Page 71 of Heart Checked By the Hockey Heartthrob

“Will you marry me?”

No fanfare. No extra words.

Just that.

The question I didn’t expect today.

The one I haven’t stopped hoping for.

I drop to my knees in front of him, heart slamming into ribs, and cover his hand with mine.

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Yes?”

“Yes,” I say again, louder now. “Of course, yes.”

The backyard erupts into whoops and applause. Abby shrieks. Jake throws his arms in the air and asks if he can call me Uncle Wes now instead of Coach Wes. Someone lets loose a beach ball that smacks Griff in the face mid-toast. Liz cries into her lemonade.

Wes slips the ring onto my finger—simple, perfect, sparkling—and then pulls me into his arms.

We don’t kiss right away.

We just hold each other.

Like two people who finally stopped running. Who found something worth standing still for.

Later, after the sun dips behind the water and the firepit flickers to life, I rest my head on Wes’s shoulder and trace the edge of the ring with my thumb.

“This wasn’t the s’mores announcement I was expecting,” I murmur.

“Better or worse?”

“Better,” I say, lifting my face to meet his. “Infinitely better.”

He presses a kiss to my temple, and I close my eyes.

It doesn’t feel like the end of something.

It feels like the beginning.

Chapter twenty-six

Wes

The youth hockey rink smells like sweat, popcorn, and the faint metallic echo of sharpened skates gliding across the ice. I love it. Always have. But today feels different. Today, I’m not just a former player or a local coach.

Today, I feel like a man who belongs.

The Sunset Cove Youth Hockey Program is hosting its first ever Skills and Sportsmanship Showcase. There are shooting accuracy contests, puck relay races, a fastest skater track, and even a goalie dunk tank—the kids are going wild. Parents line the bleachers, phones out, cheering and laughing.

I’m manning the stickhandling station and coaching a nervous eleven-year-old named Cody, whose skates are slightly too big. He fumbles the puck, cheeks flaming.

“Hey,” I say, kneeling next to him. “You’re already doing better than I did my first year. Want to know a trick?”

He nods.

I guide his hands slightly closer together. “Right there. Less wrist strain. Now try again—smooth and slow.”

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