Kylie: Because he loves you. And because he knows it wasn’t like you were taking joyrides to the hospital and talking the nurses out of their panties.
My inclination to get all sappy on him has to be tempered by humor.
There’s a long pause.
Blake: How do you know I don’t have a collection of panties tacked to my wall?
Kylie: Because you have posters of your brother in their place.
Another pause.
Blake: Kylie?
Kylie: Yeah?
Blake: I don’t just like you.
Kylie: I know—and for the record, I love you too.
Blake: Damn. And here I was going to say I abhor you.
Thirty-Eight
Colt
“You all good?” Kylie asks, straightening the neck of my jersey.
My five hundredth game is tonight.
I’m getting fucking old—at least in the hockey world.
The players are getting younger and faster and…
Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking about the leeward slide of my career.
Maybe I should be thinking about how this is a pretty cool accomplishment.
But that hole inside me—the one that grew a little bigger when Blake confirmed he and our parents wouldn’t make it tonight—feels raw tonight.
No charity event.
No family night.
No milestone celebration.
“I’m good,” I lie.
She leans close, presses her lips to mine. “It’s really cool of you to invite Adrian.”
I glance over at the kid and his parents, all of whom are wearing my jersey, and feel a bit of that jaggedness in me smooth over. “It was cool of them to come.”
Her hand finds mine, squeezing my fingers through my gloves.
A facsimile of a touch when I want her bare skin on mine.
But she’s here too.
And wearing my jersey. Speaking of which?—
