Her brow furrows. “Really?”
“Cuffs are fraying.”
Her brow furrows deeper. “On a hockey player’s salary.”
“I’m hard on shirts.”
She looks at me like she’s trying to decide whether to call this what it is. I keep my expression bland and steal a piece of her bread.
“Do you think we can get some clothes for me?” I ask innocently.
“Don’t you have a stylist or something?” She gives me a suspicious look.
“A stylist?” I scoff. “I’m not a celebrity, Miranda.”
“Well, you kind of are,” she murmurs. “But sure. I don’t mind.”
We wrap up dinner and head to our next location. My stylist will not be pleased when he finds out I let somebody aside from him dress me, but I couldn’t give two shits about that. Standing in a men’s boutique, I stay still as Miranda holds up two darkblue button-downs in front of me with the seriousness of a woman defusing a bomb.
“This one.” She thrusts the left one at me. “The other has weird stitching at the collar. You’ll hate it after one wear.”
I take it. I’m trying not to smile. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“It’s your call,” I murmur.
“Grayson, I’m trying to do this in under an hour. Please stop pretending you have opinions.”
By the time we leave, there is a charcoal sweater that Miranda picked because she said it would look good on me, two dark blue shirts that she said would look good on me, a black button-up shirt with a matching pair of slacks because “black really suits you,” a pair of jeans she said would fit my thighs better than the brand I usually wear, and three things for Ethan that she insisted weren’t necessary while picking them out anyway: a tiny denim jacket, a pair of sneakers in his size with little wolves embroidered on the side because she said he’d lose his mind, and a stuffed dog smaller than ChuChu that she said could be ChuChu’s friend.
My wolf has been a low, contented hum the entire time.
She chose every single thing on my body for the next week. Every time I reach into the closet, I’ll be reaching for something she put her hands on.
Miranda may not know it, but this is how mates groom each other, and my wolf is on cloud nine.
We head back to the car. The sun is getting lower in the sky, and Coach is going to drop Ethan back by sunset. As I drive, Miranda seems to be lost in thought.
“What’s wrong?”
She glances at me. “Nothing. Seeing Vivian was a surprise. I didn’t think she had such a low opinion of me. She said the whole hospital thought that.”
“Does it upset you?” I don’t know why I asked that. Of course she’s upset.
“No.”
Her denial surprises me. “Really?”
She gives me a small smile. “The people who know me best know the truth. And honestly, I knew there would be backlash from our engagement. Vivian was jealous. But I do wonder how long this will follow me.”
Before I can ask what she means, her phone pings, and she checks it. Her brows furrow.
“Everything okay?”
“Hm.” She taps something. “Just a response from one of the hospitals I applied to. They’ve moved me to the second round.”
The world tilts a half degree.
