“Would that someone happen to be an incredibly talented and incredibly hot Englishman?”
I slid my mouth over his to stop him talking, and he sighed into my kiss, threading his fingers through my hair, lightly scratching at my scalp. He drew back from me far too soon, though, studying me with his brows pulled together.
“How are you feeling about tomorrow’s game?”
“The same as usual. Confident. Nervous.” I reached up to cup his face, my thumb rubbing over the smooth line of his jaw. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He smiled at that, the concern in his gaze replaced with something so fucking soft it made my heart stutter. “Me too. I’ve been thinking about you since the last game ended. I know we’ve spoken since then, but… I guess I was worried about whether you were okay, whether the team was handling the loss alright.”
“We’re okay. It’s one game out of the series.” I paused, studying his face. “You were worried about us?”
“Yeah. The team. Uh…I guess I was mostly worried about you.” His voice was quiet. “I know how much it means to you to move past everything that happened before…and how you don’t always have people you can lean on. And I hope I can maybe be a person you can lean on while I’m here.”
His words did something to my chest, made it hard to breathe for a moment. When was the last time someone had worried about me, personally, or even cared about how I was feeling outside of a professional capacity?
“Jude.” I couldn’t reply, too fucking overwhelmed to speak, so I kissed him, pouring everything I couldn’t say into it. His mouth moved against mine, so slow and sweet, and I never wanted it to end.
“How long do you want me to stay?” he murmured.
Forever.
My eyes flew open at the thought that had come out of nowhere.Fuck. I rubbed at my mouth, my heart pounding, and then cleared my throat. “We shouldn’t risk you staying too long. As much as I’d like to wake up with you in the morning, we can’t risk anyone seeing you.”
“Okay. An hour, then. You need a decent amount of sleep before tomorrow.”
“An hour,” I agreed.
One hour.
It wasn’t enough. Not when every second I spent with him left me wanting more, and more, and more.
14
Jude
“Western Conference Champions.”
Cody raised a brow as he handed me a beer before sinking onto the sofa next to me with his own bottle. “That has to be the fifth time you’ve said that since you got here.”
“Yeah, well. I’m proud of you, okay?”
He rolled his lip between his teeth, his lashes sweeping down as he stretched out, resting his legs on the L of his sofa cushions. Taking a swig of his beer, he stared out at the city views. I took the almost shy expression on his face, and I could read him well enough by now to know that he probably wouldn’t accept my compliment at face value. Because it was just for him. Not for the team.
It had been two days since the Calgary Bobcats defeated Dallas 6-3 in the fifth game of the Western Conference Finals and became the subsequent champions. Two days that had left the entire city of Calgary buzzing.
The Stanley Cup Finals. My brother and my…whatever Cody was to me, were going to get a chance to obtain the most important trophy in hockey. It was the equivalent of my football team getting into the FA Cup final or being in the running to winthe entire Premier League. Not that I was likely to experience either of those things when I was inevitably transferred from Fulham to a team with an even worse track record.
Forget about football.
I pushed all thoughts of my uncertain future from my mind and clinked my beer bottle against Cody’s. “Cheers. I mean, I knew you were good, but watching you annihilate Dallas like that… Bloody hell, Cody. You were incredible.”
“It was a team effort,” he said, tipping his head back to rest against the firm cushions behind us.
I wished he could see himself the way I saw him. Still, I’d noticed the pride in his eyes before he’d angled his head away from me. I hoped he realised he was an integral part of making everything happen.
Placing my beer in the handy cupholder on the arm of the sofa, I kicked my feet up on the footstool and then dropped my head to Cody’s shoulder. I felt him brush a kiss over my hair, and I smiled. Tomorrow, he’d be on a plane to Toronto with his teammates, and I’d follow separately with the families and friends of the players. But for now, we got to spend this bit of downtime together.
It was weird, thinking about how close we’d grown in such a short time. Or more accurately, it was weird that itwasn’tweird. Over the past few weeks, we’d been spending every moment together that we could manage. Stolen hours between Cody’s practices and games, late nights in hotel rooms, early mornings in his apartment, wrapped up in each other, the rest of the world feeling so far away. It had been surprisingly easy to get away with it, too. Brayden might’ve questioned me if he’d had more free time, but he was so caught up in the intensity of the playoffs and focusing on the team that he hadn’t even blinked when I’d told him I was doing my own thing.
