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Irritation bubbles over and I march up to him, taking the mug right out of his hand and dumping it down the drain. “That coffee is mine. This”—I go to the stove, point at the pot—“rosemary simple syrup I was making for you is mine.Those cookies I made for you last night aremine. The—”
All of a sudden, he’s in my space again, his face mere millimeters from mine. “I don’t want the cookies or the coffee or the simple syrup.” He kisses me, deeply, intensely, and with lots and lots of tongue. So much that I waver when he finally lets me go, lungs heavy and struggling to draw in enough air. “I just want you here,” he says, fingers in my hair, palm pressed to the hinge of my jaw. “ I want you to stay and enjoy the present. I want you to be right here in my house when that couch I bought comes, so I can fuck you on it. I want you here until Steve is better.” His thumb presses to my bottom lip. “I want you to stay until you’re ready to go.”
My heart is pounding.
Those butterflies flutter in my belly, wings creating a ruckus. “You do?”
His forehead drops to mine, and he seems to be warring with himself.
But then he sighs, fingers tightening in my hair.
“Yeah, butterfly, I do.”
Thirty-Eight
Lake
The snow is piledup ridiculously high on the sides of the road.
The wind is still flying and there’s ice everywhere.
In other words, it’s sketchy as shit.
But I have practice. I have to get back out into the real world, have to do my real job, even though I want to be back at my house, watching crappy movies—
Or watchingNovawatch crappy movies.
When I left, she was sitting in my bed, Steve at her hip, laptop open, editing photos.
I want to be right next to her.
Not pulling into the rink, my shoulders already getting tight. Not grabbing my shit and walking into the practice facility, moving by the offices and through the kitchen, the player’s lounge, trying to avoid talking with anyone because even though I love playing hockey, love living in Tahoe, I don’t love the roster, don’t love my coaches.
And I sure as shit don’t love walking into a room that’s tense and frustrated.
So palpable, I can cut it with a knife.
I’m the captain. I lead by example.
But examples don’t matter with these guys—or most of them, anyway. Knox is a good guy—with the exception of him orchestrating Nova’s arrival at my house. Leo and Riggs are solid too, and I’m lucky to have them on the team.
The only bright spots.
Our goalie is weird. I mean, goalies are strange in general, but this guy takes the cake—as in, literally, he can’t play well unless he has a slice of cake before a game.
And it’s vanilla cake with vanilla icing, no less.
Eating the cake pregame is weird enough—but I could shrug it off because hockey playersareweird with our rituals—but the man has his choice of a hundred varieties of cake and he choosesvanilla?What the actual fuck?
So, asshole coaches, a group of older guys who are lazy, settled in their routines, and not interested in pushing forward, an owner who may or may not be a criminal—the investigation into that was inconclusive, so it’s business as usual, apparently—and a weird fucking goalie. And then the icing—vanilla or otherwise—on top is that the young guys are so fucking young they can’t even name three characters from Harry Potter—and in fact, half of them couldn’t even name Harry Potter himself when asked by the team’s social media crew.
Yup. My team’s awesome.
I grind my teeth together, ignore the tension, and drop my shit in my locker.
We made it to the playoffs last year before crapping out, and I’m not saying that we deserved to win just because our roster is talented—everyoneat this level is talented. But we didn’t do all we should have, all wecouldhave to take the Cup home.
It was an uninspired battle.
