“So you know celebrating the first time you hook up with someone isn’t exactly normal, right?” she said.
“Of course I know that. But nothing about our relationship has ever been normal, so why start now?”
Lexie shrugged. The man had a point.
“Don’t worry, honey. I’ll do something really big for our dating anniversary.”
Lexie growled at him. “You’ve been spending too much time with Brent if you think a grand gesture is the key to my heart.”
“No, I know the key to your heart is good sex,” he said with a wink.
Again, the man had a point.
But with Mitch, it was more than sex; she could admit to herself now that it always had been. The first time she locked eyes with him at Contour, all bets were off. Somehow,thisman, this kind, selfless, generous, incredibly sexy man, was willing to stick around and fight for her when she couldn’t even fight for herself. It meant the world to her, that she meant that much to someone. And it was why she was sitting here right now.
“Okay, question for you,” she said sometime later, after their food had arrived and they were spread out on the floor around the coffee table.
“Shoot.”
“What would you do if you weren’t playing hockey?”
“I haven’t given it much thought,” Mitch said, a frown turning his lips down. “Why are you asking?”
“I mean…don’t all professional athletes need to have a backup plan? Brent’s got FLEX, and when he’s done playing for good I know he’d ultimately like to manage a team or even own one. Don’t you have dreams and goals like that?”
“Growing up, I honestly never thought too far ahead. Now that I’m older, and settled, though…” His eyebrows drew together, something like embarrassment passing over his features. She reached up and brushed her thumb over the lines there, and his face softened. Whatever he was thinking wasn’t something he had shared with many people, if anyone at all; she knew him well enough to know that. So she waited him out.
“I’d always thought I’d get involved in real estate somehow,” he finally said. ”As an agent, or as a property manager. I mean, I already manage the loft.”
“Wait, what?” Now Lexie’s eyebrows reached for each other. “I thought you just bought that for personal use.”
“I did originally,” Mitch said. “But after a few months, I had people reaching out asking if I was interested in using the space as an event venue. And I thought…I didn’t need the money, but the loft just sat empty for days, sometimes weeks, at a time when we were too busy or on the road for long stretches. So I said what the hell, and listed it on one of those property rental sites.”
Lexie was stunned, but not because Mitch had been offering his space up to people for, God, almost three years now? No, she was stunned because she hadn’t known.
“Why have you never told me this before?”
Mitch shrugged. “It never came up.”
She smacked him. “You’re a pain in my ass,” she said, “but it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that you’d do something like this. Let me guess, your cost to rent is a rock bottom rate, too.” She rolled her eyes when he didn’t disagree. “I’m sure it’s something so insanely cheap that people regularly offer you more money because they feel like they’re taking advantage of you.”
Mitch’s cheeks turned pink, and Lexie giggled, knowing she’d struck a nerve.
This man of hers.Sigh.There was no one more selfless. Add it to the long list of things she loved about him.
“It was never something I had planned to do,” he told her. “Like I said, I never thought too far ahead. Playing hockey for a living was always the dream, and when I was younger, there were days when I wasn’t even sure I’d see the next sunrise.”
Lexie’s face slackened in shock. Mitch didn’t talk about his childhood—or his dad—much, so she remained silent while he continued.
“He was always smacking me around,” Mitch said quietly, and she didn’t have to ask whohewas. After meeting his mother and knowing the things she did about Mitch’s dad, the admission from him didn’t come as a shock. But being unsurprised didn’t lessen the clench in her heart, thinking of all Mitch and his mother had endured. “One of my earliest memories is him literally kicking my ass because I fell off my bike and cried when I skinned my knees. When I got big enough to start hitting back, he’d slap my mom around, or threaten to, just to keep me in line. Then there was that car accident when I was fourteen, right before Ann Arbor called.”
“What happened?”
“We went out to a local restaurant for a family dinner. It was one of those rare weeks when my dad seemed to have gotten his head on straight for a few days in a row and wanted to treat me. You know, an attempt to make up for lost time and the fact that he was a shitty human. Anyway, dinner started off fine. We ordered drinks—water—and our meals. When the waitress brought out our food, my dad decided he couldn’t eat his prime rib without a beer.
“From there, our nice, quiet evening turned into a drunken public disturbance in a heartbeat. My dad, naturally, got hammered and made a scene when he got into a fight with another patron over the football game on TV. The restaurant owner was seconds away from calling the cops when I finally got him outside. I tried to take his keys from him, but he wouldn’t listen to me. It was late, and it was either I walked the ten miles home, or I got in the car with him.”
Lexie reached out and grabbed Mitch’s hand, and he squeezed back.
