Alex strides to the door, freezes, and comes back to me, cupping my face and kissing me hard on the mouth. “Bye. I’ll call you later.”
He walks back to my office door, right by Rose, who is grinning like a love-drunk fool. “Bye, Rose,” he mutters, not making eye contact.
“Toodles!” Rose sings.
As soon as he’s out the door, I reach for my purse. When I turn around, Rose is still standing there grinning at me. I blush. Again. She laughs and hooks her arm through mine as we start down the hall. “I’m going to buy you coffee and you’re going to pretend it’s truth serum and tell meeverything.”
“There’s not much to tell.” I shrug and try not to grin. “My boyfriend just stopped by to say hi.”
She rolls her big brown eyes. “Honey, don’t even try to downplay this. I want all the details and I’m going to squee like a total fangirl.”
“Wow,” I huff and I can’t help but smile in awe. “You’re intense, Cupid.”
She pats my arm as we step out into the chilly fall afternoon. “I know they’re the picture of wedded bliss now, but both Jessie and Callie were their own worst enemy when it came to true love. So yeah, when love happens easily, I’m going to bask in it like a warm summer day.”
I find that hard to believe. Both her sisters are madly in love—and are loved madly—it’s obvious. But Rose isn’t a liar, so there must be one hell of a past I’m unaware of. We reach the corner and wait for the light so we can cross to the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street. “I don’t know Alex really well, but I know him well enough to know he likes to pretend he’s undatable. Obviously you busted through that bullshit.”
“I think he still believes that, but he’s willing to try with me anyway.”
She waves her free hand in the air, waving away my concern. “Pish. Nobody is undatable. Love is something every person on this planet wants…whether they know it or not.”
“You are quite the lover of love,” I remark.
“Yup!” she says with a shameless grin. “So details please! When did it start?”
I laugh. “I guess technically the night of the housewarming.”
“I knew it! I thought I saw you guys checking each other out.”
We order our coffees, and as we wait for our orders she leans close to me and asks, “So how’d you handle your first road trip as a girlfriend?”
“I missed him.”
“Not going to lie, it can get hard. Especially on the long ones or when they’re in playoffs,” Rose confesses and sighs before leaning closer again and flashing me a devilish grin. “Skype sex helps.”
I laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
They call our orders and we grab them from the counter.
“Does Luc get banged up a lot?” I can’t help but ask as we make our way out of the coffee shop. “Alex seems to have a lot of scars.”
Rose’s smile slips a little. “Yeah, the injuries can be brutal, and Luc isn’t exactly a passive player. He likes to get into it. He kind of has to because he’s a defenseman. He’s had pucks to the face, fists to the face, a stick to the face. Luckily nothing has left too big a mark.”
“What would cause scars on the back? A skate or something?” I didn’t mean to say it aloud. I just couldn’t help it. Rose looks at me, puzzled. “Alex has little scars on his back. He’s covered them with a tattoo but you can feel them.”
Rose’s grin is back and she wiggles her dark eyebrows almost frantically. “You’ve felt his back? Shirtless back?”
I know I have to be the shade of a fire engine right now. Ugh. I cover my face with my hands. Rose takes pity on me and hugs me quickly as the light changes and we start to cross the street. “Okay, okay, I won’t press for details…right now. But I don’t know anything in hockey that would give him a bunch of scars on his back. They wear pads and jerseys and maybe once, if he was really unlucky a skate might pierce all that but I doubt that would happen more than once. How many does he have?”
“Umm…like seven or eight.” I feel kind of guilty bringing this up with her because I doubt Alex wants me to talk about him, or this, with anyone. Especially if he lied to me about the origin of the scars, which it’s definitely beginning to seem like he did. “Forget I said anything. It’s not my place to talk about this, you know.”
Rose nods and brushes back her long black hair as the cold wind whips it across her face. “Jordan played on the same team as Alex for years and didn’t know his background. He knew his family never came to games, but Alex never told anyone why. He recently opened up a bit to Callie and admitted his parents have died.”
“I know.” I sip my coffee and leave it at that.
“Jordan was shocked Alex never told him, but I think Alex picked Callie because she was the most like him before she finally admitted she loved Devin. Dear God, that girl tried so hard to keep herself from happiness it was maddening.”
She proceeds to tell me a brief summary of Callie and Devin. It’s a wild, heartbreaking tale. Callie, I can tell even from the brief time I’ve been around her, has a giant heart and is fiercely in love with her family and Devin. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree when she told me about her stepson at Alex’s party. It’s almost impossible to imagine she’d have tried to walk away from that.
