Page 18 of Score Her Heart

I sighed and pulled back so I could look up at him. “We fought, he thinks you and I have been fucking the whole time anyway, but he said he’d get out of my apartment in a couple days.”

Riley frowned at that. “Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that…”

“My apartment?”

He nodded but looked down at the floor. “Yeah. I mean...should you come move in with me now?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I like my place in Fishtown.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I know, but I have a big condo in Old City.”

I looked at him sternly. “I would like to keep my own place.” I left off the part where I said, “In case we decide to get divorced anyway” but from the look on his face, I think he knew that was what I was thinking about.

“Did you get any work done?” he asked, changing the subject.

I sighed again. “Not really. I’m stuck on this book. I think I need to completely rewrite it.”

He checked his watch. “Why don’t you let me take you to dinner tonight? We have an early flight tomorrow, so write for another hour, and we’ll go at seven, okay?” I opened my mouth to protest, but he put a finger on my lips. “For once in your life, Fi, don’t argue with me.”

Normally I would have argued some more, but something inside of me let it go. “Okay, sure.”

Chapter Six

RILEY

I was honestly surprised she agreed to dinner, so I wasn’t going to try to push the whole living arrangement thing. I was hoping that maybe I was worming my way into her heart since she had initiated having sex today, but maybe she just needed something physical. I was not complaining, but I didn’t know how I was supposed to go about showing her that I really wanted this to work.

It had been rash of me to offer to marry her, but I had been in love with this woman since we were teenagers. She always thought I was another dumb jock who had hoes in different area codes, though. My life was complicated, and sure I had some one-night stands…okay, more than some. There had been a couple girls in the past couple years that I thought could be something, but they couldn’t take my schedule.

I watched her return to her laptop, pulling the headset over her head, and the room filled with the tip-tapping of her fingers flying across the keyboard. I walked back into the bedroom and threw a t-shirt over my head. I took out my phone to see if I could get a reservation somewhere nice. It was kinda iffy, but someone must have recognized my name because I was able to get something at one of the nicer sushi bars. I knew she loved her sushi.

After hanging up, I saw a text from my teammate and probably my best friend on the team, Benny. Benny was a massive, brown-skinned, six-foot-four left-winger from Boston, and we had bonded over being two of the few Americans on the team.

BENNY: When you coming back from that Vegas wedding?

I scratched the back of my neck. I wasn’t sure how I was going to break it to my teammates that I had randomly gotten married. I sighed but figured I had to come out and say it.

ME: Uhh….her fiancé flaked on her…so I kind of married her instead???

BENNY: What in the actual fuck? Are you serious?

I ran a hand over my face and groaned. Benny was my best bud, so I knew he would give me shit for this, but I had no idea how I was going to break this to my other teammates. I texted him back immediately.

ME: Yes.

BENNY: Wait…this is the girl from home that you’re legit in love with?

ME: Yup.

BENNY: What the actual fuck?!?

What the fuck indeed. Not like Benny had any room to talk; he was in love with our teammate TJ’s twin sister. Too bad the curvy Canadian hated his guts. Women didn’t like it when a guy stared at their tits and asked if they were real. Poor Benny.

I flicked over to the sports news and looked at a few articles that talked about me and whether if Philly was getting the right value in me. One article was calling for me to be traded because I was taking too many penalties. As if I didn’t know that! As if it was news to me that you could take a bad penalty and cost your team everything?

I threw my phone down on the bed in anger and sank onto it in defeat. Like I didn’t know that this was a bad season for the team. With Metzy in the net, we had a good chance; we just had to work really hard. I shouldn’t have missed my flight home today. I could have used an extra day on the ice for conditioning to get my head in the game. We had been on a hot streak, but it came to an end, and it was like we lost our mojo.

I shook off the emotions and picked up my phone again to try to watch some video to see what I had been doing wrong in the last couple games. I wanted to work hard to stay in Philly and stay with the Bulldogs. My contract expired in July, but since I was an older player, I had a feeling they would let me become an unrestricted free agent and let another team waste their money on me. I really wouldn’t have blamed them if they did. But I loved Philly, and I needed to stay there if I wanted to make my wife fall in love with me.