I couldn’t take it anymore.
The jockstrap love conversation had broken me.
I threw open the door and stepped out of the closet, still laughing so hard I could barely breathe. Four sets of eyes stared at me in complete shock.
“A falcon?” I gasped, wiping tears from my eyes. “You think Erik has a falcon?”
The room was frozen in stunned silence for several seconds.
Then Benji’s face lit up like a Christmas tree.
“OH MY GOD!” he shrieked, pointing at me with both hands. “HE LITERALLY CAME OUT OF THE CLOSET FOR YOU!”
The entire room dissolved into uncontrollable laughter and tears.
Mia doubled over laughing so hard she snorted.
Finn was laughing so hard he had to lean against the wall.
Benji was levitating with glee.
And Jacks was covering his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking, his ears as red as any rose I’d ever seen.
“This is the best metaphor ever!” Benji continued, now bouncing on his toes. “You were hiding in anactualcloset and came out for love! I can’t! I just can’t! This is too perfect!”
“Oh my God, Benji,” Mia wheezed. “Stop!”
“NEVER! I’ll never stop! This is going in my wedding speech when they get married!”
“We’re not—” I started, but I was laughing too hard to finish.
“You came out of the closet,” Benji repeated, tears streaming down his face. “For him. Literally. Actually. Physically emerged from a closet because you couldn’t stay hidden from him anymore.”
“Benji,” Jacks managed, “you’re going to give yourself an aneurysm.”
“It’ll besoworth it! This is the most romantic thing that has ever happened in the history of romance. Shakespeare wishes he thought of this. Lifetime might discover a new plot so they can air this scene.”
I was still giggling as I moved toward Jacks. He was shaking his head in disbelief but smiling so wide my cheeks hurt for him.
“Were you honestly hiding in a closet?” he asked. “Listening to us speculate about why we’re here?”
“I was waiting for the right moment to make an entrance,” I said, getting my laughter under control. “But you guys were so entertaining I couldn’t interrupt. Especially the falcon theories.”
A moment passed with everyone sucking in breaths. Finally, when everyone had gained some semblance of control, Jacks lowered his voice and asked, “So why are we here?”
I stopped right in front of him, close enough to see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes and to smell his cologne mixed with the lingering scent of arena popcorn.
“Because I couldn’t wait until later to see you. I couldn’t wait until tomorrow or the next day,” I said, my voice going rough with all the emotion I’d been carrying since the final buzzer. “Not after that game and after seeing you in the stands wearing my jersey and cheering when I scored.” My hands found his shoulders. “I needed to see you right now. I needed to tell you what it meant to have you here.”
The room went quiet except for Benji’s occasional giggle about closets.
“You have no idea what it was like,” I continued, the words tumbling out now that I’d started. “Looking up and seeing you there, seeing how happyyou were when we won and knowing that you were watching me play for the first time, and that you were—” I shook my head. “I couldn’t go sit through twenty minutes of press questions about power play systems without telling you first.”
“Telling me what?”
“That having you here made me play better. That every time I glimpsed you in the stands, I felt like I could take on the entire league.” I cupped his face. “That seeing you wear my name was the best feeling I’ve ever had in all my years of playing hockey.”
From somewhere behind us, I heard Mia make a soft, strangled sound.
