Fake Skating(94)

“Great game, kid,” my dad said, grinning as he pulled me in for a hug and a back slap. “Big-boy hockey right there.”

“Thanks,” I said, hugging him back.

“And you shut down Bodie,” my mom said with a smile. “I mean, you might’ve been a smidge too rough, but it was nice to see.”

A smidge too rough that sent me to the penalty box twice. I loved my mom.

“I didn’t hate that part,” I said, taking a moment to enjoy how happy they looked.

“Do you, um, know where my dad went?” Dani asked, leaning to look behind them.

“He’s meeting us at the Cro,” my mom said, which made Dani look at her mother like she was worried. She seemed to be… processing, like there was something she was trying to work through.

My dad said, “Kendall said they’ve got a band ‘on call’ for the win, so by the time everyone gets there, there’ll be live music upstairs and the usual downstairs.”

“Looks like we’re all going to the Cro, then, huh?” I said, dying to be alone with Dani for just five minutes.

I mean, I couldn’t wait to celebrate with the guys, but what she’d said to me about everything being real and the way she’d been acting with my friends and the team in general lately, suddenly she felt like an important part of my life.

Not someone occasional, not someone dropped into my world but moving kind of aroundit, but someone who was wholly in the middle of everything.

And I fucking loved it.

“Looks that way,” Dani said with a smile, but there was a tiny crease in her forehead that I didn’t like.





CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE Dani




Things were normal between us as we exited the rink, but then Alec went rogue.

“Come on,” he muttered, pulling me in the opposite direction from where Burrito was parked. Instead of heading toward his car at the end of the lot, he led me around the side of the building—through the snow—and didn’t stop until we were in a dark corner, my back against the side of the Doug.

“What are we doing?” I asked, my voice almost a whisper. The high winter moon let me see the sharp angles of his face as he looked down at me, and I felt almost breathless with how badly I wanted him to be my realboyfriend.

“No idea,” he said. “All I know is that I need to kiss you.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling warm as his big body pressed my back against the wall and his big hands came up to slide underneath my hair.

“Have I ever told you how obsessed I am with your hair?” he said, his eyes making me feel drunk with the way they were hot on me, roaming all over.

“I—I don’t think so,” I managed, my voice barely a breath in the night.

“I cannot look at it without wondering how long it takes to dry after a shower,” he said, his fingers slowly twisting around random strands. “Or how wild it looks the minute you open those brown eyes in the morning. The things I would do to get a first look.”

His words weren’t risqué, but the way he was saying them was, dear Lord.

“You said… something about a kiss,” I said, feeling hypnotized by the slow-motion twirl of his fingers.

“Impatient?” He rubbed his nose over mine, sending a shiver through my body.

“Yes,” I breathed, going up on my tiptoes to close the space between us.

“Praise Jesus,” he said, and then he was onme in a way that nearly made me pass out.

Because it was different when he slanted his mouth against mine and kissed me as my actualboyfriend. It felt bigger as he dove in, possessive as he boldly fed me feverish kisses that had me gripping the front of his jacket to keep from melting to the ground in a puddle.

God, he knows how to make me feel.

When he kissed me like that, it felt like I was everything he could ever want, like he was desperate to be closer.

Which was powerful because I felt the exact same way.

I snaked my arms up around his neck to pull him closer and he made a noise of approval in the back of his throat, not lowering the heat in the slightest.

“Zeus!”

I jumped at the sound of Vinny’s voice, scrambling to guiltily untangle myself from Alec.

“What do you want, Vin?” Alec said, barely pulling back as he gave me a look that told me he was nothappy about the interruption.

“You guys headed to the Cro?”

I looked over Alec’s shoulder to see Vinny in the back seat of a car I didn’t recognize that was pulled up behind the building.

“Yeah.” Alec sighed and dropped his hands to his sides. “In just a sec.”

“Okay—see you there,” he said, and then the car squealed away.

“I guess we should go,” Alec said, his voice so deep as he put his mouth next to my ear that a shiver shot down my spine.

He took my hand and started leading me toward the parking lot, only… was that my parents?

I squinted and yes, holy crap, it was.

My parents—and Grandpa Mick—were standing next to my mom’s car, a few spots down.

“—and she shouldn’t have to live in this placejust because you’re trying to recapture your youth, Hannah!”

Oh God. They were arguing.

My always composed father is very nearly yelling in a parking lot,I thought as I watched in disbelief, my stomach sinking to my feet as I grabbed Alec’s hand and tugged him back so we were between cars, where they couldn’t see us.