Chapter 21
Twenty-One
MALAKI
Tonight isn’t just any ordinary game.
Tonight, my fiancée is watching.
Fiancée, fake fiancée–tomato, tomahto.
The majority of the team is completely unaware of my sudden engagement, but after tonight, I’ll make sure they know.
Will they be surprised? Maybe.
But I think they know me well enough now to know that I like to be spontaneous. I’m predictably unpredictable, a wild card if you must–but in the best way.
The stands are filling up, both teams on the ice for warm-ups.
I take full advantage of Coach being preoccupied with a reporter and search the stands for Reese. She said she’s been to a game before, but never like this–with my ring on her finger.
I find her off to the side, talking to Daisy, and drop my attention to her left hand.
There it is. The ring that Benedict thinks is nonexistent.
After his last phone call, where he obviously doubted our engagement, he’s been quiet.
I don’t have high hopes that his absence will last, but I do have a feeling that his threat of gaining custody of Charleigh is just a strategy he’s attempting to use to keep Reese in his left pocket.
For now, we keep up this charade and have a little fun.
I skate up to Reese just as Daisy takes the ice. “Hey, fiancée.”
Reese, to my surprise, smiles. “Are you ever going to stop calling me that?”
I grin. “Yes. When we get married, I’ll just start calling you wife.”
Her deadpan look makes me grin.
She leans close and whispers through clenched teeth, “We aren’t getting married!”
I put my gloved hand on my chest. “You just stabbed a knife in my heart.”
She laughs, and those cute dimples dig the knife in even farther.
I quickly pull my glove off and pull on her Blue Devils shirt. “You need to wear my jersey.”
Reese glances at her shirt. It’s a blue t-shirt with our logo on the front and a long-sleeve shirt underneath it. “Why? Do I look bad?” Her words zoom out of her mouth nervously. “I borrowed this from Daisy. I don’t have any Blue Devils merch, but–”
An unexplained energy flies to the tips of my fingers, and I find myself leaning over the edge of the glass to grab a hold of her chin.
I squeeze her warm face, and she immediately stops talking to give me her full attention.
She peers at me with the same brown eyes that Charleigh has, and my mouth opens before my brain even catches up.
“You look perfect,” I admit. “I just meant you need to wear my jersey because you’re mine.”
She blinks once, and I do the same.
That came out…possessive.
I quickly attempt to remedy the situation with a shake of my head. “I just mean…because…” I stumble over my words.
What the hell is happening?
I look away, hopeful that the break in our eye contact will be enough to loosen me back up.
I clear my throat and make sure no one is too close to get an earful of my explanation.
“I mean, most of the girlfriends and wives wear their significant other’s jersey.
Since you’re my fiancée, you should probably wear mine…
right?” I glance out at the ice, knowing I need to get back out there to stretch—and apparently, to focus.
“I think we should act under the assumption that Benedict is always watching.”
“Oh, yes. Right!” she agrees sternly.
Before I skate off, I give her one more glimpse. Her white teeth work into her bottom lip as she stares at the sparkly ring on her finger. She chews on the soft skin nervously, and a pang of worry eats away at me.
“Hey.” I wait until her brown eyes find mine. “I’ve got you.”
Relax, babe.
Reese’s lip pops out from being trapped behind her teeth, and she plasters a fake smile onto her face. Daisy, in her Blue Devils costume, takes my place. I quickly skate off to join my teammates and put my focus on the game instead of the strange pull I keep feeling from Reese.
I’m all for a pretty girl catching my eye, which she has done from the very beginning, but to stutter over my words? That’s unusual for me.
A tall presence skates up beside me, and I know it’s Lars without looking up.
“Who is that chick you were talking to?”
I slide a puck off from the side and move it back and forth against the ice. “Why?”
Lars taps me with his stick, taking advantage of my slower pace. “Because she's smokin’ hot.”
“Didn’t you see the ring on her finger?” I ask. “She’s taken.”
“She is?”
I follow his line of sight, and a feeling I haven’t felt since my hot seventh-grade teacher informed the class that she was married settles into the pit of my stomach.
Raging, hot jealousy sends my reflexes haywire as I stare at Reese bent over at the waist with her perfect peach up in the air, fixing something on Daisy’s costume.
I lift my stick and jam it into Lars’s stomach. Relax, I sent it into his pads.
“Yeah, she’s taken.” A hot flush spreads against my skin. “By me.”
Lars shoves my stick away. “You’re engaged?”
A few of my teammates come to a skidding halt against the ice. “What did you just say?”
I spin and skate backward to face my teammates, who all similarly share a look of shock. “Yeah.” I’m nonchalant. “That’s my fiancée.”
“Bullshit,” Hayes mumbles through a laugh.
Emory skates out from the net and angrily pulls his mask up. “It’s true. Now quit gossiping and chuck some pucks at me.”
“I didn’t even know he was dating anyone," someone mutters on their way past.
I make eye contact with Emory, and he shakes his head with disappointment before he fixes his mask.
He has no room to judge, though. He married a stripper he barely knew, for fuck’s sake.