Page 119
Monroe shifted beside me. It took me a moment to register what was happening. The slight turn of his body, the dip of his head. He pressed a kiss to my temple.
And my damn lungs forgot what they were for.
Goldie’s head swiveled so fast I felt the air move. “You kissed Gracie.”
Monroe didn’t flinch. “Yep.”
“Told you.” She whipped to me, eyes impossibly wide. “Told you Daddy liked you. Right, Daddy?”
Monroe made a sound beside me that was almost certainly a laugh he was working very hard to keep contained.
“You have to say it,” Goldie informed him. “It’s rude not to say.”
A warm hand cupped my face, pulling it toward him. My heart beat at a completely unreasonable speed for someone sitting on a couch.
“Graciella.” The words danced across my lips. “I like you very much.”
He punctuated it with a kiss.
THIRTY-NINE
MONROE
SHE’S RIGHT, THEY SHOULD’VE PLAYED SHIRTS VS. SKINS.
I sighed, finishing lacing up my skate.
“Golds, can I get some kisses before I go out on the ice?” I called out from the bench, needing a distraction. “Like a lot of kisses? I need them for good luck.”
She let out a little hum, tapping on her chin. Fifty-fifty shot. She was in the middle of coloring, and anything that pulled her away from a project was a negotiation.
“How about ten kisses?”
“Okay, I’ll take that deal.”
She walked over to the bench and, not so carefully, climbed into my lap. I’d gotten good at avoiding getting hit in the balls by uncoordinated limbs.
“Okay, I’ll count. One…” She placed her little lips on mine. They were stickier than they should be, which meant she’d gotten into something she wasn’t supposed to. I shook my head but didn’t dare stop the countdown. When she hit nine, she paused, pulling back and leveling me with the most serious expression a five-year-old had ever worn.
“Okay, Dad. This is the last smoochy kiss.”
“Wow, the last one?”
She nodded, solemn as a judge. “Forever. I can’t make any more after this.”
“What do you mean you can’t make any more, Golds?” Jimenez asked, walking up from the locker room, stick in hand.
“They’re all gone.” She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, lifting one small shoulder in a shrug before pressing her lips to mine for the tenth and apparently final time in recorded history.
I had to clamp down hard on the laugh crawling up my throat. These were the moments—her staring me down with complete conviction, laying out the weird little rules her brain manufactured out of thin air—when I had to fight to keep a straight face. Her mind was so free. So completely unburdened by the weight the world spent years piling onto people. For every birthday that passed, every inch she grew, part of me ached knowing she couldn’t stay like this forever.
A carefree smile, plastered on a short firecracker of a woman, blinked into my mind.
Maybe Goldie had a shot at keeping that free spirit after all.
I thought about the fort. The blankets strung between the couch and cabinet, Graciella laughing so hard I thought she’d pass out when I’d tried to crawl under there with them. I’d taken out a wall of pillows with my shoulder.
We’d ended up in my bed that night, all three of us. Goldie in the middle, her feet somehow finding my and Graciella’s ribs simultaneously. I’d lain there in the dark listening to Goldie’s breathing even out, and then I’d looked across the top of her head.
