Page 111 of A Heart Worth Finding
NOW: April 5, 2024
On the first Fridayof April, Coach had blessedly given the team the day off from practice. They’d won both of their games the previous weekend in South Dakota, which meant the Spartans were heading to the Final Four in St. Paul. They didn’t play again for another week, so Coach gave them one day to rest, relax, and recover before they were back at it tomorrow.
It also happened to be four years to the day since he’d first laid eyes on Jessica Daniels.
To celebrate, they were holed up in the living room at his house, her final project before receiving her teaching degree spread out on the floor around her while Jack mindlessly scrolled through his phone on the couch behind her.
It had all the makings of a perfectly normal, quiet day.
Until Aiden and Kenzie walked into the room, his teammate wearing a shit-eating grin, Kenzie apprehensively trailing behind him.
Jack’s hackles immediately rose.
“I don’t like that look,” he said to Aiden.
“I have an…idea,” his teammate blurted. Next to him, Kenzie scoffed, and Aiden shot her a glare. “Okay, fine. It’s less an idea and more…a dare.”
“No,” Jack said instantly. That devilish gleam in Aiden’s eye couldn’t mean anything good, and if he’d learned anything in the fall when Aiden got suspended, it was that no dare was worth risking playing time. Especially not when they were one win away from playing in a title game.
“You haven’t even let me say what it is!”
“The answer is still no.”
“Just hear him out,” Kenzie said, looking resigned. “It won’t affect hockey.”
“Just spit it out, Aiden,” Jessica said, rising from the floor to stand, crossing her arms over her chest.
To Jack, Aiden said, “I dare you and Jess to get matching tattoos.”
“Wait what? Why are we dragging Jess into this?”
“In case you forgot,” Kenzie said, “I wasn’t exempt from dares, so why should she be?”
“Thanks a lot, Kenz,” Jessica said sarcastically, though Jack noted there was no actual anger in her tone.
He turned to her and curled his hands around her upper arms. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I think she does,” Kenzie said.
“Butt out, bunny,” Jack said without looking at her.
“I’m just saying. You guys made me make out with Aiden in front of like fifty people. A video of which ended up online. A tattoo is small potatoes compared to that.”
“A tattoo isnot‘small potatoes,’” Jack said, throwing quotation marks around the words. “Tattoos are really permanent. Like…the most permanent.”
“You already have one,” Aiden reminded him. “What’s one more?”
“Jess doesn’t have any, though,” Jack said, still not taking his eyes off her.
“I’m not opposed to the idea,” she said quietly.
Jack blinked slowly, unsure he’d heard her correctly. “Are you sure?” he asked. “A tattoo is one thing, but a matching tattoo? With me?”
“What’s so bad about that?”
“I mean, nothing really,” Jack said. “Only, what if…”
He trailed off, unwilling to voice the words aloud. What if they didn’t stay together? He wanted Jessica by his side for the rest of his life, but sometimes, things didn’t always work out the way one planned.
