That’s her car.
In the parking lot.
Right next to a beater I don’t recognize.
Someone’s holding her hostage at the clinic.
“The fucking hell they are,” I snarl.
I don’t know if I put my car in park, or if I shut off the engine, or if I shut the door. All I know is that I’m banging on the back door of the clinic, and if that fucker hurts her, I will tear him limb from bloody limb and then I’ll use his bloody limbs to beat his face until it’s pulp, and then I’ll—
The door swings open, and a woman in animal-print scrubs leaps back. “Oh!”
“Kami,” I say.
Say. Order.
Bark.
Growl.
She backs up and flicks a finger down the hallway to the left.
So maybe I don’t look as terrifying as I do terrified, because if I were facing me invading a building, I’d put up a fucking fight.
I’m charging down the hallway so fast, I go right past her the first time.
It’s only as I’m passing the doorway that I process she’s sitting at a desk in a cramped office, her head bent over paperwork.
I spin and charge into the room, my lungs heaving, because fuck, she’s gorgeous. And in one piece. And alone. And safe.
And safe.
She blinks up at me with big, disconcerted brown eyes that go slightly wide as her nose quivers.
Fuck, I smell like ass.
“You weren’t at the game,” I sputter, because my brain’s still processing that she’s here. And she’s safe. And she wasn’t at the game.
But she’s Kami.
She had a fucking good reason.
She probably has ten million fucking better things to do than me.
Her lips draw down like she’s drawing the same fucking conclusion. “Muffy’s cat swallowed a battery and needed emergency surgery,” she says slowly. “Mom’s at a conference. If we’d waited, it would’ve died.”
“A…what?”
“Right?” She rubs her eyes. “Most cats won’t even take a pill. Muffy’s swallows a freaking button battery. A watch battery.”
I’m dropping to my knees in front of her desk, because she’s okay. She’s fucking okay.
She’s better than okay.
She’s a perfect fucking superhero.
“I thought something happened to you.” I can’t shut up. I tell myself to shut up, but I’m babbling like a lunatic. “A car accident, or a robbery gone wrong, or just…something. And I couldn’t breathe at the idea of this world without you in it. Of my life without you in it.”
She blinks at me through heavy pink eyelids. “My phone died,” she says. “It’s been—Nick, I’m so—”
“Oh, fuck. The cat. Is she okay? What can I do?”
“What can you…do?”
Now she’s looking at me like I’m an idiot, because what the fuck can a dumbass jock do to save a cat who needs emergency surgery?
“For…you,” I finish lamely.
It’s Kami.
She doesn’t need me. She’s smart and strong and capable, and I’m just the guy who can’t let her go.
“Or Muffy,” I add. Maybe she needs a comforting pat on the shoulder. I can be the hero who patted a woman who almost lost a cat.
She stares at me a minute longer. “How was the game?” she asks.
“The game? Fuck the game. You were here saving a cat. I was just—just—trying to stop a puck from going in a net and watching a bunch of puckheads fight over a fucking game. Christ, Kami, I don’t know why you don’t get arenas full of people screaming your name. You’re the real hero. I was just playing a fucking game, and you’re here saving people’s pets.”
She’s still staring at me like I’ve lost my mind.
Maybe I have.
But I don’t care, because I’ve finally found the most important part of life, the one thing that money and fame and fake hero worship can’t touch, and I’m done putting the wrong things first and ignoring what matters. “Kami—” I start, because I’m not putting this off one more minute.
But before I can finish, she’s holding my cheeks and leaning over her desk and kissing me.
Soft, peppered kisses all over my lips that turn into long, slow, deep kisses, her hands anchoring my head while I grip her arms, because this.
This is everything I need.
She’s safe.
She’s not breaking up with me.
She loves me despite me. And I’m the idiot who almost lost her because I took too long to notice.
I pull out of the kiss, because this cannot wait another minute. I caress her cheeks and hold her where I can look into those beautiful soft eyes. “I love you,” I tell her.
It comes out on a strangled whisper, so I try again. “I love you.”
Stronger. “I. Love. You.”
Her eyes are crinkling at the corners and getting shiny. “Nick,” she whispers, and fuck, I love my name on her lips. “I know.”
“You—”
“And I love you too.”
So maybe life can get better, because my entire world just went technicolor in 3D.
“Why?” I ask, and she laughs, that uninhibited smile brightening the room even more.
“I just can’t help myself.” She giggles and licks her thumb, then rubs something off my face. “Crazy man. You’re still wearing dick glitter.”
“You like it? I’ll wear it every day. Or you can be the glitter on my dick. Shit. That wasn’t supposed to come out. Not of my mouth. I—”
She silences me with a finger while she laughs so hard her face scrunches up.
There’s nothing better in all the world than the sight of Kami laughing. She’s cookies and cream ice cream on triple fudge caramel brownies. She’s winning the Cup all over again every hour of my life. She’s the only person in the world I’d trust with my heart.
“You make me so happy,” she says with that huge smile. “Just by being you.”
“I really am this big of a dumbass,” I warn her.
“Everyone has their moments. But not everyone makes up for them the way you do.”
I can’t stop touching her. Her face. Her hair. Her hands. Her neck. Everywhere. I need to touch her everywhere. “I thought—you were hurt. Somewhere.”
Her smile fades. “My phone’s battery—I usually charge it here during the day, but Mom took the charger to her conference, and then Muffy showed up, and I got so busy—”
“I’m getting you a new phone.”
She looks like she’s going to argue, so I pull a don’t even try it face.
“One phone,” she says sternly. “Small enough to fit my hands. None of this bigger-is-better stuff.”
Now I’m grinning, because if she thinks those parameters will stop me from going overboard in other ways, she’s clearly forgotten who she’s talking to. But she’s not arguing over me getting her a new phone, so we’re making progress.
“And one phone case, and it cannot have your picture on it, and I do not want anything about my phone plan switched or upgraded, regardless of who you think is paying for it, though I’ll take three chargers, fine, if they’re different from my current chargers, but no fancy earbuds. I prefer the way the cheap ones fit in my ears, and I’ve tested them, so don’t try me. And no adding any apps to the phone, and I’ll consent to a battery pack, but only one, and it can’t have your picture on it either.”
Huh.
That’ll make it a little harder.
And all the more rewarding when I still manage to make it the best fucking phone package ever.
“Dr. Oakley?” a voice says behind me. “We have everything under control here. Why don’t you go home?”
She frowns. “But Muffy—”
“I’m off tomorrow. I’ll stay with her as long as she wants to stay with Rufus. You go on. We’ll call you—ah, if you get your phone plugged in, I mean.”
“Call me if you need her,” I tell her. I grab a business card off Kami’s desk, scribble my number on the back, and hand it to her assistant person. What’s she called?
The tech. Right.
She needs a nametag, because the only name I can remember at the moment is Kami. Come to think of it, everyone in the entire universe needs nametags.
I don’t know my own fucking name at the moment
The tech stares at me for a minute, then the card, then she glances at Kami, who’s rustling behind the desk.
“S-sure. Thanks. Did you—did you kick some Indies ass tonight?”
I stare at her blankly for longer than necessary even to hit the awkward stage, because fuck. I forgot I played a hockey game tonight.
“Did you?” Kami echoes.
All of it comes rushing back, but mostly just the four empty seats.
Which were empty because Kami was saving a life.
I give her the ol’ Nick Murphy grin. “Yeah.”
“Good.” She slides a hand under my arm and tugs, because I’m still squatting on the floor. “C’mon, you troublemaker,” she teases. “Take me home.”
Home?
More of my week comes flooding back, and now I’m grinning even bigger than my normal grin.
She wants to go home.
I’m going to do one better than that.
Forty-Eight
Kami
Nick doesn’t let go of my hand once we’re both in the Jeep, and I’m starting to think he forgot where he’s going, because he’s making every wrong turn known to man on the way to my house.
We’re not going to his parents’ house either.
But now that the color’s coming back to his face, he’s quit looking at me like he’s making sure I’m still in one piece. I try to ask him questions about the game, but he ignores me to ask about Muffy’s cat.
Oddly, answering him is settling my own anxiety levels too.
There’s nothing as terrifying as a family member banging on the door with a limp cat shrieking about a button battery.