Felicity: Please tell me you didn’t dump my brother. He would be HEARTBROKEN. And none of us know what that might mean, but it’s terrifying.
Alina: Whoa, wait, Nick has a heart?
Muffy: He does really seem to like you, Kami. Don’t do it. Don’t break his heart.
Kami: Yes, Felicity, I have a spare ticket for your mom for the game. But she can’t mention the garden shed or I’ll accidentally on purpose spill my soda all over myself and then I’ll have to go change, and I’d really like to see the game.
Alina: Fuck that. Spill the soda on her. Nick needs you. He’s on fire since you started banging him.
Maren: #truth
Muffy: Called it.
Felicity: Thanks, Kami. I’ll tell Mom. And I’m muting you all now.
I absently glance at the front door, remember Nick taking me against it last night, remember that he forgot to use a condom, and everything inside me temporarily freezes.
He gives really good wall sex.
But I don’t want him to think I’m trying to trap him into having a baby.
Except…he wouldn’t have stayed if he thought I was trying to trick him into something he didn’t want. And—I shiver—if there are any lasting repercussions to us forgetting protection last night, I have this feeling he’ll be an amazing dad.
He was so—so—perfect about it all. Responsible has never been a word I’d associate with Nick, but after his initial apology, he didn’t freak out.
He took it all on his shoulders and told me everything was okay.
He’s just everything. Everything I always wanted to believe he could be.
And—my heart skips a beat—if I am pregnant, I don’t think he’d marry me just to give our baby the traditional married parent home.
No, I think he might do that because he loves me.
Pancake skids to a stop in front of me and drops a pull toy on the ground, then goes down on her front paws and lifts her haunches, wagging her tail. “Okay, we’ll play,” I tell her.
Dixie and Tiger race over to us too, and I spend the rest of the day hanging out with my dogs and cleaning my house and smiling.
About everything.
And texting Nick.
Who also gives good text.
I head over to my parents’ place just before dinner. Muffy meets us there, and we all pile into my car to go pick up Mrs. Murphy.
There’s a knot in my stomach that I can’t quite shake as we pull down the drive. Sugarbear’s grazing in the front yard, and she trots over to beg for love when we all step out of the car.
“Oh, she’s so cute!” Muffy squeals.
“Very social for a cow,” Mom says.
“She’s such a good girl.” I rub her head, talking doggy talk to her, and I half expect her to flop onto the ground and show me her belly, but she just stands there soaking up the attention and trying to lick us all.
“You should find her a home with other cows,” Mom reminds me gently.
I hold up my hands. “Nick says he’s working on it.”
“Who wouldn’t want to keep such a cutie-patootie around?” Muffy croons to her.
She looks like she’s gained another twenty-five or fifty pounds this week, and Mrs. Murphy looks mildly flustered when she steps onto her front porch and catches sight of the three of us loving all over the calf.
“We offered to get him a real dog instead, but he says he likes this one. Like she’s a dog. And she’s adorable, but there’s nothing cute about stepping in a cow patty at five in the morning. And if you tell his coaches he thinks this cow is a dog, and he gets grounded for mental issues, I’m disowning all of you.”
“She is a dog,” I reply, which earns me another sloppy, grainy kiss from the calf.
“And he’s so good with her,” Mrs. Murphy sighs happily. “He’s doing right by her too. Even if it’s getting mildly inconvenient waiting for everything to fall into place.”
I glance at her.
She smiles serenely, and I realize she has a secret.
And she’s Nick’s mother.
And he has to get his skills from somewhere, which means…
No, I tell myself. I have to trust him.
He would not harm a cow. And neither would his mother.
But they are definitely up to something.
“You’re sure there aren’t any more farm animal pranks being planned in that locker room?” Mom asks as we all troop back to my car.
“Positive.”
Except I’m actually cringing at the thought of what else might be going on in the locker room. Because a little birdy told me things are heating up again between Nick and Zeus after our phone-sex-gone-wrong incident.
And by little birdy, I mean all of my friends, because it hit the underground hockey blog network, and of course Felicity heard from Ares, though she’s kindly refrained from mentioning it.
“Nick learned his lesson,” Mrs. Murphy tells my mom. “The real question will be if that Zeus Berger has learned his.” She sniffs. “Just because he’s seven feet tall doesn’t mean he gets to be a bully. I sometimes can’t believe he and Ares are identical twins. Such very different boys.”
“Nick can handle Zeus,” I tell Mrs. Murphy quietly.
Because he can.
But after hearing a few more stories about the bullies in his childhood, I can see why she’s testy. Nick’s a big guy—well over six feet and built—but the Bergers both dwarf him.
“And he’s hardly innocent,” I add with a head nod toward Sugarbear.
She looks at the calf like she’s going to blame Zeus for taking the prank too far, but even she seems to realize it would be pointless.
Nick doesn’t do anything small.
That is, after all, why the four of us are headed to the arena with front row seats tonight.
“Think he can get another shutout?” Muffy asks when I put the car in gear.
“I think he plays his best games on home ice,” I say.
“With his favorite cheerleaders in the front row,” his mom agrees.
I should probably worry about when she’s going to start asking if I’ve had my period lately. The thought makes me both smile and worry, because while I know she’d be over the moon at the idea of two grandbabies within a year, I don’t want to do babies unintentionally. Especially because Nick and I still haven’t talked about our future. But I decide that for now, I’m just going to enjoy that we’re all ignoring the shed incident and heading into the arena.
Plus, who wants to worry when we’re on our way to a hockey game?
It’s going to be an awesome night.
Forty-Four
Nick
I’m pulling on my pads when my phone buzzes at the top of my locker.
Kami’s texting.
It’s a selfie of her, both our mothers, and Muffy in front of the new Thrusty statue outside the arena. All four of them are in Thrusters jerseys.
Our mothers are arguing over which one of us is more perfect. I think they’re trying to sell each other, she adds to the picture.
I’m so distracted, smiling at the photo of them all happy and bunched together around the giant metal Thrusty for a picture, imagining my mother telling Kami’s mom that I potty trained myself at two and a half and that I always give the best Christmas presents, that I almost miss Zeus walking in.
“Ready to kick some ass?” he asks the room at large.
Grunts and Fuck yeahs fill the room.
He saunters to his locker and stops with a smirk at the box sitting on the bench in front of it.
“Funny, Murphy. I’m not falling for your shit,” he tells me. “You open it.”
“It’s from your mom,” I reply.
He’s still smirking when he reaches around it and grabs his jersey.
Like I’m going to put the good stuff in a clearly labeled, very suspicious box.
There’s a pop!, and everyone around Zeus scatters while a puff of glitter and confetti explodes in the air.
“Fucking damn it!” he barks before he rounds on me, glitter and confetti sparkling all over his face. In his eyebrows. Up his nose. Square on the neck. Sticking to his stubble. It’s sprinkled all over his Thrusters T-shirt and down the front of his sweatpants, and he hasn’t yet realized what’s special about the confetti. “Did you talk to my sister, you fucker?”
I scratch my chin. “You got a little dick there on your face.”
Snickers and outright belly laughs are going through the room, because the entire team’s in here.
Berger scratches his face too, pulls the confetti away, studies it for a minute, and his face breaks into a big-ass grin. “You sneaky motherfucker,” he says. “Come give us a hug.”
Fuck.
Can’t help but like a guy who takes a glitter bomb well.
Especially a dick glitter bomb.
So I let him hug me and smear glitter all the fuck over my pads.
He gets me with a hand to the face, and I shove a second glitter bomb down his pants.
“Not the first time,” Ares mutters with a head shake when confetti explodes out of Zeus’s ass.
“That was you who sat on that fucking bomb the first time,” Zeus replies to his brother, rubbing confetti all over his twin too. “Who’s next? Come get your game makeup, fuckers!”
He snaps a selfie, and I can’t help but stare at the grin.
He got owned, and he’s standing there taking it like a champ.
Knew I liked him for some reason.
“What in the hell are you doing now?” Coach asks from the doorway.
There’s two massive piles of glitter and dick confetti all over the Thrusters logo in the carpet, plus trails of it everywhere. None of us are dressed. And everyone’s looking at me.
“Team building exercise,” I say.
“Fuck, yeah,” Zeus agrees.
He plops his three-hundred-fifty-pound ass right on top of the white box on the bench in front of his locker, and my voice—though higher and a little distorted—comes from the general area of Zeus’s asshole.
“That’ll teach you to fuck with me, jackass! You’ve got a face only a mother could love! Did your wife have to tie your skates for you this morning?”