Page 33 of Your Kiss Is On My List

“Shit.”

I nod. “Dani’s the reason I’m here, on the team and playing for SPU, living my dream and with a legitimate shot at playing for the NHL. She’s the reason I’m whole. Or was whole. Until I shot a cannonball through my own gut when I messed up with her.”

“What are you going to do about it?” He puts his hands on his hips, standing on the side of the road in the gravelly shoulder with pine trees encroaching, their scent filling the air. Funny how my surroundings pop to life now. Like I’m waking up, my brain clearing from after a nightmare, adjusting, reorienting to the reality of the light of day.

“I need to mend fences,” I say. “But I have no fucking idea how.”

Chapter 12

TREY

We get back to BMOC House late for dinner and the emptiness of my stomach finally sets off hunger alarms. Thank fuck Majik has some plates of food saved for us and I want to hug her when she sets them out on the table, hot from the warming oven. So I do. She takes my hug in her usual stalwart style, without a word and without hugging back.

“You look like you’ve been through a war. Must have been something bad to keep you from dinner.” She darts a glance at Nate, but neither of us comes up with an explanation and she doesn’t expect one. “There’s a cake in the pantry with your name on it. Someone told me you might need it for some damn reason.”

Shit. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask who, but I don’t bother because if she were going to divulge the fucking tattler, she would have mentioned the fucker’s name. Nate laughs and slaps my back and then punches Majik’s arm as he takes a seat at the old wooden table in the warm, garlic-scented kitchen.

“Shrimp scampi—fuck,” Nate says. “If I’d known that I wouldn’t have taken that detour.”

“You and me both,” I snort and take a seat, more grateful to Majik than I can express except with a look. She nods. She gets it. Gets how a bunch of macho athletes express themselves, or rather how they don’t.

We both dig into the food in silence. I need filling up, both my stomach and my soul. We eat in silence until Majik grunts her goodbye and lets herself out the back door. She’s leaving late, as usual, closing in on eight p.m. Nate pushes his empty plate aside and sits back.

“You good for seconds or you want to skip to dessert?” he asks me.

“What makes you think she has any more of this stashed away for seconds? I bet all our bottomless-pit housemates ate everything and she had to fight them off with a shotgun to save this much for us.” He laughs.

“I can see Majik with a shotgun holding them off.” He pauses. “Nah. She wouldn’t need a gun. She’s fucking scary all by herself, staring down the hungry mob.”

“So then it’s cake,” I say, finishing my last mouthful of the garlicky food of the gods, relishing the here and now of tasting and smelling. I push my chair back and stack our plates and forks then bring them to the dishwasher.

“No, I’ll bet you there’s more. I know where she hides the leftovers sometimes. Twenty bucks.” I laugh as he leans back in his chair, lazy and full of shrimp and shit both.

“You’re on.” He gives me a wicked grin like he’s conned me and I search my mind for whatever I was missing, because I know it’s something. It’s always something when he baits me into a bet. He’s won enough twenties off me and the last three years to buy a used car. Maybe that’s why he does it. Because I know his family doesn’t have much money.

He lunges for the storage room where the walk-in freezer door is and I’m on his heels as he opens it up. He knows exactly where to go and reaches for one of the dozen heavy-duty containers on a shelf, checks the label, and snatches it off, holding it up like it’s a trophy.

“Gotcha.” We exit the freezer and when we get back to the kitchen I grab the container from him and pop the lid.

“What the hell? How did you know she’d have leftovers?”

“Easy. I remembered Bigby and Bane were going to the women’s basketball game tonight.” He points to his head as if it takes a genius. “It was an away game—Boston College. They were going to get dinner on the road.” I search my head for that tidbit and I come up blank. He laughs.

“They talked about it this morning when your head was in your ass, feeling sorry for yourself.” I smack his arm with the lid before I return it to the shrimp scampi container.

“I still want cake.” I hand him back the container and he dishes some into his bowl and sticks it in the microwave before returning the rest back to the freezer. I take out the cake. There’s two of them, but they’re both the same tonight—chocolate banana Bundt cake with chocolate butterscotch glaze, according to the labels. My mouth waters just looking at it as I bring it to the table, then grab a knife and a couple plates and forks because I know Nate is good for a slab of cake even after seconds, sometimes thirds.

Normally, I’d eat double or triple servings of supper too, but tonight my soul needs this cake more than anything and I push back sinner’s guilt as I carve out a quarter of the cake and slide it onto my plate. Nate joins me back at the table with his piping hot seconds and we dig into round two of filling our bellies to keep us going for hockey. It’s a tough battle and most seasons I lose weight, but I enjoy every morsel of the fight to eat enough.

“Damn, that cake smells good,” Nate says.

“I don’t know how you can smell past the garlic in that scampi.” I aim my fork at his dish.

We both fill our mouths with enough food to keep us quiet. But it’s my fucking head that keeps making noise at me.

Then the back door creaks open slowly and I turn to see who it is because normally the guys crash through loud and fast. I drop my fork then shoot to my feet.

“Dani.” What are you doing here? I’m smart enough not to say it out loud. Dumb enough to be happy before I know the answer.