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“I’m fine. I played nearly eighty minutes of hockey yesterday, got slammed into the boards more times than I can remember, blocked at least two shots with the same thigh, and then got hauled down from behind while I was trying to score the winning goal. I’m going to make noises when I move for at least the next three days.”
“Seventy-seven minutes and forty-three seconds.”
I finally opened my eyes and twisted enough to look at him. “You know exactly how long the game lasted?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
Max propped himself onto one elbow and regarded me as though I was being deliberately stupid. His hair was sticking up on one side, there was a faint crease from the pillow along his cheek, and if the rest of the world could have seen Captain Max Renaud right now, his reputation would never recover.
“Because I was there.”
“That doesn’t explain why you know the seconds.”
“I am captain.”
“I don’t think knowing the exact length of yesterday’s game is part of your job description.”
“It should be.”
I laughed and immediately regretted it when my ribs joined the list of body parts lodging formal complaints, which was apparently all the encouragement Max needed to resume his medical interrogation.
“Don’t start,” I warned when his hand began moving carefully over my side.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t need to because I can see you mentally cataloguing every bruise I have. Cinder checked me last night, he’s checking me again at recovery this morning, and you can stop looking at me as though you’re considering wrapping me in bubble wrap.”
His eyes narrowed, and he looked so thoroughly unimpressed with me that I wanted to kiss him, so I did.
Max’s irritation lasted approximately half a second before his hand slid into my hair and he kissed me back, slowly enough that I forgot about the ache in my thigh and the bruise across my shoulder. There was no urgency to it, which made it completely different from the kiss we’d shared on the ice last night, when adrenaline and relief and thousands of screaming people had turned everything into something enormous.
This was simply Max: warm skin, morning breath, messy hair, one hand tangled with mine beneath the covers and the other cupping the back of my neck while he kissed me as though waking up beside me was something he intended to spend a very long time getting used to.
The thought made my chest tighten because I loved him, and sometimes the realization still arrived with enough force to surprise me, not because I doubted it but because I’d spent so many years making sure nobody could get close enough to matter. Somehow Max had walked straight through every defense I had, survived every attempt I made to convince him he would be better off somewhere else, and stubbornly stayed until I finally understood that I didn’t simply want him beside me.
I wanted to stay too.
When we separated, he brushed his nose against mine and murmured, “Bonjour.”
I smiled as I reached up to smooth the pillow crease on his cheek. “That would’ve been more convincing before you interrogated me about my injuries.”
“I worry.”
“I know, and I love you for it.”
Something about Max softened every time I told him that, even though I’d said it before and intended to say it often enough that eventually he stopped looking as though the words had caught him by surprise.
Then again, maybe I didn’t want him to stop completely.
“I love you too, mon cœur.”
I kissed him again because there really wasn’t an adequate verbal response to Max speaking French while looking at me like that.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand, and neither of us moved. A few seconds later it buzzed again, then mine started vibrating somewhere on the floor beside the bed, but Max merely tightened the arm around me.
“No.”
