Page 84 of Changing the Playbook
Mike’s laughter echoes through the clearing, rich and unrestrained, and despite my mortification, I’m laughing too. Because yes, this is my life. Even when she’s exposing my dating history, even when she sees straight through my defenses…
And if Mike keeps laughing at my disasters, keeps looking at me with those eyes, keeps finding excuses for our legs to touch, keeps defending me to eight-year-olds like I’m worth protecting... Well, maybe there’s space in my life for him after all.
Probably.
twenty-four
SOPHIE
“Hey, sleepyhead.”My whisper barely carries to the backseat where Hazel has curled into a tight ball, blonde curls spilling across her face. “We’re home.”
Silence.
I watch for a moment, transfixed as her chest rises and falls in the steady rhythm of deep sleep, mouth slightly open. The streetlight catches the glitter still clinging to her cheek from whatever craft project she’d ambushed us with at McDonald’s.
“I think someone used up all her energy reserves,” Mike says, voice low and amused as he shifts the car into park.
My parents’ porch light spills golden across the front lawn, turning their ordinary colonial into something warm and welcoming against the darkness. The sight tightens something in my chest—not quite homesickness, but close enough.
I turn to Mike and smile. “Thanks for today. For all of it. But especially taking the role of Chief Bug Guy.”
“Even the part where your sister choreographed a flash mob to ‘Baby Shark’ and recruited half the climbing gym?”
Heat floods my face at the memory. “Especially that part. You moved like someone was running electricity through your limbs at half speed.”
“That’s both highly specific and emotionally devastating.” His mock offense dissolves into a grin. “Some of us save all our coordination for ice skates.”
The car falls silent again, but it’s the loaded kind—thick with awareness of how close we’re sitting, how his cologne has claimed every molecule of air in this space. I know what I’m thinking, and the decisions I’ve made in the last few hours, but now I wish that I could read his mind.
My fingers twist the hem of my jacket. “We should probably…”
“Right. Yeah. Of course.”
He’s out and opening the back door before I can overthink it further. I gather Hazel’s detritus—backpack, jacket, three Happy Meal toys she’d named and created an entire backstory for—and when I look up, Mike already has my sister cradled against his chest.
My lungs forget how to work. The air leaves me in a silent rush, and something pools low in my belly. Not just attraction—though that’s certainly there, insistent and undeniable—but something more terrifying than that, something that feels like certainty.
He didn’t just pass my test today. He aced it with extra credit.
I lead him up the walkway on legs that feel disconnected from my brain. Before my knuckles can meet wood, the door swings inward. Dad stands there in his ancient Michigan Hockey sweatshirt that has seen better decades, but that he’d die without.
“You’re late.” No accusation colors his tone, just observation. “Hazel asleep already?”
“Sorry. We stopped for dinner after the climbing gym.” I shift my weight. “And then there was the whole impromptu dance party situation…”
“It’s fine, Sophie.” But his gaze has already traveled past me to Mike, cataloging every detail. His eyebrow performs that subtle arch I remember from childhood, a one that meant I was about to get a lecture about leaving my bike in the driveway.
Desperately wanting to break the silence, I stammer a completely unnecessary introduction. “I guess you two already know?—”
“Coach.” Mike executes an impressive nod considering he’s got forty pounds of drooling eight-year-old decorating his shoulder.
Dad’s eyes complete another circuit: Mike, me, sleeping Hazel, back to Mike. I can practically see the calculations happening—daughter, player, unexpected Saturday activity, showing up at family home. Although he knew we were both taking Hazel out today, he’s doing the math on exactly what this situation is.
“Altman.” He steps aside. “Second door on the right.”
Mike nods, squeezes past us both, and then navigates the stairs with an athlete’s grace while I hover in the entryway, trying to telegraph “nothing to see here” with every fiber of my being. Both my father and I stand in awkward silence until we’re sure Mike is out of earshot.
“So,” I grasp for literally any topic that isn’t the six-foot-four hockey player currently tucking my sister into bed. “How was New York?”
