Page 137 of Changing the Playbook
But as the chaos erupts around us, Mike just holds me, swaying slightly in the middle of the maelstrom like this is our kitchen and not a locker room full of half-naked hockey players. I can’t read what he’s thinking, but he’s holding me so tight that it’s clear he’s afraid he might lose me if he lets me go.
“You sure about this?” His lips brush my ear. “Being apart? Or else moving every few years? And probably having to learn what icing means?”
I pull back to really look at him. This beautiful, complicated man who was willing to amputate a piece of himself to keep me whole. The man who climbs fake rocks with eight-year-olds to make my day easier and can’t write poetry worth shit but tries anyway if it brings a smile to my face.
“I want you,” I tell him. “Everything else is just logistics and frequent flyer miles.”
He kisses me again, softer this time but somehow more intense. A promise written in the language of lips and tongues and hands that know exactly where to touch. Someone starts a chant of ‘MVP’ up, but in our bubble of two, the noise fades to white static.
“I love you,” Mike says against my mouth. “Thank you for giving me back my life.”
“I love you too.” I trace the C on his chest plate, right where his heart hammers against the padding. “Thank you for teaching me how to fly. And flying with me.”
That smile—his real smile, the one I almost killed—breaks across his face like sunrise. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
His teammates part for us, still whooping and hollering. Maine salutes with his beer. Rook shouts something about not doing anything he wouldn’t do. And, as we stumble into the hallway and the door swings shut on the beautiful chaos, the sudden quiet feels like breaking the surface after a deep dive.
“Your place or mine?” he asks.
“Yours is closer.”
“Thank god.”
We make it maybe ten feet before he backs me against the concrete wall. His mouth finds mine with desperate precision, like he’s trying to climb inside my skin through sheer determination. His hands frame my face with devastating gentleness even as his tongue does things that should be illegal in public.
“Thought you wanted to leave,” I gasp when he finally lets me breathe, hands now roaming my body.
“Changed my mind.” His lips trail down my throat. “Need a minute to ask a question?—”
I shut him up with another kiss, pouring every apology, every promise, every ounce of love into the connection. My hands tangle in his sweaty hair and I don’t even care that he smells like hockey equipment and desperation, because it’s the smell of Mike.
“No, seriously,” he pulls away again. “I need to know.”
“What?” I groan in desperation.
He laughs, raw and perfect. “So you actually like hockey now?”
“I can’t say that, but I like you,” I tell him. “And you are hockey, so by the transitive property or whatever, yes. And I’m not going anywhere. Except maybe Calgary. Or Nashville. Or wherever else you get paid a lot of money to be beautiful on ice.”
He drops his forehead to my shoulder. “But you hated hockeysomuch…”
“Can’t hate something that makes you this happy.”
He pulls back to study my face, and whatever he finds there must satisfy him because the last of the tension bleeds out of his shoulders. The haunted look finally, finally fades.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go home.”
Home.
Four letters that suddenly mean something completely different than they did an hour ago. Because home isn’t my apartment or his or even this town. It’s wherever this beautiful, terrifying adventure together takes us.
And for the first time in my life, I can’t wait to find out where that is.
thirty-nine
SOPHIE
The secondI close Mike’s apartment door behind us, he’s on me.
