She has to work tomorrow.
But she still smiles at me and nods. “Yeah. I’m coming.”
Thirty-Three
Kami
I’ve never felt like more of a total disaster than I do on the ride out to Nick’s parents’ place.
We were supposed to go to my place and have crazy monkey sex to celebrate his shutout, but because I flipped out when Aunt Hilda mentioned my stupid drunken ramblings about how I was finally going to go for it with Nick and marry him by this Christmas, I feel like some manipulative puck-chaser.
And then when I tell myself it was never about wanting him just because he’s a really hot hockey player, I start to feel all stalkerish and weird like I might be one of those people who sees a celebrity on TV and thinks that they’re actually talking to me when they smile and make their secret gestures to their family, because I can see past their celebrity-ness to the person inside, and I just know we’re meant for each other.
Except it’s not like that.
I don’t think.
Oh my god. I’m crazy and I just don’t know it.
“Did I tell you what I did to Berger to pay him back for Sugarbear?” Nick asks as he steers us out of downtown, completely oblivious to the second mental breakdown I’m having.
I tell myself I’m a normal, healthy adult who’s had a crush on her best friend’s brother for years, because I did actually know him—kind of—all the way back in high school even though he was a year ahead of me and didn’t know I existed because I was not a hockey puck, stick, jersey, skate, or rink, and I concentrate on the fact that Nick’s back to playing pranks, because of course he is.
This is normal.
“Please tell me it didn’t involve anything live,” I say, because this is also normal.
He laughs. “Nah, after your stunt with the penguins, not even the Berger twins and Frey together are willing to risk it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Coach knows it was you, doesn’t he? You called him and worked it all out before those birds ever hit the ice.”
He’s damn right I did, but admitting that would be akin to giving him power, and no matter how much I like him—rightfully or crazily or whatever—I can’t.
Also, I still felt like a horrible human being, because the penguins could’ve been legitimately traumatized, and I’ve never been one to go running to the teacher just because I didn’t like what someone else was doing. “I used to sneak out of my parents’ house and go over to Muffy’s house so we could write anonymous love emails to our secret high school crushes.”
“What? No, you didn’t.”
“I did. And we’d sometimes sneak a beer because we needed liquid courage on occasion.”
“No, you were—fuck. We went to high school together. Why do I always forget we went to high school together?”
He doesn’t seem to be asking for an answer.
Not with that face. He’s scowling. At himself.
“You were on your way to a hockey scholarship.” I shrug and squeeze his thigh. “You had other things on your mind.”
“I’m a real dickweed.”
“Stop,” I say on a laugh. “You’re trying. That’s the important part. And you always have, in your own special way.”
He cuts a you’re not helping look at me in the dark, and I start to relax for the first time since we left Chester Green’s.
“I’m not saying that shipping a thousand dick cookies to Felicity’s ex was the right way to make your point about him being an ass who needed to leave her alone, but your heart was in the right place.”
He shakes his head like he’s seeing himself for the first time, which is also crazy, but he just looks so…astonished.
Like he’s having one of those life epiphanies where you’ve sort of known that Earth rotates around the sun, but you didn’t actually realize until right this minute that that makes Earth secondary in the solar system, because the sun actually can survive without Earth.
“Do you know how rare it is for someone to be able to focus as hard on one thing as you do?” I say softly. “And not just focus on it, but succeed at it? You have dedication at a level most people will never be able to understand, much less apply.”
He’s still frowning. “You save animals’ lives every day.”
“Trust me, it’s definitely not every day.”
“Maren’s saving the environment.”
I hide my surprise that he knows what Maren does for a job, because that’s not going to help here. “She has a passion. Everyone has a passion. I like to think they do, anyway.”
“I just stop a puck from going in the net.”
“There’s value in entertainment, Nick. You give people an escape. And something to cheer for. And you give kids a role model.”
He cuts another look at me.
“Most kids don’t know about the dick cookies. Or that book you wrote.”
He cracks a grin at that one. “Those royalty checks all go to charity,” he says.
“I know.”
Crazy man wrote a book mocking another one of Felicity’s ex-boyfriends, and even though he published it under a pseudonym, people know it was him.
Hopefully not people under the age of twenty-five, or better yet, forty-seven, because it’s really terrible in both the plot and the writing, and I’m pretty certain he meant it to be, but it sells, and he writes a check every month to a local organization that provides supplies for women’s shelters.
Because he’s not a bad guy.
He’s just a little blind sometimes.
“And no one gives gifts like you do,” I add.
He doesn’t even smile at that. “I’m trying, Kami,” he says instead.
“It doesn’t take much,” I whisper. “I’m pretty easy when it comes to you.”
He pulls my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles.
And it’s the most perfect thing he could do.
Thirty-Four
Nick
I park down the drive so my headlights won’t wake my parents, and we tiptoe back to Mom’s garden shed, where Sugarbear’s sleeping for the night, because Mom couldn’t stand the idea of the cow sleeping outside in the elements and getting cold. She lifts her head when we sneak inside, and she moos.
“Aww, you sweet girl.” Kami leans over and kisses her head.
Doesn’t have to lean far. The cow’s growing.
“Who’s a good puppy?” she whispers, and I crack up.
“If the team docs knew I was calling this cow a puppy, they’d have me talking to shrinks.”
“They have no imagination at all.”
Sugarbear moos again and nuzzles Kami’s stomach.
“I still need to find her a forever home,” she says on a sigh.
“Fuck that. I’m buying a farm.”
I’m not, but when Kami turns to me with all that wide-eyed hope, shit.
Maybe I am buying a farm.
“You can’t get a farm,” she says on a laugh. “You’re gone half the year. And you spend at least a solid month playing pranks.”
“So I’ll hire a caretaker. And we’ll get a big farmhouse where you can spend the night if you don’t want to drive back to the city after playing fetch with the cow all night, and Tiger and Dixie and Pancake can get a doggie playground.”
And the idea’s growing on me faster than I can keep up.
“Quit teasing me, Murphy. It’s like you’re trying to talk your way into my pants.”
“Always. Do you know anything about growing avocados? Felicity would shit if we had an avocado tree.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re too far north to grow avocados.”
“Then we’ll build a greenhouse and grow avocados inside and we can make them all organic and tell her she has to say three nice things about you every time she wants one.”
Kami’s shaking her head at me. “It’s like you don’t even want to make her work for it.”
Sugarbear moos in agreement. Stinks like wet cow in here, and my jacket isn’t helping, so I shrug out of it and toss it outside before pulling the door shut on the shed again. My parents moved all the garden supplies and the riding lawnmower to the garage, so the shelves are bare and Sugarbear’s tied to a hook at the far end.
But just for sleeping overnight.
She’ll get free rein of the yard again in the morning.
“You really want to live on a farm someday?” I ask Kami, because I do pay attention from time to time.
“Sometimes,” she says slowly. “I love the open space, and the lack of traffic, and it just feels so…romantic, I guess. I’d probably actually hate it if I lived there. Plus, all my family’s here. All my friends are here. If I moved out to the country—they’d be so far away.”
“I could get you a helicopter. Cuts down on commute times.”
She tips her head back and laughs, and I can’t help myself.
I grab her at the waist and lean down to kiss those smiling lips.
“Ohmygod, you stink,” she says on another laugh.
“I really do,” I agree.
“Maybe you should lose the shirt too,” she whispers against my mouth.
“Done.”
I whip off the polo and toss it somewhere behind me, backing her against the wall between the door and the window and sliding my hands down her hips. “I missed your lips,” I tell her before I rub mine against hers.
“You do that so well,” she whispers.
“I want to do it all the time.”
I graze her bottom lip with my teeth, and her moan makes me hard in an instant. Painfully, instantly, insistently hard.
“Again,” she gasps.
I bite harder, just to the point that she’s panting, and scrape her lip again. She grips my hair and pulls me tight, wrapping one leg around my hip while she dives into kissing me like we might never see each other again.