What the hell? Maybe the crush was more serious than I thought. Maybe that almost kiss was . . . something.
Harper and Jace dragged Aspen into the locker room and I shuffled to catch up.
“They’re fine,” Jack assured me. “We’ve got a lot of kid-friendly guys in there.”
He steered me ahead by my lower back and we entered the chaotic pre-game scene. Some guys were already out of their suits and taping their sticks. One guy was juggling to the kids’ amazement. “That’s Obi. He’s our goalie. Literally a magician,” Jack said, leaning down to my ear.
“So, uh, this is where you work?”
Jack was quite self-conscious all of a sudden. “Yep. This is the office.”
Jack’s goalie teammate pulled a quarter out of Aspen’s ear and he gasped. Hazel stood back, eyeing him cautiously. “I don’t trust him either, Haze,” Jack announced to everyone’s laughter.
“Jackie baby, when’d you get two more kids?” A man with longer reddish-brown hair wandered in from the doorway and gestured to me. “And who is this?”
“This is Mara. They’re hers. Her son Aspen is Harp’s best friend,” Jack said. “Mara, that’s Mikey. He’s a royal pain in my ass.”
“You love me, you big lug,” Mikey said, kissing each of Jack’s cheeks, then extending his hand to me. “Nice to meet you, Mara.”
He crouched down to Hazel’s level. “Who’s this?”
“That’s Hazel.”
“We just had our first baby. A little girl,” Mikey beamed, and I couldn’t help getting a little doe-eyed over such a proud papa moment from one of Jack’s teammates. So much for hockey players being thugs. Maybe Bryce just attracted the wrong kind. “How old is she?”
“She’s fifteen months. And congratulations!”
“Gosh. She’s still both little and big,” he said.
“I remember those just-born days. Bet you’re tired.”
Mikey got a wistful look. “My wife’s doing an amazing job. I hardly notice.”
“Anyway,” Jack announced, cutting that conversation off. “Aspen, do you want to help me tape my stick?”
Aspen’s eyes lit up and Jack reached into his locker.
“Let me go get changed and I’ll be right back in.”
Gabi sauntered over with flushed cheeks.
“Where have you been?” I murmured. “You make a friend?”
“Seems I’m the new ambassador to Russia,” she said, acting all proud of herself.
“Oh?”
“He asked for my number,” she said, refusing to meet my eyes.
“Nice, Gab!”
“Not nice! I’m a first grade teacher,” she hissed, gesturing around us. “I have no business with all this. I’m a commoner.”
“Stranger things have happened,” I sang.
But then I looked up and choked on my own spit, perhaps like a pelican might if it were swallowing a large fish and having difficulty getting it down. I held a fist up to my mouth as I coughed.
Jack motherfucking Leroy had entered the room shirtless, stepping to his locker and pulling some outrageously tight long-sleeved shirt over his head. My mouth must have been hanging open watching the sinews of his muscles and the tattoos that covered them ripple through such a basic movement.
