Page 93 of Fake Shot

“Don’t come if it’s going to be too hard. Or do if it helps you feel like you’re over what happened. Whatever you feel is going to be best for you is what we’ll do.”

She sits up and cups my jaw in her hands. “Part of me wants to show up in your jersey and prove that I’ve moved on.”

“Jules.” Her name is rough coming off my tongue. I don’t know how to be vulnerable and ask the question that needs to be asked, but I want her to be honest with me about how she’s feeling, and I won’t know unless I ask. “Isthat what it would mean? Because last time you wore my jersey to a game, you did it to keep up appearances. If you wear it now, is it because you’ve truly moved on?”

Her thumbs stroke my face, running along the line of my cheekbones above my beard. “I think so?”

I wish she knew for sure, but this is progress, at least. She’s still got work to do to learn to trust, and I need to keep being there so she knows she can trustme.

“I’m not here to break down your walls,” I tell her. “Youput them up, you have to choose to dismantle them. But don’t fucking think for one second that I’m not going to climb over them whenever I can, hoping that eventually you won’t feel like you need them anymore.”

She presses her lips to mine gently, raining tentative kisses across them before moving to my nose and my forehead. “I know. And I’m working on it. I promise.”

“As long as you’re doing it foryou, Jules. I don’t want to move faster than you’re ready for,” I say as I rest my palm in the space between her breasts. “I’m going to be here for as long as it takes, because you’re worth waiting for.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

COLT

“Iknow I’m starting,” I tell Hartmann as we take the ice for warm-ups, “but you’d better be ready to play tonight.”

“Are your knees bothering you?” He asks the question with complete empathy, unlike my teammates who give me shit for being the oldest player on the team, because he knows what it’s like even though he’s only a couple years into his career.

“No. Because there’s at least a fifty percent chance I’m getting into a fight tonight, and if I do, I plan on winning.”

“Whose ass are we kicking?”

“You’re not kicking anyone’s ass, because we need you to goaltend if I get kicked out.”

“Okay, whose ass areyoukicking?”

“Brock Lester.”

Hartmann snorts. “That guy’s such a douche. What did he do this time?”

I consider what I can say that won’t betray Jules’s confidence or invade her privacy. “It’s an old grudge about something that happened a long time ago.”

“And it’s just rearing its ugly head now?” His eyes squint as he looks at me, then he looks past me at the stands and nods his chin in that direction. “You sure it has nothing to do with her?”

I turn and find Jules descending the steps toward her family’s seats right behind our bench. I didn’t think she’d be here—when I left for the arena this afternoon, she still wasn’t sure. But now, she’s strutting down the stairs like she owns the whole damn arena. Her hair is in loose, bouncy curls and she’s wearing a touch of makeup. Her bootcut jeans with heeled boots make her legs look a mile long, and over her tucked in scoop-neck T-shirt that shows quite a lot of cleavage, she’s wearing a Rebels playoff jacket.

I’m pretty sure the WAGs start working on those way in advance. I think they wore them for the first round and Jules wasn’t wearing one, so I’m not sure where this came from. But the navy-blue satin material of the oversized starter jacket shimmers, while the Rebels logo on the front breast sparkles.

When she sees me looking at her, she gives me a little fist bump in the air with her left hand, and her ring almost blinds me. Good. I want everyone to know she’s mine.

I skate toward her, and she walks straight past her family, sitting in their seats, and meets me down at the glass. And just like the first time I saw her in my jersey, I loop my finger through the air so she’ll turn around. Like last time, she rolls her eyes at me but turns, sweeping her long blonde hair overher shoulder so I can see COLTIER where it arches across her shoulder blades.

When she’s fully turned around and facing me again, I say, “You trying to kill me, Tink?”

She just smirks at me and presses both her hands against the glass. And that’s when I notice that not only is she wearing her engagement ring on her left hand, but she’s got the gold silicone ring on her right.

Someday, I’m going to propose to her for real—I’m certain of it. And I hope she’ll still want these same rings, so we can remember where we started, and see how far we’ve come.

“Where’d the jacket come from?”

“Marissa unexpectedly dropped it off at my house a couple hours ago.”

“That the only reason you’re here tonight?”

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