A laugh rolls through the room. Blakely squints at me.
“Are you…in a hurry?” she asks, suspicion narrowing her gaze.
Absolutely.
Completely.
Desperately.
“No,” I lie. “Just still riding the adrenaline.”
Another reporter jumps in with a question about faceoff percentage, and I answer it at lightning speed. Another asks about special teams. I give them the shortest, cleanest responses of my career. More than one person looks at me like I must’ve been hit in the head during OT.
Finally, Coach steps in. “Alright, that’s all for tonight.”
Bless him.
Chairs scrape, reporters pack up, and Blakely gives me a weirdly perceptive look like she knows something is up. I don’t care. I grab my phone, stand, and check the message.
Harper
Already here.
My stomach drops and lifts at the same time.
Fuck me, she came.
She’s waiting.
I’m halfway out the door before I remember to play it cool in front of the cameras. But inside?
I’m an excited kid on Christmas morning.
And the only thing I’m thinking is her name.
When I step out into the hallway afterward, still riding the high of that OT goal, everything stops.
Harper is there.
Standing in the middle of the corridor like she was carved straight out of a memory. Her hair a little mussed from cheering, cheeks flushed from excitement, eyes bright and full and locked on me.
God, she’s fucking stunning.
Connor is beside her, still vibrating with leftover adrenaline. Antoni is standing a respectable distance away. He spies me first and smirks like he knows something is about to happen. I guess I never was very good at keeping a poker face because the second Harper looks up at me I’m gone. I don’t even fucking think. I just move. I stride forward, reach for her waist, pull her in, and kiss her.
Hard.
Fast.
Exactly like I used to.
Exactly like I’ve wanted to since the second she walked back into my life.
She tenses at first, her hands gripping my jersey immediately, but then she melts into me like muscle memory. The world narrows to the warm press of her lips and the faint taste of beer and her lip balm and the small, stunned whimper she makes before kissing me back even harder.
It’s perfect.
It’s reckless.
