Page 46 of The Sweetest Risk

Then he places a piece of my hair that I left out of my ponytail behind my ear. “I like your hair up in a ponytail.” I swing my head to the side and show off my pink ribbon that I tied into a bow, securing the ponytail. He laughs, “Of course you have a pink bow in your hair.”

I shrug while playing with the drawstring of his joggers. “I thought I’d switch things up a little.”

“Well, I like the switch-up. It may come in handy later.” He winks at me, making my stomach somersault.What does that mean?He then turns around and grabs a box from the other side of the aisle. He hands it to me. “Here. Open it.”

“Another package?” I feel a sudden twinge of guilt in my stomach for not getting him anything at all. “Tristan, you know I don’t need you to buy me anything, right?”

“Will you just open it? And I will spoil my girl if I want to.”My girl.I grin and take the box. I lift the lid and see hockeyskates. And not standard black hockey skates. Custom pink ones. With green laces and the number 92 printed on the side. “If we are going to continue your lessons, I want you to have the best skates on the market. No more rental skates for you. Do you like them?”

“I love them! Thank you. They are perfect.”

“Just like you, Cupcake.” He kisses me on my forehead. Is this a dream? Because it sure feels like one. The most surreal one yet. One where I might be falling in love with my enemy with every passing moment. One where I think he is falling for me, too. “Here, sit down on this bench and I’ll put them on for you.”

Without protest, I sit and watch Tristan take extra care of putting my skates on properly. I can tell he does this daily. Once he is done securing them on my feet, he takes my hands and guides me onto the ice. My body jolts when Tristan yells up to the media box, “Hey Randall, my man, can you play that playlist I have queued up and do that special thing I requested earlier?”

Randall’s voice booms across the empty arena. “Sure thing, Mr. Lawson.”

The lights dim around us and light ricochets off the disco ball that starts turning above us. One of my favorite songs from my favorite band,The Paper Kites, starts playing. This isn’t just any skating lesson. This is Tristan Lawson’s version of a romantic date. This is him wooing me. And I am completely falling for it. Forget what I said earlier about maybe falling for Tristan.

I am unquestionably falling in love with him.

Tristan is skating backwards so I have no choice but to look up at him. “Are you trying to romance me, Mr. Lawson?”

“Is it working?” He tightens his grip on my hands and smirks.

It is standard for me to resort to giving him a hard time or coming back with a deflective comment. Instead, I let him in. “Maybe.” I squeeze his hands back.

He continues to effortlessly glide backwards while I struggle to find my equilibrium on the ice. But even though that struggle, I feel safe. My heart is beating wildly but this time it isn’t because I am afraid of the ice – it is because the man in front of me, who put so much thought into this night, is smiling at me like I’ve never been smiled at before.

My gaze shifts down towards the ice so I can save face. I slide a bit, but Tristan is right there to hold me up and prevent me from falling on my ass again. At least we are somewhat alone this time and not in front of a bunch of kindergarteners and their chaperones.

Tristan must sense my self-doubt. “Don’t think. Just skate, Cupcake.”

“Easy for you to say. You do this for a living. It is your whole world, Hot Shot.” I raise an eyebrow at him and smile.

He sighs. “I used to think the only thing that mattered to me was hockey. Making it into the NHL was my dream ever since I stepped foot onto the ice when I was four. You’re right, my world only consisted of hockey. The ice. The puck. The crowd.” He leads us to the middle of the ice and our skating ceases. Everything but Tristan’s voice seems to fade into the background. He wraps his arms around me, trapping the bottom of my ponytail under his massive, strong forearms, angling my face up so I have nowhere to look but his hazel eyes. “Until I met you.”

I inhale sharply. I’ve never seen Tristan look so serious and vulnerable all at once.

“I wanted so desperately to get your attention with my hockey skills because for so long that was the only way I ever got attention. But I soon learned you couldn’t care less about hockey. You are my biggest challenge and the best thing I could ever attain in this life. Every single goal I’ve scored since I met you was my own personal love note to you, Brooke.”

I tighten my arms around his lower back as he presses a kiss on my forehead. I am a puddle.

He continues, “I found out over time that my hockey skills weren’t going to be the thing to win you over. And for a long time I lost hope that I would ever be with you. I just considered myself lucky that I was in your life at all. The sound of your voice ignited my soul every time I was near you. The mere fact that you are on this earth is a blessing to me and motivation enough for me to be the best version of myself on and off the ice. It was because of you that I trained as hard as I did. It was because of you that I never let another woman fully in. It’s not that I wanted to be a bachelor or a playboy or whatever the hell you want to call it. No other woman was good enough to have my whole heart. I didn’t want to let them in because I was reserving that spot for you.”

That’s it. My heart no longer belongs to me. It belongs to the man holding onto me in his big, strong arms in the middle of his favorite place in the world, while my favorite song by my favorite band is playing. We can no longer fight whatever magic led us into each other’s lives.

I adjust my arms to wrap them around his neck and bring his lips down to mine, more like colliding his lips to mine, almost knocking him off-balance. I need to kiss him like I need air to breathe. I want to show him how much I need him. I don’t want him to doubt my feelings about him or misconstrue them in any way. My hands travel down his sculpted chest and finally find the hem of his shirt. Talk about unnecessary clothes. My fingers graze the top of his joggers and his skin sears mine.

He laughs against my lips and says, “Careful, Cupcake. We aren’t completely alone.”

“Well, as sweet as this romancing is, maybe we should get out of here so that wearecompletely alone,” I whisper against his mouth.

“I promise you that we will go back to my house after this. But I have one more place to show you, if that’s okay?”

I playfully roll my eyes and scoff, “I guess.”

The next thing I know, Tristan grabs my ass and lifts me up so my legs are straddling his torso as his hands stay firmly on my butt. He squeezes a little and says, “Roll your eyes again, and see what happens, Cupcake.” He skates to the edge of the ice toward the opening to the tunnel. I expect him to lower me to the ground once we are off the ice, but Tristan keeps me in his arms, walking with ease down the tunnel. He makes a turn and we enter the Dallas Storm locker room.

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