39. Monroe
THIRTY-NINE
MONROE
SHE’S RIGHT, THEY SHOULD’VE PLAYED SHIRTS VS. SKINS.
I sighed, finishing lacing up my skate.
“Golds, can I get some kisses before I go out on the ice?” I called out from the bench, needing a distraction. “Like a lot of kisses? I need them for good luck.”
She let out a little hum, tapping on her chin. Fifty-fifty shot. She was in the middle of coloring, and anything that pulled her away from a project was a negotiation.
“How about ten kisses?”
“Okay, I’ll take that deal.”
She walked over to the bench and, not so carefully, climbed into my lap. I’d gotten good at avoiding getting hit in the balls by uncoordinated limbs.
“Okay, I’ll count. One…” She placed her little lips on mine.
They were stickier than they should be, which meant she’d gotten into something she wasn’t supposed to.
I shook my head but didn’t dare stop the countdown.
When she hit nine, she paused, pulling back and leveling me with the most serious expression a five-year-old had ever worn.
“Okay, Dad. This is the last smoochy kiss.”
“Wow, the last one?”
She nodded, solemn as a judge. “Forever. I can’t make any more after this.”
“What do you mean you can’t make any more, Golds?” Jimenez asked, walking up from the locker room, stick in hand.
“They’re all gone.” She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, lifting one small shoulder in a shrug before pressing her lips to mine for the tenth and apparently final time in recorded history.
I had to clamp down hard on the laugh crawling up my throat.
These were the moments—her staring me down with complete conviction, laying out the weird little rules her brain manufactured out of thin air—when I had to fight to keep a straight face.
Her mind was so free. So completely unburdened by the weight the world spent years piling onto people.
For every birthday that passed, every inch she grew, part of me ached knowing she couldn’t stay like this forever.
A carefree smile, plastered on a short firecracker of a woman, blinked into my mind.
Maybe Goldie had a shot at keeping that free spirit after all.
I thought about the fort. The blankets strung between the couch and cabinet, Graciella laughing so hard I thought she’d pass out when I’d tried to crawl under there with them. I’d taken out a wall of pillows with my shoulder.
We’d ended up in my bed that night, all three of us. Goldie in the middle, her feet somehow finding my and Graciella’s ribs simultaneously. I’d lain there in the dark listening to Goldie’s breathing even out, and then I’d looked across the top of her head.
Graciella was already looking back.
We didn’t say a thing, yet that shared look felt like an entire conversation.
The doors at the far end of the rink swung open, and laughter bounced off the ice.
My hand stilled against my daughter’s back.
“Well, well, well,” Graciella said, stepping onto the rubber matting at the rink’s edge, hands tucked into her jacket pockets. “What do we have here?”
“Gracie!” Goldie was off my lap before I could blink, latching onto Graciella’s leg. “Daddy’s going to play hockey today with the boys.”
“He is? Does insurance know there’s a geriatric man attempting to go out on the ice? Feels like a hazard risk.”
“I think you’ll find that I’m quite capable,” I said, holding her gaze.
The corner of her mouth twitched. She knew exactly what I was referencing.
“Gracie, will you play with me?” Goldie tugged at her leg. “Daddy says I have to be here until Nana comes, but I’m bored.”
I pushed up from the bench and moved toward them.
“Bored? I thought you liked watching me play?” I scooped her up, tossing her high enough that her laugh pitched into a shriek before I caught her. “I don’t think Gracie is here to entertain you, Golds. Go with Jimenez. He’ll get you snacks.”
She whipped her head to him so fast I was surprised she didn’t get whiplash. “Can we get snacks from the secret place?”
“Of course, mija.” Jimenez waved her over. “That’s the only place to get the good stuff.”
They disappeared toward the locker room corridor, Goldie’s hand swallowed up in Jimenez’s, her little voice rattling off a list of demands.
And then it was just us.
Well, close enough. The guys were filing out onto the ice, and the scrape of blades and warm-up chatter filled the rink around us. But nobody was paying attention to Graciella and me standing by the boards.
“Where’s the secret place?” she asked.
“Thatcher’s locker.” I smirked. “He stocks it with her favorites specifically for when those two go rifling through his stuff.”
Graciella shook her head. “That girl has got us all wrapped around her finger, huh?”
“She’s not the only one.”
Her eyes caught mine, pink blooming across the apples of her cheeks, and she trapped her bottom lip between her teeth.
“You know…” Her gaze dropped to my jersey before sliding back up, the corner of her mouth curving up. “I kinda wish this were a sport where you could play shirts versus skins.”
“Oh yeah? And which team would you put me on, Trouble?”
She reached out and curled one finger into the fabric at my collar, tugging it down an inch. It didn’t reveal much, just the edge of the padding underneath, but the air between us thickened.
She flicked her eyes back to mine. My next breath came out a little shallower.
“Shirts.”
My hand wrapped around her wrist before she could pull away. I was already a head taller than her in bare feet, and on skates, I had to fold myself nearly in half to get close to her ear.
“I have it on good authority,” I said, keeping my voice low, “that you very much like seeing me without a shirt.” I felt her breath catch. “In fact, if I remember correctly, you had a lot to say about it. Right before I cooked you pancakes.”
She stepped back half a step, eyes cutting sideways to scan the rink.
“I don’t think you should do that. They all think you’re in a relationship with—”
“I want them to know I’m in one with you.”
Her eyes went wide. “Monroe.”
“Graciella.” I dislodged her bottom lip from between her teeth. “We’ll work it all out. But it’s happening.” I could tell she was racking her brain for something to push back with, but I cut her off. “Get out of that pretty head of yours and objectify me while I play.”
She barked out a laugh, the creases at the corners of her eyes softening a touch.
“You sure you even know how to? It’s going to be pretty embarrassing if you go out there and get your ass handed to you, old man.”
Brat.
I tilted her chin up, keeping her eyes on mine.
“I’ll make you a bet. I get my ass kicked, you get your way. We go back to hiding whatever this is from the world, even though we both know that’s bullshit.”
“I didn’t—”
“But if I win,” I said, holding her gaze. “Then we go public. Give us a real shot.”
“Josh,” she whispered, the slight hitch in her voice doing something to my chest. Her eyes dropped from mine, and she picked at the edge of her bright orange nails.
My thumb and forefinger found her chin, tipping it back up.
“I like Itzel.” My words had her brown eyes snapping to mine, mouth tipped into a frown. I chuckled, low and quiet. “But not the way I like you, Trouble. I don’t like anyone the way I like you, and I want people to know that.”
I was damn sure like was not the right word for what I felt about her. But I kept the one I wanted to use where it was, tucked back behind my teeth.
She looked at the guys out on the ice, then back at me, a war playing out across her face.
“Monroe.” A breath. “Both of our careers are on the line here.”
Fuck my career.
I opened my mouth to say exactly that, but something in the set of her shoulders stopped me. “Graciella, this fake-relationship shit was always supposed to end. Let’s just move the breakup date.”
“It’s not that easy…” She exhaled through her nose, a far-off look on her face. “I didn’t lose my last job. I mean, I did. But it wasn’t—” She pressed her lips together. “I got fired because I broke into my coworker’s apartment.”
I blinked.
“Caleb,” she said, like the name tasted bad. “He got the promotion I’d been working toward for two years. Two years, Monroe. And something felt off about it, so I…” She let out a humorless laugh. “I showed up at his place with Monica, and I found him fucking our boss.”
The pieces rearranged themselves in my head.
“My hockey stick, Monica? How many crimes have you committed with her?”
She finally looked at me. “Out of everything I just said, that was what you locked onto? Not that I got fired for catching them together?” Her jaw tightened, but there was the tiniest of smirks on her lips.
The rink noise filled the silence between us, blades on ice, pucks hitting boards, the guys chirping at one another.
“If this campaign goes sideways…” She shook her head. “There’s no coming back from it. I can’t have two previous employers who have negative things to say about me.”
I studied her.
“Okay,” I said.
She frowned. “Okay?”
“I hear you.” I pulled her into my arms, but only for a second. “I’m not going to ask you to tank your career, Graciella. I want what’s best for you, and if that means waiting a few months to go public…then that’s what we’ll do. But I have one request.”
She held my gaze, holding herself with her arms.
“If I go out there today and I hold my own” —I tilted my head toward the ice— “then we start working on the exit plan. Itzel, the timeline, all of it. We move it up. As much as we reasonably can.”
She stared at me. “You’re seriously making a bet about this?”
“Yup.” I let the p snap like she so often did.
She quirked a brow. “And if you get your ass handed to you?”
“Then we table it.” I shrugged. “You get your way, we keep everything exactly where it is, and I don’t bring it up again.” I let that sit for a second. “For a little while.”
She looked away, watching the guys warm up. I could see her doing the mental math of her chances.
“Fine,” she said. “But when you go out there, and these twenty-something-year-olds skate circles around you, I want it on record that I warned you.”
“Noted.” I reached out, tucking a piece of hair back from her face before I could stop myself. “Get ready to eat your words, baby.”
Adrenaline was already moving through my blood.
These guys did not know what they were about to be up against.