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“You should probably think about it.”
“Non.”
“You don’t know how annoying I am when I live somewhere full-time. I leave wet towels around, steal food, talk during movies, and sometimes leave dishes in the sink overnight.”
He pulled back far enough to look at me with genuine horror. “We have a dishwasher.”
I laughed. “So that’s the deal breaker?”
“You will learn.”
“You’re very controlling.”
“And you are still moving in.”
The laughter faded as his hands came up to cup my face, and for all Max’s certainty, there was enough hope in his eyes to make my throat tighten.
“Live here,” he said softly. “And then the farm.”
There was nothing possessive about the words, just a vulnerability he showed so rarely that I covered one of his hands with mine and gave him the answer he needed.
“Okay.”
His eyes closed for a moment, and that tiny reaction nearly undid me because Max had spent so much time making sure I understood that I was safe with him that I sometimes forgot he needed reassurance too.
When his eyes opened again, I kissed him.
There were no cameras this time, no roaring crowd or teammates crashing into us, and no scoreboard announcing that we’d just survived Game Seven. There was only Max holding me in the middle of his kitchen while breakfast went cold behind us, and somehow, the quietness of it made the moment every bit as important as the one we’d shared on the ice.
Last night Max had chosen me in front of the world, while this morning, I was choosing him when nobody else was watching.
When we finally separated, he rested his forehead against mine and kept his hands against my face.
“My home is yours.”
“I know.”
His thumb brushed slowly across my cheek. “No, mon cœur. I need you to know this. Not because you are my mate or because of my dragon, and not because you need somewhere to live. I want you here because when I come home, I want you to be here too.”
My throat tightened so quickly I couldn’t answer because there had been too many places in my life where staying depended on somebody else’s mood, too many years when home meant keeping my head down and making myself useful enough that nobody had a reason to throw me out.
Max wasn’t offering me somewhere I was allowed to stay.
He was asking me to make a home with him.
I leaned into his hand, trying to smile past the sudden pressure in my throat. “You might regret saying that when you discover exactly how many hockey sticks I own.”
His answering smile came slowly. “Your hockey sticks may stay.”
“That’s possibly the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“I love you.”
The words were simple and certain, offered without hesitation because Max had never once made me wonder what I meant to him, and I turned my face enough to kiss the palm still resting against my cheek.
“I love you too.”
Eventually we had to leave because the Western Conference Final apparently refused to postpone itself simply because the Colorado Dragons had played the equivalent of almost four periods of hockey the night before.
