She smiled. “Good.”
I cupped the side of her face, my thumb tracing over her cheekbone. “Next stop, Washington.”
Adaline’s smile grew. “Finally,” she breathed.
I kissed her again.
“You ready?” I asked her. “To go finish where we started?”
With a laugh, Adaline wove her hand through mine, laying her head on my shoulder while I settled my back against the wall next to hers.
“Yeah.” She kissed my shoulder. “I’m ready.”
March
Emmett
Everything was going to plan, until I started playing with the paperclip that they used on my new contract.
As the pen flew over the paper, my signature appearing in a quick, messy scrawl, the room was completely silent save for the click of a camera shutter. I tried to take my time forming the letters, the large swooping E, the double Ts that came next, and the arches of the W that preceded the final scribble of my last name.
But it was over in a blink. I’d signed my name so many times that I could do it without thinking, could hardly take the time to process the enormity of what had just happened. When I set the pen down and grinned up at the faces watching me, the silence was shattered with applause and whistles.
“How does it feel?” One of the senior ESPN journalists asked.
I let out a deep breath, then picked up the black, red and white hat that was waiting on the desk next to the contract I’d just signed. I slipped it on my head, adjusted the bill the way I liked and smiled.
“Feels like I’m home.”
They asked a few more questions, and that’s when I picked up that small piece of curved metal and started fiddling with it in my hands. Media never made me all that nervous, but something about this day seemed even bigger than draft day had all those years ago.
The expectations were a bit different, I knew I was being signed to win a championship. Nothing less than that would do.
And I was coming back to the place where I’d learned to love the game, to start a family with the woman I loved.
My mom—standing at the back of Allie’s office—clutched in between Adaline and my sisters, was weeping endless, happy tears. I swear, she hadn’t stopped crying since I told her I finalized my offer to come play for Washington. Adaline wasn’t crying, but her wide smile did an absolute number on my heart, just like it always did.
Every morning, I got to wake up with her next to me. Every night, I got to go to bed with her tucked against my side. Nothing had ever felt better, or more right.
It took the months of our long distance relationship for me to finally make peace with all the years we’d spent apart, the fact that it was my choice that kept us there. And as I eased into a daily routine that finally included her in it, I lost that frantic feeling to make up for all the time that we’d lost.
We bought six acres just north of Bellevue as soon as the regular season was over, and construction on our forever home was about to start.
I wanted a home like the one I’d grown up in. Not some fancy show piece that belonged on a magazine cover. Something that we could grow into. Something that Adaline and I could fill with love and family and more memories than we could count.
We’d already started doing that, and it was even better than I could have imagined when I spent all those months missing her.
Every single day since we moved in together—ditching her small apartment for a modest rental that we’d live in until our house was complete—we talked about our future and what we wanted it to look like.
Given all the things on our plate at the moment—me starting in Washington, and her overseeing the building of our house, while running her business, Adaline and I were just happy to be together. To live through all the chaos hand in hand.