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I told her I was patient, and I’m willing to be. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t killing me not to have her already. I’ve long since accepted that the way I feel about her isn’t going anywhere. On the contrary, it’s only getting stronger every day. There’s no point in fighting it anymore.
I’m hers for the taking. All I can do now is hope that she doesn’t leave me out to dry.
It’s a risk bringing her into my life, but what Gracie said to me on the phone really stuck. I’ve put my personal life on the back burner for ten years now. Cooper is not only my son but my biggest cheerleader, and if he’s okay with this and the risk it brings, then I should at least try to be too.
He’s already begun to grow a bond with her through his own meddling, and knowing he likes her and wants her to reciprocate those feelings for me is a bit of comfort in this wild unknown.
“I’m going to dinner after tonight’s playoff game with Leo,” Scarlett says from behind me. My shoulders tense as a prickly feeling comes to life in my stomach. Jealousy? “If I get more pucks in the net than you do, from let’s say, the blue line, would you come with me?”
I spin around and find her in the exact same position as earlier. “And if you don’t beat me?”
Her grin is wicked. “I will,” she states. The two simple words go straight to my cock as it hardens in my briefs.
“After you, then, Big Baller. Best of what? Fifteen?”
“Works for me.”
Scarlett skates around me and grabs the bucket of pucks we usually keep off to the side of the ice by the handle before bringing it over. Dropping the bucket in front of me, she kicks it over and begins to separate them into two piles with her stick.
Once there are two piles of fifteen pucks, I take a few glides back, making room for her to line herself up. She pulls a puck from the pile and moves it back and forth across the ice a few times before stilling it.
I watch, nearly in awe, as she wraps her fingers around her stick and, in one swift movement, pulls it back and swings it forward, slapping it against the puck.
She sends it flying, and a second later, it sinks into the centre of the netting. A huff escapes her.
“That’s not where I was aiming.”
I turn to her in disbelief. “Dead centre isn’t good enough?”
“No,” she says before collecting another puck and taking another shot, this time swapping her slapshot for a wrist shot.
Again, her form is perfection. She snaps the shot, and the puck hits the top left corner of the netting.
“Better,” she notes.
“I didn’t think you could get any sexier, but I was wrong. Very, very wrong.”
She peeks at me over her shoulder, brows raised. “Are you a puck bunny, Adam?”
I grin. “When it comes to you, I think I could be just about anything. But Adam the Puck Bunny does have a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“Sure.” She takes another shot and sinks her fourth puck. “Maybe I’ll make you a custom cup with your new nickname on it to replace the one you made for me.”
“You found it?” I had that cup made weeks ago. It’s about time. “Is it still in one piece?”
She shoots two more pucks into the net. “I debated throwing it into traffic, but the road to get here isn’t busy enough. I would have been standing in the ditch for hours.”
A brash laugh escapes me, echoing off the walls. Scarlett gifts me another one of those rare, wide grins, and it pierces my chest.
She looks ahead of her again before lining up and sending off the remaining pucks. All but one makes it inside, and even though I knew I wouldn’t win when I agreed to this bet, the alpha inside of me is a bit grouchy knowing he’s going to lose.
“Ready?” she asks me, a hint of something mischievous in her tone.
I skate up beside her and lean in, kissing her cheek. “I think so.” Gripping my stick, I turn to the side and grab a puck. “What time is dinner? I have to see who can watch Coop for me, even though he’ll probably ask to go home with Maddox after school anyway.”
“Eight,” she says. I nod while winding up my first shot and slapping the puck at the net. When it pings off the top bar and scatters off the boards, Scarlett snorts. “Cooper and Maddox seem pretty close.”
“They’re the closest in age. If we’re going to get into specifics, the entire group is very close, but the Hutton clan are the closest thing to family we have. We spent a lot of time with them when Cooper was really young.”
