Charming as Puck(59)
The second-line forward skates over and flips his helmet up. “Yeah?”
“Your girlfriend’s over there with her mom. You should toss her a puck.”
I nod toward Kami, and swear on my left skate, the dude goes pink in the cheeks. “You’re such a fucker,” he mutters, but he bends over, grabs a puck that Zeus just sent flying my way, and carries it over to toss it over the boards.
Muffy’s eyes go huge, and she catches it, clasps it to her heart, and sinks into her chair.
Thank you, Kami mouths to me.
I wink at her, then reach out to grab one of the pucks flying at me from Ares, Lavoie, and Frey, who are lined up and taking practice shots.
“Head in the game, eh, Murphy?” Frey says with a grin.
The crowd fades away as we count down the final seconds to game time, and there’s just the ice left.
Just the ice, the enemy, and me standing between them and the goal.
Lavoie, Frey, and Ares head to the center line.
Zeus and Sokolov skate over to me, and we trade fist bumps.
“Got your back, Murphy,” Zeus says.
Sokolov nods.
“Your wife here?” I ask Zeus.
He grins and points behind the bench, where Joey, Gracie, and the baby all wave.
“Don’t embarrass her, okay?” I tell him.
Sokolov laughs. Zeus punches me in the arm, but he pulls it so I don’t even waver from where I’ve dug in at the crease.
“Let’s play hockey, bitches,” Zeus says.
And that’s exactly what we do.
Thirty-One
Kami
These. Seats. Are. Amazing.
I’ve been to dozens—hundreds?—of Thrusters games over the years, but I’ve never sat right here. At the edge of the rink.
Watching my boyfriend play.
Oh, I’ve watched Nick play plenty, wishing he was my boyfriend, but tonight—I think he really is.
“Ohmygod!” Muffy flings herself back in her seat as Zeus shoves a Minnesota player into the boards right in front of us, pivots, and takes off again like a demon on blades, chasing the puck before Nick has to stop it.
“Shew, those boys are hot.” Aunt Hilda fans herself.
Alina’s dark brown eyes meet mine, and her lips twitch in an amused smile. “How many more sets of tickets do you have?” she asks me.
“Twenty-seven. I think only six of them are front row, but the others are really good too. None more than third—Oh! BLOCK IT! GET IT—phew.”
I sink back into my own seat next to Muffy.
That was close.
I thought Minnesota was going to score.
But Ares and Manning are driving the puck toward Minnesota’s goal now, and Nick’s still holding steady.
He hasn’t looked this way since the game started. Not even when they left the ice between the first and second periods. He was downing water and talking to the goaltender coach, brows drawn together, sweat dripping off him.
And there I go getting all warm and excited between my thighs.
My phone dings. It’s Mom—she’s watching the game from the box she and Dad get every year, and she wants to know how my view is.
I’m not sure what I text her back, because I drop my phone when Minnesota goes on a breakaway, heading straight for Nick, unopposed because Zeus and Sokolov are caught off-guard, which means it’s just the big bad Minnesota guy and Nick, and—
And oh my god, how does he stretch his body that fast? He’s like a freaking panther on the ice, dodging and lunging and dropping and deflecting the puck so fast, it takes me a minute to find it again.
“This is so fucking awesome,” Muffy breathes.
She’s clutching her puck to her heart, and I don’t know if it’s intentional or not. I’m too busy watching the game to see if she’s watching Jaeger flying over the ice, or if she’s watching all of it.
“Kami, you know I love you,” Alina starts, and I tear my gaze off the action on the ice to glance at her cautiously as she continues, “but I’m starting to wonder if you might need to take one for the team and just sleep with Nick until he retires, because he’s fucking hot tonight.”
“That…wouldn’t exactly be a hardship,” I tell her.
“Does he want kids?”
I sigh. “He knows I do, but we haven’t really talked about it.”
“If you want kids and he doesn’t, you have two options,” Muffy informs us. “One, get yourself accidentally knocked up, which I don’t recommend, because hello, problems. Or, two, discuss with him if he’s willing to get you pregnant and you promise to do all the heavy lifting if he really doesn’t want to be a dad. Also not really a great option, but you have all of us to help you out, so there’s that.”
I don’t really like either option, but seeing as even when I was hanging out with Maren at Chester Green’s and wasn’t really feeling anything beyond amusement at the men hitting on us, I don’t know that my body would even let me be attracted to anyone else.
So I need to decide.
Do I want to be with Nick, even if he never wants to get married and have kids, or do I need to press the issue and find out if he’s willing to consider permanence? Since we’ve barely started dating publicly, it seems like a question that can wait a week or two.