Chapter Fourteen
SCOTTIE
The next morning, I woke up to find Katerina still fast asleep on the other side of the king-sized bed, her back turned to me but sleeping soundly.
It takes me three whole seconds before last night hits me like a truck, and then I get out of bed quietly and head for the shower.
Katerina.
Her grinding her ass against my erection, her laugh vibrating through my chest, the way her body arched into me, and then the way she looked in the dark behind the roadhouse.
Her eyes were trusting, the little gasps she made for me when I did something right, the way she whispered my name into the night sky that felt like only the two of us were standing under it, right before she came for me.
And then I just about took it too far—Scottie… I’m a virgin.
I run a hand over my face and then reach for the shower faucet, turning it on full blast.
Yeah. That part is tattooed on the inside of my skull.
The panic in her voice, the embarrassment on her cheeks as if she did something wrong, the concern that hit me that maybe I pushed too far… took too much.
My own brain slamming into a wall so fast I’m shocked I didn’t get whiplash. I’m not proud of how fast I shifted from I want her to don’t touch her. But Christ, the second she said the words, every protective instinct I’ve ever had roared to life.
I’m not taking something from her that she can’t get back.
Not in an arrangement that still has an expiration date.
Not when she’s still halfway convinced she doesn’t deserve a life of her own.
So I backed off. And then I spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling like a guy who read everything wrong. How could I have known she was a virgin? I guess that shows how little we know about each other.
I walk into the spray of the hot shower, the steam billowing out around me, softening the tension in my shoulders. I lean into it, letting the spray run over my head, down my shoulders, as I try to clear my head for just a second.
I run through my usual shower routine, which is basic, and then I dry off, wrapping a towel around my waist.
I open the door quietly to grab my duffle bag and see Katerina sitting up, legs swung over on her side, checking her phone.
She glances in my direction the moment she hears the door open.
“Good morning,” she says, voice a little groggy.
She looks stunning like this. No makeup, freshly woken, just in a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt.
She stretches, her pajama shirt pulls tight against her chest. Then my eyes catch on her hard nipples; she’s not wearing a bra.
Fuck… I look away because I don’t trust not getting aroused in only a towel.
“Morning,” I say, clearing my throat and walking toward my bag. “How did you sleep?”
“Good. Though I woke up a few times,” she admits. “It’s too quiet here. I didn’t have city white noise.”
“No cabbies honking? No New Yorkers yelling at each other?” I ask.
She smiles. “Who knew such a place even existed. No noise at night, nice people, good dancing…”
“You planning to steal all my honky-tonk moves when we get back to Seattle?” I ask.
She meets my eyes, and a beat of knowing passes between us. I’m testing the waters to make sure we survived last night. The faintest smile tilts her mouth.
“You think I need to steal them?” Her response is soft but sharp. A tease. Back to herself and our banter.
Thank Good.
“I’m just saying,” I stretch my arms overhead, “I nearly dislocated a hip trying to keep up with you.”
“That’s your fault for attempting lifts on a crowded dance floor.”
I grin. “I regret nothing.”
She shakes her head, but I see it. The flush starting at her throat, the softness that wasn’t there last night after Anika cornered her.
We’re okay.
Or… okay-adjacent, but that’s all I need. I can work with that.
“Breakfast?” I ask.
She nods. “We should say goodbye to your parents,” she says, tying her hair into a low twist.
God help me. She looks like she belongs here. Like she woke up in Montana a hundred times before this, but now I’m anxious to get her back to Seattle, back to our routine and life where things are back to normal.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “Let’s go.”
My parents’ house smells like bacon and cinnamon rolls the moment we step inside. Moose barrels across the kitchen like he’s been waiting all morning for Katerina specifically. His tail is wagging so hard I think it might throw him off course. An entire great dane vibrating with purpose.
She crouches automatically, elegant even while being aggressively face-licked.
“Moose,” I groan. “Buddy, back off, she’s mine. "
“He’s fine,” she says, laughing softly, scratching behind his ears. “He just missed me.”
Of course he did, because who wouldn’t?
Mom whirls from the stove, already reaching for plates. “Oh good, you’re here. Sit, eat. There’s plenty to go around. Do you want tea? Coffee? Scottie, grab the butter. Arny, stop stealing bacon before I finish a batch. We have guests.”
Dad shamelessly winks at us and steals another strip.
It’s chaos in the house. Most of their guests from last night are still asleep in whatever room or basement couch they could find.
Tents were pitched out in the backyard that happened to have just a glint of frost on the tops of them.
I’m glad we get my parents for a few minutes before the rest of the mob of people descend on us, which should be any minute once they smell the delicious food my mom’s been slaving over all morning.
“I’ll take some tea. But don’t stop what you’re doing,” Katerina says, holding up a hand to my mother, who’s standing over the oven. I’ll make it. I think I remember how you did it.”
“I don’t mind, really–” my mother starts, but Katerina waves her off and heads for the kettle.
“I’m not good at cooking, but I can heat up water,” she says.
“Barely, so I hear,” I tease her.
My mother tsks at me for making a joke at my wife’s expense, and Katerina tosses a smirk over her shoulder and scrunches her nose. In my defense, that’s what she told me.
“Would you like a cup, Mrs. Easton?” Katerina asks.
“I would love one, sweetheart, but call me mom, or ma. You’re family now.”
Katerina’s eyes shoot to me and then back down to the tea kettle, and I see a ghost of a smile stretch across her face.
It has me wondering what her reaction would be if I told her I wanted her to be a part of our family permanently.
Would she smile? Would she frown? Would she grab the keys to the rental car and take off for the nearest airport back to Russia, and turn herself in, rather than spend a life with me?
I can’t take my eyes off my wife as she’s filling the kettle with water under the faucet and then sets it back to heat, Moose following her every step.
“I’ll take a cup of coffee if anyone is worried about me getting dehydrated over here,” my father calls out.
“You’re a cripple, Arny, not dead. Get your own cup of coffee, you ol’ coot. Our daughter-in-law is our guest.”
Katerina’s head snaps toward me so fast I almost choke. The look on her face is priceless–shock, confusion, a little alarm, like she’s trying to figure out whether she just walked into a hostile kitchen or a comedy sketch.
Before I can reassure her, my dad wheels himself straight over to my mom, grabs her by the waist, and yanks her onto his lap with a strength no one expects him to still have. Though I know he’s been lifting weights with my uncle to keep his upper body strength so it doesn’t shock me at all.
“I’ll show you what an ol’ coot can still do,” he says, and then proceeds to kiss her like they’re teenagers sneaking around behind the barns at a county fair.
Katerina’s eyes go comically wide. I have to bite back a laugh as I stand out of the stool and head towards her where the coffee caraff sits and poor myself and my dad a cup.
“Welcome to breakfast at the Eastons,” I murmur as I set the mugs down and angle closer, sliding a hand behind her back to draw her in. I dip my head and press a brief kiss into her hair. It’s easy, familiar, like it belongs there. “It’s… interactive.”
She lets out a soft, stunned laugh once she realizes this is just how my parents flirt. It’s not fighting. It’s foreplay.
Then her gaze lifts to mine. She doesn’t pull away; she leans into my touch, and for a second we just look at each other, something unspoken stretching tight between us.
I want to tell her so much, but the kettle whistles and breaks the moment.
Fuck. I want what my parents have. And I want it with her.
Not just the heat of it but the longevity, too.
I want the version of us ten, twenty years from now—me with a bad back and a worse shoulder from too many seasons on skates, her giving me hell in Russian in front of our daughter-in-law. Still bantering. Still grabbing at each other like we can’t help it. Like my parents.
Like, forever isn’t a scary word for her.
We settle into the kitchen once my dad finally lets my mom off his lap.
He wheels over to me as I hand him a cup I poured for him and myself, and then I follow him across the kitchen and sit with him at the table while he launches into a story about a neighbor’s dog getting stuck in a storm drain again.
And Katerina? She drifts to my mom’s side like she’s been stepping into this kitchen her whole life. Passing utensils, tasting a sauce, leaning in to hear a whispered instruction. She is easing into the rhythm of my family like she already knows it’s one of her well-practiced performances.
She laughs at the right moments, follows up with questions, gets perfectly good blackmail stories about me as a kid that I’m sure she’ll use to her advantage later, and listens like she belongs.
The idea that this might be the only time I ever get to see her in this kitchen, that after today this could all go right back to temporary, hits me hard enough that I have to swallow it down.
Anika was right. When this is over, it’s going to hurt like hell. I just didn’t want to admit it.
My mom catches me staring at Katerina and lifts her brows in that knowing, smug, mom way.
One of those ‘you love her’ looks.
Moms think they know everything.
Unfortunately… mine’s right this time.
After another fifteen minutes, the house starts to hustle awake, and Katerina and I have a flight to catch.
We step out to the porch as we’re leaving, and Mom touches my arm.
“Walk with me,” she says.
We move toward the side yard, away from the others. She reaches into her apron pocket and hands me a folded printout.
“What’s this?” I ask, though a part of me already knows.
“The trial I told you about. The regenerative nerve study. Your father’s therapist says that they are seeing improvements with people coming out of the program.”
I smooth the paper open.
Medical terms. The number of their successful patients so far. A ten-year waitlist. The kind of price tag that makes my stomach twist, but it’s nothing I can’t afford, but I know they would have to sell the house to scrape up enough.
There’s something else not listed here that’s the most important of anything.
It’s hope… a chance.
“You want him to apply,” I say.
“I do,” she admits softly. “But he won’t. He’s convinced it’s selfish. We’d have to pull all the equity out of the house, and then our mortgage would be stifling. He doesn’t want to leave me with this kind of debt if something happens to him.”
I close my eyes briefly.
Dad. Always refusing help, always choosing pride over comfort. And more importantly, choosing my mom over his needs.
“I’ll look into it,” I say. “Talk to the doctors, see what the process actually requires to apply. And I’ll cover the cost. I told you last night when I handed you that check. I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am without the sacrifices you made. Hockey isn’t a cheap sport.”
“Yes, but we never wanted you to worry about that. You loved it, and we just wanted you to be happy.”
“I know, but now I see the kind of parents I could have had,” I say, glancing back at Katerina on the porch, hugging my younger sisters goodbye, “…and this is something I can do in return. If this could give him a chance, then it’s worth it. I can’t promise I can get him in, but I’m going to try.”
Her eyes shine as her hand trembles a little.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
When we walk back toward the truck, Katerina is waiting by the passenger door, watching me, like she knows something shifted but won’t push until I offer it.
Once we’re on the road, I tell her the basics.
Her hand finds my forearm on the middle console. “I hope he gets in,” she says, and I know she means it.
I swallow hard. “Yeah. Me too.”