Amy’s eyes widened. “Wait. Did he say he was in love with you?”
Crossing my arms, I declared, “No. That’s all Natalie and her romantic bullshit. You know how she gets when she travels. Too much time to read, and it messes with her brain.”
“Okay, I was there. Let me tell you what actually happened, and you can all be the judge,” Natalie declared. “Cal told her acar was waiting to take her to a surprise. We go down, and it’s not just a car; it’s a limo. Then, we are dropped off at some fancy recording studio in LA, where the guy in the booth is an old college friend of Cal’s. He sent over a set list of songs that he’s caught Hannah singing at home. Raise your hand if you think Hannah could see it in skywriting and still wouldn’t believe that Cal is in love with her.”
All three of their hands went up. Traitors.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I argued. Pulling my hair into my hands, I twisted it into a bun at the back of my head before letting it fall with nothing to hold it in place.
“Your hair twisting is giving you away, Hannah,” Natalie calmly accused. “You know it means something.”
Damn her. Each one of us had our nervous tells. Natalie was the lip biter, Amy was the cheek chewer, Lucy was the ring spinner, and me? I was the hair twister.
Lucy reached out to touch my arm. “I get that it’s easier to brush it off than to accept the signs. When Preston’s acts of love were shoved right in my face, I nearly had a mental breakdown. We are talking ugly crying. He did something selfless because he knew it mattered to me. That’s love.”
“Are you afraid that you may not feel the same way?” Amy asked.
“Natalie tried to explain it, but I’m more afraid that I don’t know what love is. Maybe I am in love with him and I don’t know how to label those feelings properly. What if all those meaningless nights with guys from the club broke me?” I closed my eyes. I hated being vulnerable.
“I thought I was broken, but Liam changed all that. Answer me this: do you want to be with anyone else?”
“Of course not,” I scoffed.
“Are you willing to come clean to your dad?”
“We already decided that once the season is over, we will talk to him together.”
“If you got home today and Cal decided it was best if you parted ways, how would that make you feel?” I pressed a hand to my stomach. The mention of Cal not wanting me anymore made me nauseous. Amy didn’t need words. My physical reaction was answer enough. “That’s what I thought. You’re in love with him.”
Terrified out of my mind, I blurted out, “Well, I’m not saying it first. I’m not going to put myself out there to get rejected. He’s never even had a girlfriend before. He probably doesn’t know what love is like either. I don’t want to wreck what we have going.”
A ghost of a smile passed over Amy’s lips. “I think it’s sweet that you two are growing together. You’re both finding your way in the relationship world at the same time.”
“We’ll be lucky if we don’t drive off a cliff riding around in the dark,” I muttered.
Natalie took my hand across the island. “Strangely enough, you’re the only one of us who has gone about building a relationship the ‘right’ way—doing the ‘dating and getting to know each other’ part first. You might be scared, but know we all were when love found us. When you fall, you’re counting on blind faith that your other half is there to catch you.”
Lucy and Amy nodded in agreement.
God, what would I do without these ladies? We were always there for each other, and today, they were ready to talk some sense into me. Having their support, knowing they’d been where I was now and had been just as frightened, gave me comfort.
Cal was willing to stand by my side when we told my dad. Any man willing to take on Ace Moreau—at the risk of his career, for me—wasn’t scared of anything, least of all love.
It was time for me to put my big-girl panties on and accept that sometimes you had to push through the hard parts of life to get to the reward on the other side.
Chapter 24
Cal
The weather was turningwarmer, and flowers were beginning to sprout, which could only mean one thing.
Playoffs.
The entire season boiled down to the next couple of months. Sixteen teams would qualify—eight from each conference—but there would only be one champion.
Winning it all required sixteen hard-fought wins over the course of four consecutive best-of-seven series. It was a marathon, not a sprint, stretching from mid-April through early June.
Earning the top spot in our conference guaranteed the Comets home-ice advantage through the Conference Finals, if we made it that far. It also gave us the easiest opponent in the Eastern Conference—the Philadelphia Rebels—for the first round.
