Page 22 of No Pucks Given
Carter left his hand on my shoulder. It calmed me and let me really listen to her words.
Stephanie rolled her eyes, and her hands flew around as she spoke. “First, you kiss like that. Then you go to the bedroom, and about nine months later, there’s a baby."
That wasn’t the worst description of sex. That was a description I could live with. At least she didn’t know anything that happened behind the closed doors. She could learn about that when she was much older. But I should probably double-check to be sure that’s all she knew.
Carter must have been on the same page since he piped in, “What happens in the bedroom?”
Stephanie’s brows furrowed as she tried to figure out what those actions could be. She then said, “I don’t know. Grown-up stuff. I guess you’re not a grown-up since you don’t know.”
Stephanie was so sassy with the last part that it got a rise from Carter. He ran over and started to tickle her, which caused lots of squealing and a very loud and breathless, “Stop!”
Carter chuckled and tickled her hard as he lifted her up into the air. “Never. Not until you say I’m an adult.”
Steph looked at me with hope that I might put an end to the tickling antics, but she had gotten herself into this little battle and needed to learn that sassiness had consequences.
Stephanie huffed out, “Fine. You’re a grown-up.”
Carter immediately stopped and set her back on the ground. Under her breath, she muttered, “Barely.”
Which got me giggling since it was such a typical comment from my sassy girl. Carter threatened to tickle her again. Seeing my two favorite people getting along made me feel so damn lucky.
Chapter 22
Carter
Iadored having Siobhan and Steph here, but I wished they were here for any other reason. They were so easy to live with. I’d never had such good, healthy meals. Mom tried, but Siobhan was an amazing cook.
Stephanie and I were on clean up duty since Siobhan cooked dinner. Yeah, I’d completely fallen into dad mode as much as Scuba had with his kid. The only thing was that only Natalie knew about Stephanie. Well, I had a feeling Suzuki probably knew I had a kid living with me, but he’d fortunately been cool about the whole thing and didn’t say anything to the team.
While emptying the dishwasher, I looked over at Siobhan. Things had been pretty quiet the last couple of days. “So, what do you think if we move you back to your house tomorrow? I’llstay with you that first night back, though I would have to leave the next day to fly east for a road trip.”
“Yeah. We can do that.”
It wasn’t the most excited response, which made me wonder if I had misread the situation. I thought she wanted to go back home since she would apologize every night for being a burden, which she wasn’t. I loved getting to know her on such a deeper level. I just wish it wasn't under these circumstances. I would rather go back to having stress-free sex.
All of a sudden, her phone blurted out the worst-sounding alarm.
I jumped up, glad I had a solid grip on the plate in my hands since the phone was so fucking loud that I nearly dropped it.
“Fuck,” Shiv said with dismay as she grabbed her phone. She stared at it, and whatever she was reading just seemed to break her.
That’s when I realized it was her house alarm. We’d changed the settings to make sure we were alerted to any movement on the exterior of the house and to use maximum volume on the phone.
As much as I wanted it to be a false alarm, her world wouldn’t be shattering like this if it were. After putting down the plate and the tea towel, I wrapped my arms around her. If only hugs could take away pain and stress.
She whispered, “I can’t go home.”
Then she sobbed into my chest. Not wanting to violate her privacy, I didn’t reach for her phone. Instead, I let her get her emotions out. I kissed her forehead. “No one is making you do anything long-term, but we need to go back to deal with whatever that is. What happened?”
She didn’t move, and I let her cry as I thought about what we could do while I was on the road. There was no way she could be left like this, but I didn’t have a choice. I had to go play hockey.
“I think someone broke into the house," she murmured.
Fuck, that was far worse than anything I could have imagined. I was hoping it would be something more minor. Although she said she 'thought' someone had broken into her house, so there was a slight chance that it didn’t really happen.
“We have to deal with whatever happened, babe.”
Siobhan’s spark diminished with every single attack, and today was the worst. The light in her sky-blue eyes dulled to the point where I desperately wanted to make her feel better. She shook her head. “One of us has to be here with Steph. I can’t go back.”
