Chapter 13 Roe Monroe
Chapter thirteen
Roe Monroe
The Bench Social Media Group
Didn’t knock. Just went around back.
Just saying.
Riley: Did he have an overnight bag?
Marge: No bag. Just confidence. And sinfully tight joggers.
Alex: He’s not there for coffee.
Stan: Let the man live. He’s probably checking on Jamie.
Marge: Stan. Please.
I glance up and catch Thatcher’s eyes as he reads the gossip site over my shoulder. He’s smirking like someone who knows the punchline to a joke and is deciding whether to say it out loud.
“You ready?” he asks, voice low as his bare foot—why is that so hot—pushes off the deck, causing the porch swing where we landed last night and again this afternoon, to move in a soothing rhythm.
“You mean for telling him?”
He nods toward the phone. “Kind of feels like we missed the window for subtle.”
“Yeah.” I exhale. “Still. Better he hears it from us than Riley’s running commentary.” Or from kids at practice or school, which has been Thatcher’s worry.
We didn’t wait long. Last night we agreed . . . after school today.
I want to take Thatcher out for dinner, or grab coffee, or a million things the town might find suitable for gossip, so the sooner the one person who has reason to know is actually in the know, the better.
Jamie’s out in the yard, making a show of kicking a soccer ball around to cross-train some footwork, but it’s mostly just pacing with extra steps. His foot’s doing that twitchy thing again, like he’s trying to decide whether to bolt or sulk.
Thatcher and I are on the back deck, sitting under a quilt that probably screams “domestic bliss” more than we intended. Jamie’s been glancing over like he knows something’s up but hasn’t decided if he wants to be involved.
Meanwhile, Thatcher’s thigh is pressed against mine and I’m trying very hard not to be distracted by it.
Spoiler: failing. In my defense, it’s a damn sexy thigh.
“You sure about this?” I murmur.
He doesn’t look over, just keeps watching Jamie pretending to work on step-overs. “I’m sure.”
Jamie finally wanders over at a beckoning by Thatcher, hands jammed in the front pocket of his hoodie. He flops onto the top step and gives us a look like he’s bracing for bad news.
“Okay,” he says. “This has big ‘family meeting’ energy, and I don’t love that. I know I screwed up at the game, but practice has been so much better—“
Thatcher stops him, as a ripple of sheer horror crosses his face when he realizes where Jamie’s mind has gone. “This isn’t about that, Jamie. You’re playing great, and even if you weren’t, this isn’t a hockey intervention.”
Thatcher looks to me and gives me a barely perceptible nod like I’m the one going first. Of course.
“You’ve probably noticed that your dad and I have been . . . around each other more.”
Jamie raises an eyebrow. “You mean like how he turns into a human lamppost every time you’re nearby?”
Thatcher lets out a strangled sound. I snort. “Yeah. That. Subtle, right?”
I slide my hand under the quilt to find Thatcher’s. “So we wanted to talk to you. About us.”
Thatcher takes it from there, as though I’d passed him the puck on smooth ice, his voice steady. “We’re seeing each other.”
Jamie blinks once. “You’re dating?”
“Yep.”
“Okay.”
“Just okay?” I ask, shooting a look at Thatcher who looks much more relieved than his death grip on my hand would suggest.
“I mean, yeah. I figured. Riley’s basically been narrating your slow-burn romance for weeks.”
Thatcher groans.
Jamie grins. “He posted that picture from the game—caption was ‘No-personal-space November came early.’”
“Christ,” Thatcher mutters. “I told you not to read that garbage.”
“It’s not garbage,” I say. “It’s community journalism.”
Jamie shrugs. “Whatever it is, he’s not wrong. You two have been giving off vibes.” He leans back on his elbows. “Honestly, I think it’s cool. You make him less grumpy, and he makes you, like, five percent more tolerable.”
I glance at Thatcher, who just shakes his head, trying not to smile.
“I’m still your coach,” I remind Jamie, who gives me a smirk that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen in the mirror before.
“You okay with it?” Thatcher asks Jamie. “Just to be clear, you don’t get to vote on it, but I do want to know how you feel.”
I smile at Thatcher, because he’s always quick to manage expectations.
“I know,” Jamie says, and his voice softens a little. “I kind of knew already. I just didn’t want to bring it up first. And yeah—it’s weird, I guess. You don’t really date. At least not seriously.”
There’s a pause. I feel the weight of that, but I also feel my chest puff out. Thatcher’s mine, a voice in my head likes to say, and that voice is pretty damn smug that of all the guys who could want Gabe Thatcher, I’m the guy sitting next to him on his custom porch swing. Mine.
“You’re a good kid,” I say.
“I know,” Jamie says, and just like that it’s back to normal.
He heads back into the yard, and I turn to Thatcher, who’s still watching him go with that quiet, serious face he gets when he’s pretending not to be emotional.
I lean over and kiss him, and just like always, he melts into it like it’s second nature.
“Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy,” I say, just so Thatcher can roll his eyes, which he does.
We don’t tell anyone else, but Fox River Falls doesn’t need announcements to get the news.
Two days later, we’re at The Blue Line, standing a little too close at the counter while Thatcher mutters about how Riley always overcharges him for oat milk.
Riley doesn’t even ask what we want—just makes our drinks and slides them across with a look I’d call smug if it weren’t somehow affectionate.
“Cute,” he says. “You’ve got matching caffeine dependencies.”
Thatcher frowns. “That’s not a thing.”
“It is now.” He raises his voice. “Y’all owe me ten bucks! I called it first!”
My chest tightens as I realize half the café is watching us. I look down to where my hand is too close to Thatcher’s, with my pinkie reaching out to smooth the back of his hand. I snatch it back.
Christ. Thatcher’s a damn magnet and I need to stop touching him.
We take our drinks outside fast. The air’s cold but easier to breathe.
“You okay?” Thatcher asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’ve been gossip before, but not like this. It’ll pass.”
“Yeah.”
I sip my coffee. “You good?”
“I’m not the one who used to be in the NAPH. I didn’t have a whole city following my love life.”
“That was never love,” I say quietly. “This isn’t . . . exploits.”
Thatcher doesn’t answer. He just walks beside me, shoulder brushing mine like that’s answer enough, and I see that smile again. When I drop my shoulder to be even closer to him, he doesn’t shy away, and his mouth hitches to one side as if he’s trying not to smile.
Dinner at their place is easy. Thatcher grills salmon and then places it on top of rice mixed with some kind of green leafy vegetable I can’t identify. It tastes amazing and I hope Jamie realizes how lucky he is to have a dad who makes sure he eats clean and healthy.
Jamie chatters through the meal and tries to trade me his math homework for help with his wrist shot. I laugh and tell him he has to work on both—but I’ll help with the latter if he promises not to grow up into a defenseman.
By the time he heads off to bed, the house has gone soft and still. I work on the few remaining dirty dishes, since Thatcher cooked and Jamie had cleared the rest but then he’d had to start yet another load of hockey-scented laundry.
“You’re good at this,” I say.
He glances over his shoulder. “At what?”
“This. Being a dad. Having a rhythm. It’s steady.”
“I had to learn.” He gives me a little smile. “Still learning.”
“Well, you did—are.”
We fall into a quiet routine. He hands me a beer and has one for himself as we make our way to the couch. It’s too cold for outside tonight.
I slide a folded piece of paper out of my pocket and hand it to him with two fingers.
“What’s this?”
“Contract,” I say. “I bought the bar.”
His eyes snap up to mine. “You’re serious? The old bakery on the square?”
“Yeah. The closing’s next week.”
Thatcher studies me like he’s trying to find the punchline, but I keep my face steady.
“Are you going to keep it a bar? You know they started converting it into one but it never even opened, I hear.”
I chuckle at the new rumor about the place—one I hadn’t heard yet. My understanding was that it had been converted from a bakery and then opened as a bar but only for a short time. Unless you asked Stan, who claimed it was open for years.
“I think so? I figured . . . I should have some plan for the future. Plant roots. Build something.”
“The Knights—“
I place a hand on his chest and watch his eyes darken as his body shifts to accommodate me closer to him.
“I’m done making plans based on what could be, Gabe.
If something moves in my career, we both know it’s not going to be forever.
My knee could tell you that. I’m not the most pragmatic guy, God knows, but I’m not delusional.
Playing good hockey, at most, gives me a shot to end my career on my own terms.”
I see a wave of emotions cover his face.
“Rory, you—“
I push that hand on his chest a little harder. “I know the score, Gabe. Always have. That’s one thing you should know about me. I can’t see the future, but I don’t bullshit myself about reality.”
I want to make plans based on this, him and me, but he’s not ready to hear that yet. And maybe it’s too new for that, but somewhere deep down I know it isn’t. It’s crazy to me that I can talk about the impending end of my career easier than Thatcher can talk about too far into the future.
He folds the paper again and sets it down gently. “That’s a big deal. The bar.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It is.”
Another silence stretches between us, softer now.
I wind my arms around his neck, practically in his lap, but his appreciative noises the closer I get don’t encourage me to stop.
“I’ve been dying to kiss you all day,” I tell him, and he slides his hands to my face, cupping it and kissing me deeply.
Damn, he’s a sexy kisser. It gets me all hot and bothered in no time at all.
“I’ve got road games starting day after tomorrow,” I say between kisses and roaming hands. “Be gone about a week.”
Thatcher nods between kisses. “You packed?”
“Not yet,” I chuckle. I’ve never held a logistics conversation during sexy times.
“You ever pack early?”
I smile into the next kiss. “Nope.”
“How comfortable would you be if we moved this into my bedroom?” he asks.
“You think Jamie’s still up?”
“No, he doesn’t usually come down at night, but you are a little loud.”
My eyes widen. “Sorry about that.”
He gives a bashful grin, a look I haven’t seen on his face before. It’s sexy. “No, I—“ He pauses, hands tracing patterns on my skin where they landed under my shirt. “I like it.” Thatcher’s bedroom eyes have me desperate for whatever he’s going to offer. “I want to make you get loud, Roe.”
I’m off him fast enough to feel it in that damn knee. Still, I pull him up beside me and try to put the couch back to rights or at least looking as if we haven’t been making out on it.
Thatcher stops me, taking the folded contract and carefully tucking it into my front pocket while giving me a look that could halt time.
“Bedroom?” he asks. “A week on the road . . .”
I groan. “Fuck, I could get used to all this,” I tell him, walking him back toward his bedroom but keeping our bodies in contact. “And you had to remind me about the road.”
His smile rises. “Life’s tough, superstar.”