I stood up and pulled on his hand. “Please.”
“Keep begging me, Hawaii,” he said as he stood up. “I like it so much I might just fuck you in the middle of this party.”
I laughed, looking around at the room full of college students who were well beyond a slight buzz. “Sadly, I’m sure half of them wouldn’t even notice at this point.”
“Forget the bathroom,” Leo said, wrapping his arms around my waist and kissing my neck from behind as we wove through the party. “Let’s go back to your room and stay there.”
“You don’t want to celebrate anymore?” I asked, looking over my shoulder.
He smirked at me. “I want to celebrate the reporter who made this the best season yet. And I want to do that with room service and champagne—sans clothes.”
He lifted me off the ground and I squealed as I kicked my feet. “What do you say, Hawaii?”
“Absolutely,” I said as he put me down and I spun around to plant one more deep kiss on him.
People always say timegoes by fast, but I’d never understood what that meant until I’d walked across the stage to accept my diploma while Alyssa and Jia hooted and hollered from the crowd, determined to be heard over the sounds of my family who did not make it easy on them. It was a surreal moment, one that captured both the achievement of the last four years and marked the end of an entire chapter of my life. Jia was going home to Chicago and Alyssa was staying in Boston for a master’s degree, with plans to go home to Florida in a couple years. We were all splitting up, and now our friendships would have to stand the test of distance and time or slowly fizzle out.
Leo walked across the stage shortly after I sat back down and it was impossible to make out a single voice in the cheers that sounded from his teammates, his family, and me. But even still, he looked for me in the crowd, where I tried to be heard, cheering for him one last time.
My family had a flight home shortly after the ceremony and I hugged them all goodbye as we stood in one of the quads on campus. I’d expected things to be awkward in the week they’d spent with Leo and me before graduation since everyone we loved knew we were doomed in a couple days, but instead, our families got along so well and seemed tointegrate seamlessly to the point that I started to think maybe their goal was to torture us with a vision of how great things could be.
Mom talked up the city of Boston an awful lot for someone who hated cold weather and thrived in the Hawaiian climate and Kennedy cornered me to tell me how amazing Leo’s family was, but other than that, they were all perfectly normal. It had almost been unsettling.Is no one going to tell us we’re making a terrible mistake? Do they think we’re doing the right thing?Because I wasn’t sure at all.
Over the last few days I was becoming more worried we were about to make a huge mistake. It nagged at me more and more with each passing hour. But my fear wasn’t something I could easily bring up with Leo when we’d been surrounded by one family member or another. I was going to have to talk to Leo when we were alone.
My flight back to Oahu was scheduled for two days after graduation. There were a few on-campus celebrations I’d wanted to attend and every day here was another day with Leo, so even if I hadn’t wanted to attend them, I sure as hell would have pretended I did.
By the time Leo and I got back to his dorm after saying goodbye to my family and having dinner with his, I figured I’d give it one more day before I told him what I was worried about. We fell asleep watchingModern Familyand when I woke up with my arm across his chest, the reminder came crashing down on me and I shot up in bed.
The movement startled him, and he blinked his eyes open, pushing himself up against the headboard. “You okay, Hawaii?”
“I’m late,” I said.
Leo scoffed. “You’re never late for anything, Soph.”
“Well tell that to my period. Because it’s a week late,” I said.
Chapter Forty-Three
Leo
Nothing wakes you upquite like someone telling you they might be pregnant with your child.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Hawaii, have you taken a pregnancy test?”
“No,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. I grabbed her and pulled her to me as a sob rose from her chest. “I figured it was nothing, just stress. It still might be nothing. But I can’t go back to Hawaii without knowing.”
“Damn straight, because if you’re pregnant I’m getting on that plane with you,” I said, the words flying out before the thought had even fully formed in my head. It didn’t matter though; it was true. I’d been thinking for months that hockey wasn’t worth it if I didn’t have Sophia in my life, but I couldn’t bring myself to just abandon the thing I’d been working toward since I was five. The thing my parents had given so muchto help me achieve and that fulfilled me in a way I didn’t think I’d find with anything else.
Still, three weeks ago I’d sprinted to the nearest bathroom and barely made it to the toilet to throw up my breakfast after I signed my NHL contract. It had nothing to do with nerves about joining the NHL and everything to do with feeling like I’d just signed away the most important person in my life in exchange for my dream career. Talk about selling your soul to the devil.
Sophia lifted her head. “You’re not giving up hockey even if I’m pregnant.”
“The fuck I’m not, Hawaii,” I said.
“I could stay here,” she said quietly.
“No, we already talked about that. You love your family too much, you’re not doing that.”
