I press a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever timeline you wanna tell them on, I’ll follow.”
“What about your family? Since you already told them?”
After I met with Sebastian yesterday, I knew he wouldn’t let me keep it a secret from Dad anymore. So I went over to his hotel room last night, and that conversation went about as well as mine did with Seb. But I trust they’ll come around.
“Again, maybe in a few weeks,” I tell her. “Let things die down a bit, you and I figure out our new normal once we’re back. And you still have a lot on your plate with finishing up the semester and job hunting. They can wait a little bit longer.”
“Okay.” She rolls over so she’s curled into my chest. Her fingers trace small circles against my bare skin. “We did this together, and it doesn’t feel right that you won’t be a part of it today.”
Alice gave me very strict, very stern instructions, that I’m not to come to the game today. I don’t want this to mess with Lennon’s focus on a day she needs to be tunneling down into that well of concentration and tapping into it.
I shift my arm out from beneath her head and reluctantly stand up.
“Where are you going?” she pouts.
“Hold on.” I cross the small room to grab the duffel bag I brought over last night. I shouldn’t have slept here, but we both needed to be close to each other when it suddenly feels like we’ve been hung out to dry.
Lennon sits up in bed, the covers pooling at her waist, and watches me curiously. I block her view of the bag as I pull out what I came over here to get and keep it tucked out of her view as I walk back over.
“What are you up to, Coach Holloway?” She grins cheekily as I approach.
My heart is thumping in my chest, already anticipating her reaction. When I step up to the edge, I pull the mask from behind my back and hold it out to her.
She gasps and throws a hand over her mouth. Her eyes are wide as saucers as she looks from the mask, to me, to the mask once more. Then an excited squeal pierces the air and pulls a laugh from my throat.
“Oh my god!” She reaches forward and takes it carefully from my hands, cradling it gingerly. “Is this for me?”
“Well I certainly don’t have use for goalie masks anymore.”
“Is this your old one?”
I shake my head. “It would’ve been too big for you. I checked the size of yours in the locker room once. But I had the same artist who did mine create this one for you.”
The art styles are similar, keeping the essence of mine there that she loved so much, but the pieces around it are for her.
The majority of it is covered in a giant husky portrait; its icy-blue eyes the exact same color as Haulton’s jerseys. On the back, the number 33 is bold in a graffiti style font, with splatters of black and grey. Tucked within some of the splatters is the number 32; a homage to our shared history of wearing that when we were younger.
But the sides are what catch her attention and cause her breath to hitch. She traces each of the blue lightsabers with her fingers.
“Just like the ones on yours,” she breathes.
“One for me, one for you,” I tell her. They’re both blue, to match the rest of the design, with one on each side for symmetry. And hidden in the swirls of the background of it, I hadKillerwritten in the mix.
“When did you do this?” she whispers, turning the mask over and over to reinspect every inch. Her eyes trace it with the utmost appreciation, and satisfaction floods me.
“I reached out to him the night after you found mine.”
Her head whips up. “The night I slept over?”
I nod.
“But we weren’t even together then.”
My face heats, and I scratch the back of my neck. “I know. But when I saw how much you liked my old one…I don’t know. I thought that if you made it here today, if you continued to put in the work you were, that you deserved something special.”
Tears spring to her eyes, and she carefully sets the mask aside before rising to her knees and inching to the edge of the bed. She throws her arms around my shoulders, and I pull her close, relishing in every inch of skin of mine that touches her.
“I love it, thank you,” she says against my neck. “It’s perfect.”
