Page 73 of Center Ice
“Is this for me to wear to the game tomorrow?” Graham asks, the excitement making his voice shake. I feel like if I were to speak right now, my voice would shake for an entirely different reason.
Drew’s eyes flick to mine, watching me swallow down my emotions, then move back to Graham. “Yeah, if you want to wear it. But if you want to keep wearing your uncle Jameson’s,” he says, and I didn’t realize he’d noticed that detail at the pre-season game we were at, “that’s okay. I just thought you might want one from me, too.”
“I’m going to put it on right now!”
As Graham slides the jersey over his head, my eyes meet Drew’s, and then I have to look away. I keep my emotions tamped down, because for Graham’s sake, I need to pretend like this is just his hockey coach giving him his jersey—rather than what it really is: Drew claiming Graham as his own.
He’s very clearly saying that Graham should be wearing his last name, not Flynn, across his back. But we haven’t told Graham yet, so Graham has no idea how or why this would be so significant.
We need to talk about how we’re going to tell him, but every time we’re together, we end up letting the attraction get the best of us—and maybe that’s part of the problem here. We have some important decisions to make about how to move forward, butwe’re not making them because we’re letting our hormones take over.
“Do you think Uncle Jameson will let me sleep in it?” Graham asks, looking up at me. Behind him, Drew scrunches his eyebrows together in confusion, probably wondering why Graham is sleeping at Jameson’s.
“I think you should take it off before bed so it’s not a wrinkled mess, and then put it back on for the game tomorrow night. You want to keep it nice, right?”
“Yeah,” he says, then turns and wraps his arms around Drew’s thighs, giving him a huge hug and thanking him for the jersey.
“Alright,” I say, “let’s grab your backpack with your stuff, and I’ll walk you over to Uncle Jameson’s car.”
Drew picks up the hockey bag from the pavement and follows behind us as we move two cars down to where mine is parked. There, he sets the hockey bag in my trunk and hands Drew his Spider-Man themed backpack, then he closes the hatch and leans against my car as he watches me walk over to Jameson. After I’ve safely deposited Graham in his backseat and given him hugs and kisses goodbye, I return to my car to find Drew waiting for me.
“Does this mean you’re home alone tonight?” Drew asks, his smooth voice tinged with hope.
“No, I’m going out with the girls.”
“All night?”
I know exactly what will happen if I invite him over after I get back from having drinks with my friends. And even though my thighs are already clenching together to quell the ache between them, it’s not a good idea. “Yep.”
“Alright. Well, I have something for you too,” he says, producing a gift bag from behind his back. He must havegrabbed it from his car while I was dropping off Graham with Jameson.
I take the bag tentatively, wondering why he would feel the need to get me a gift. The first thing I pull out is an envelope, and when I slide the card out, there’s a handwritten note inside.
I read it, then look up at Drew, confused. “You got me a personal shopper?”
“Yeah, I use this service for grocery shopping and other errands that I don’t have time for. It’s a flat-rate per month, so you should use them as much as you want.”
“But…I’ve always grocery shopped myself and run my own errands. Why would I need someone else to do that for me?”
“Because you’re a single mom, though not for long, if I have anything to say about it”—my breath hitches at his blatant statement of intent—“and you have better things to do with your time. If you were married, there’d be someone else around to split the load with. You haven’t had that.”
“I have Jules.”
“Yeah, well, I know how much you hate asking people for help, so I’m guessing you still do a lot of…everything, yourself,” he says. My teeth sink into my lower lip as I try to hide my smile. He knows me better than I realized, and he’s come up with a very thoughtful way to make my life easier. “I wanted you to have this option too, so you don’t have to feel like you’re asking people for favors.”
“My and Jules’s agreement is that I grocery shop, and she cooks. This feels like cheating.”
“Do you want me to hire a personal chef?”
The question is asked so earnestly that a laugh bursts out of me. “No, Jules loves to cook. It’s her stress relief. I think it would feel like a punishment if that was taken away from her.”
“Do you feel the same way about shopping?”
“Definitely not.” I loathe grocery shopping and errands, in general, which is why I ran out of ibuprofen before my period earlier this month.
“Good, so then put the personal shopper to use. Whatever you need—clothes, food, a pharmacy run—she can take care of it for you. And there’s something else in there,” he says, leaning an arm out and planting his hand on the frame of my SUV, right beside my head. He leans in close, and heat flashes through me as my whole body responds to his proximity.
I glance down into the bag and remove the piece of tissue paper stuffed in the top. And as I pull out a larger version of the same jersey he gave Graham, I wonder how I didn’t anticipate this. I hold the jersey bunched in my hand, the letters of his last name rippling in the crumpled fabric but visible just the same.
