I smiled back at him. He smiled back. I pulled him in close and kissed his lips.
“Or Toronto,” I said. “Home is wherever you are.”
53
ERIK
Afew more weeks passed. I’d held on to a secret for the past few days, and didn’t want to let Kayden in on it until the right moment. It wasn’t that I wanted to keep him in the dark or anything. Honestly, I’m not sure of the exact reason, or if I even had one. If anything, I needed to believe that this information was true.
We’d gone out to the Colter Bay Grill where people now cheered for us when we walked in. But I knew their response hadn’t been so enormous because we’d won a National Championship for the Larkin Lions. Notjustbecause of that, anyway.
Buffalo is a city that accepts everyone, even if that was too hard to see when Kayden and I had kept our relationship secret.
I’d almost gotten used to receiving a warm reception in so many of the places we’d gone in the city. The gym, restaurants, and even the grocery store were prime locations to have praise heaped on us. Again, I knew all the reasons why. Before, I would’ve found it scary to have everyone knowing our story, even if it meant living in a sense of freedom I could never havedreamed of. Now I felt like I’d been missing something right along.
We made our way to our usual table with people clapping us on the back the whole way. We’d gone from being practically invisible to heroes in no time at all. Our server talked our ear off, which was no problem. It would be excellent prep for when we reached the big leagues.
He’d been right about perseverance. If we hadn’t shown copious amounts of it, we never would’ve survived game seven of the championship series. We sure as hell wouldn’t have stayed together. Even now that things were going perfectly for us, I hated to admit that he was right about anything, let alone one hundred percent.
“Something’s on your mind,” he said. “What is it?”
“What makes you think I’ve got anything on my mind?”
“Because you’ve barely touched your food and hardly said anything. Plus, I can read your mind. Don’t you know that?”
I set down the half-eaten chicken wing in my hand. He had me there. Sometimes thoughts got stuck in my head and eventually took over. He’d caught me in one of those moments. I’d drifted off, thinking about what I’d wanted to tell him but had held out for the right moment. Now, I would have to spill everything.
“If you can read my mind, then you don’t need to ask that question.”
“Huh?”
“What I mean is, if you could read my mind, you’d alreadyknowwhat I’m thinking. There would be no reason to ask.”
He grabbed another wing, stuck the whole thing in his mouth and pulled it back almost meatless. Then he threw it down onto the growing stack of bones.
Some things never changed.
“The draft is coming up,” he said.
“Don’t I know it.”
“You’re gonna be happy being with me one way or another, aren’t you?”
“Of course I will.”
I had to say that. After everything we’d talked about, I had to at least make him think I would be strong about this.
“Even knowing what my chances are,” he said, “I’m worried something will happen. Like, maybe everything Leon Purvis told me would happen will fall through. Maybe something will come along to shake up the draft and screw everything up for them…and me.”
“That won’t happen.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s all going to work out, Kayden. You’re gonna make it.”
He eyed me as if to question my sanity. After all, I wanted him to stay in Buffalo, right?
“I was thinking that if I get drafted, you can come on the road with me. Like, we don’t need to be apart any more than we really have to. That’s one way we can make things work.”
