I finally let myself process what I just did.
I kissed Colt Lane in the middle of twelve thousand strangers, half of whom are still on their feet screaming the team motto like they're at war.
But here's the thing.
I didn't kiss him because the lights were low, or because Cade Jensen just scored a hat trick and emotions are running at an all-time high.
I kissed him because somewhere between the ridiculous spiral straw, the broadcaster voices, and the way he keeps making my daughter smile… I just couldn't sit beside him for one more second without touching him.
It was that simple.
His thumb is still dragging over my knuckles right now, and I'm trying very hard to look like a woman who has her life together, when really I'm a single mother in stained three-year-old jeans, holding hands with a professional hockey player whose face is currently airbrushed onto my daughter's souvenir cup.
