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Or maybe it’s just that, given my last few years’ of being alone and adrift, the idea of someonehavingme has been elevated.
Eli carefully rolls me over and scoops me up, cradling me against his chest with care. For someone so big, he’s gentle, measured in his movements. I think of him on the ice, how amazing it is to watch him—all the guys, really, but especially the one I’m most fascinated with—move all that bulk so gracefully, with such speed and delicate precision.
He holds me the same way. I want to wrap my arms around his neck, but instead keep them folded against my chest in tight fists. Like maybe if I stay still, I won’t be able to fall any harder for this man who keeps surprising me with his kindness.
Impossible.
Maggie’s laugh when we reach the kitchen is the thing that finally makes me crack one eye open, then the other. I blink, then blink some more.
Because my gaze is caught on the table, all set for dinner with plates and folded paper towels for napkins and silverware in perfectly straight lines. It’s not this or the platters of food at the center of the table making my throat ache and my nose burn. It’s the place setting right in front of me. With a small place card that has my name written in Eli’s neat print.
“We made a place for you,” Maggie says.
They made a place. For me.
It’s got to be the exhaustion of the day, the emotional overwhelm of the last two weeks, or the way holding in my real feelings is starting to crack me in half, but Maggie’s words and these small, simple gestures are too much.
Especially when I think about what Maggie thinks this is versus what itactuallyis. The guilt eases some when I remember that oh, yeah—there is nothing fake about my feelings.
“Oh,” I whisper. “Thank you.”
I don’t miss the look Maggie and Eli exchange just before he sets me down in my chair, pushes it in, and even hands me the paper towel to put in my lap.
“Thank you,” I say, gripping his hand tight, the paper towel between our fingers. His deep blue eyes are so kind it brings back the aching tightness in my throat.
“Of course.” Eli squeezes my hand and presses a kiss to the top of my head before dropping into the chair next to mine. He looks comically colossal, his legs stretching almost the length of the small table and his shoulders almost as broad.
Maggie smooths her hand over my hair and leans down to whisper, “You don’t need to thank us. It’s what family does.”
I thought it would be Eli, but Maggie is the one who will be the death of me.
And between the longing for family with a place setting for me at the table and the lies resting between us, I spend thewhole first ten minutes of dinner in complete silence, hoping the tears backing up inside me won’t flood out of me over the plate of grilled chicken.
Considering our situation, staying in the second bedroom upstairs is a perfect solution.
Almost.
As I stare up at the slats of light filtering through the gauzy curtains, it’s thealmostmy brain keeps snagging on.
There’s a whole bathroom in between Eli and me, so it’s not like he’s right on the other side of the wall or anything. But knowing he’s six steps—yes, I counted—down the hall is … something.
Tantalizing? Tempting? Nerve-racking? Insomnia-inducing?
Then there’s the fact that Maggie misses very little. I can’t imagine she didn’t hear the heavy steps of hockey guys carrying things to the opposite end of the hallway. This little charade is one trip up the steps from being revealed. I know Eli says she doesn’t come upstairs much because of her joints, but most days I’ve seen Maggie, she’s been spry and energetic.
Like today—she made three dozen cookies for the guys and then dinner too. If she decides to snoop—and she absolutely hassnoopwritten all over her—it will take one peek up here to find us out.
Clearly, with her not-thin walls comment, she wouldn’t have a problem with us sharing a room. Before the wedding, we could always say that we’re waiting. But there’s not any kind of reason why I wouldn’t be sharing his bed after. And if Maggie happens to come upstairs once Eli and I are married …
I freeze, hearing a creak in the hallway. The soft pad of a bare foot on hardwood.
My whole body practically vibrates with tension at the thought of Eli standing outside my door, barefoot and shirtless, athletic shorts slung low on his hips like earlier when I ran into him outside the bathroom and almost fell into a trance. The sight of so much bare skin, so many stacked muscles, the light dusting of golden hair on his chest—it was all too much for my already threadbare heart, worn thin by all his kindness.
Still wrecked by something as simple as a place card at the table, being told it’s what family does.
I strain, listening for more while trying not to move, not to breathe, not to imagine the blocky muscles of his abs. I’ve never dated a guy who looked like that, never really thought it was my thing. Shannon once said I was weird when I only shrugged at some shirtless picture of Chris Hemsworth she showed me.
“Doesn’t do it for me,” I told Shannon at the time, thinking I was oh-so-enlightened, a woman interested more in personality than looks.
