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I tilt my head, kissing her softly but deeply, not breaking away for even a second.
Who needs to breathe? Oxygen is definitely secondary to this kiss.
And this—thisfeels like exactly what my mouth is made for.
Bailey. Only Bailey. Forever Bailey.
The realization is sudden and forces a sharp intake of breath. It’s a laser-guided missile finding its target in the center of my chest. The settling after the last aftershocks of an earthquake, seeing a whole new landscape. If I weren’t already breathless, this knowledge would have stolen all my oxygen.
Imore thanlike Bailey as a person.More thanthink she’s pretty.More thanlike kissing her.
She snuck up on me like the slow creep of a vine. But now, as her fingers tangle deeper in my hair and she makes a small, happy sound I want to hear again and again, there’s nothing hidden or slow. Emotion swells in my chest, tightening my throat and zipping up my spine.
But …
The thing between us isn’tsupposedto be real. Or feel this good.
I file these thoughts away for Later Eli, though that’s partly how I got in this mess to begin with. He’ll figure it out. Now Eli wants to get lost in the moment, to take what Bailey gives me for as long as she’ll offer it up.
She releases my jersey and drags her hand up my chest until her fingertips touch my jaw. Tentatively at first, then dragging over my stubble. I feel her smile, taste it, and want to drink in even more.
A whistle blows somewhere, and I blink my eyes open to see the entire team just a few feet away, crowded in the tunnel and looking like they just cannot wait to give me hell about this later. And congratulations too. But hell first.
With a sigh, I pull back, only enough to rest my forehead against hers. This close, it’s hard to read the emotion in her eyes, but she blinks slowly, smiling sleepily. If nothing else, kissing me eased her anxiety about the very public surprise proposal I really didn’t think through.
She lifts her fingers to her lips, tracing them like she’s reading the memory of our kiss. The guys take to the ice, and I skate Bailey to the edge of the tunnel, depositing her on the floor. But I keep her close, my hands on her lower back, tugging her tight.
“I’ve got to go back to work, Leelee.”
“You’re good at your job,” she whispers.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know it, hockey player.”
“Is this how it’s gonna be—you giving me trouble?” I ask, sliding one hand up her back, watching her shiver as my fingertips graze her neck.
“Maybe,” she says, then her expression shifts, a tiny furrow appearing between her brows. “We should probably talk about that. You know, expectations?”
“We will,” I promise. “We will.”
Bailey’s lips curve up into the smallest smile. But it’s a genuine one.
A smile I can’t help but kiss lightly. Just once more.
Fine—twicemore. I reluctantly let her go. Ireallyneed to get back to the game. Hockey waits for no man. Not even a newly engaged one.
The third period ends with me scoring twice more. I’m flying. No one can touch me. Or stop me. Despite the other team singling me out—probably just because of the proposal—I barely register them. And my guys don’t like that and give it back just as hard. Maybe harder. I’m somewhere above it all, and though I don’t allow myself to look up at Bailey, knowing she’s there is enough.
My blood is still singing from her kiss, an electric current humming beneath my skin.
Just after the buzzer, I finally glance over to see Bailey practically pressed up against the glass, my mom beside her. Both of them screaming, jumping up and down, losing their minds.
One more thing about all this that feels right—Bailey with my mom.
The biggest wrong thing, maybe theonlyone, though it’s a biggie, is the fact that really liking Bailey means I’ve severely messed up the timeline of things.
It calls to mind a memory of Mom, sitting patiently with me at the table in the one apartment we had where the heat barely worked in any room but the breakfast nook, where it blasted like a commercial oven. For hours she tried to help me remember the order of operations, something that just would not stick in my mind. It simply didn’t make sense why brackets, which in sentences seem to include something extraneous, would get priority in math.
