She lets out a belly laugh and takes him back into her arms again. I give her a smirk and she winks at me. I’m overwhelmed with the urge to reach out and hug her, so I do.
“Great game, Hockey God,” she whispers in my ear, and kisses my cheek softly before adding loudly, “You ARE stinky!”
Conner giggles and claps his hands.
“Fine! I’m showering. Relax!” I hold my hands up and walk backward to the locker room.
My parents drop Conner back at Ashleigh’s and meet us at a local pub to celebrate. A few teammates come out too. It’s a relaxed but joyous night. Everyone is so happy. I can’t believe how good I feel, and as I watch Callie joking with my teammate Alex and my dad, I know that she’s the only thing that would make me feel even happier.
A few hours later my mom and dad decide to call it a night. I head to the restrooms as Callie is making her way back from them. We cross paths at the edge of the dance floor as the music changes to something slower. Spontaneously, I grab her wrist and pull her onto the floor and into my arms.
“We’re doing this now, are we?” she asks with a cocked eyebrow.
“Why the hell not?” I counter and give her my best cocky smirk.
She laughs and her fingers deliciously scrape the back of my neck. “Why the hell not?” she repeats softly.
I pull her closer. She feels just as fantastic as I remember. My thumb makes lazy circles on the small of her back.
“So about this moving thing…where is your new place?” I ask casually.
“Soho,” she mutters.
“What street?”
“I don’t remember.”
I pull back a little and look at her. She looks over my shoulder. “Don’t move out.”
“Devin.”
“Don’t move out.”
“I have to.” She shakes her head as if arguing with internal voices as well. “Jessie texted me during the game. I guess the NBC crew focused on us a few times during the game.”
“Yeah.” I nod. When a player’s family is at a game—especially their first game on a new team—it always makes the telecast, and usually the Jumbotron in the arena too. I had seen them up there on a TV time-out.
“They said it was the Garrison family, including Luc Richard’s girlfriend and Devin Garrison’s wife and kid,” she says and pauses. “You have to fix that.”
“It’s over with. No one probably even paid attention,” I say with a shrug. “It’s okay.”
“But Ashleigh is going to freak out,” Callie insists.
I assume she would be concerned that people think she’s my wife because she hates the idea of it for herself, but her concern is Ashleigh, which shocks me.
“It’s all good,” I assure her and smile. “I’ll tell them you’re my hot nanny.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s much better,” Callie retorts, unamused. “So when news of your divorce gets out, they’ll think I’m the skank who did it.”
“Cal, Ashleigh is the one with the boyfriend, remember?” I counter calmly. “You’re not the skank.”
She settles down a little bit at that and goes back to grazing her fingers against the back of my neck. It’s making me hot for her. What else is new?
“You don’t have a place yet, do you?”
“Do we have to talk about that again?”
“Yes,” I reply curtly. “Because until you have a place and I see it for myself, and approve of it, you aren’t moving out.”
