28. Karla
KARLA
Our night out with my girls was going almost suspiciously well.
Like, too well.
The kind of well where the universe usually goes, “Oh, you’re happy? Cute,” and then drops a piano on your head.
Brayden and Kari were in the middle of an animated debate about which reality show was the “most unhinged,” while Martha calmly dismantled her steak like it had personally trained her to do taxes.
The restaurant hummed softly around us—clinking glasses, low conversation, the smell of garlic butter and grilled meat drifting through the air.
Twinkle lights framed the window beside our booth, reflecting in the wine glasses and making everything look like a scene in a romcom.
Except this was real life. My life. Which was… new.
After Brayden surprised us with the flowers—plus those handwritten notes—my heart had basically been doing pirouettes. He’d written “I will love you until my dying day” and actually meant it. In public. With witnesses.
So yeah, my brain decided that clearly the next logical step was—He’s about to do something huge.
“Excuse me, ladies, I am going to run to the restroom,” Brayden said, sliding out of the booth.
As he walked away, my stomach dropped into my shoes. My palms got sweaty. My heart started pounding like someone had switched it to playoff mode.
Kari took a sip of her margarita, watching him go. “Your boy has a good butt,” she observed casually.
“Focus,” I demanded, fist clenched.
She arched a brow. “On what, exactly? The man is a walking thirst trap.”
I leaned forward, lowering my voice like we were planning a heist. “Do you think he is going to try something tonight?”
Both Kari and Martha turned to me in unison, identical confused expressions on their faces, like I’d just asked if I should lick a hot stove. Martha blinked slowly. “Like what?”
I shifted in my seat and started fidgeting with the roses in front of me, rearranging them for the tenth time. The petals were velvety under my shaking fingers. “Like propose or something equally as stupid.”
There. Said it. Out loud. Where it sounded even more ridiculous than it had in my brain.
Kari choked on her drink and had to slap her chest to recover before she burst into full-blown laughter. Not a polite giggle. No, this was full-body laughter, the kind that made people at nearby tables glance over.
“You’ve only been dating for a little while,” she wheezed. “He’s not that dumb. Besides, doesn’t he know how you feel about marriage?”
The reminder made my stomach twist and loosen at the same time.
I’d been very clear—at least with my friends.
Marriage, in my book, was a legal boxing ring with bad lighting and no exit signs.
I’d seen it used as a weapon too many times.
Fights, screaming, silent treatments, gaslighting—all wrapped up in the pretty bow of “’til death do us part. ”
I opened my mouth to defend my panic anyway. “It’s just that he did the flowers, and the note, and he told me he loves me, and he’s perfect, and—”
“Correction,” Martha said dryly, cutting into her steak. “He’s very good. No one is perfect.”
“I don’t know,” Kari said, tapping her finger against her glass. “The man cooks, writes love notes, worships you in public, and looks like that. He’s near perfect enough that we should all be suspicious.”
“Not helping,” I muttered.
The problem—if you could call it that—was that for the first time in my life, someone loving me didn’t feel like a trap. It felt… nice. Warm. Like being wrapped in a blanket and handed a cup of hot chocolate and told I didn’t have to earn any of it.
So naturally, my brain decided to ruin it by imagining a proposal I neither wanted nor was ready for.
And then, of course—because the universe has impeccable comedic timing—Brayden’s voice boomed perfectly into the middle of our conversation. “Crap, y’all figured it out.”
I turned slowly to see him standing at the end of the table, eyebrows raised, mouth curled into a lopsided grin. My heart tried to leave my body through my throat.
He slid back into the booth beside me, his leg pressing against mine. “Babe,” he said, taking my hand, “I do not have anything up my sleeve. Check my pockets, you will not find a ring.”
He even flipped his empty pockets inside out for emphasis. No little velvet box. No folded napkin speech. No ring.
Just my overactive imagination and three pairs of eyes on me.
Heat crawled up my neck and into my cheeks.
I felt like the biggest idiot on the planet.
Of course he wasn’t going to propose—we’d really known each other, what, months?
I’d spent most of that time trying not to flinch at loud noises and learning how to sleep without checking the locks twelve times.
The idea of adding marriage paperwork to that pile was insane.
Then Martha, God bless her zero-filter soul, opened her big mouth and lobbed the grenade.
“Karla doesn’t believe in marriage,” she announced matter-of-factly, wiping her mouth with her napkin. “Thinks it destroys the intimacy or some shit like that.”
I wanted to crawl under the table, curl up next to everyone’s shoes, and live there forever.
Brayden stared at her for a beat—then threw his head back and laughed. “Thank fucking God!” he huffed dramatically.
I blinked. That… was not the reaction I expected.
I glanced up at him, cautious. “Really?”
“Yes.” He squeezed my hand, his thumb brushing over my knuckles. “The pressure is off.”
There was something so sincere in the way he said it. No joke. No mocking. Just honest relief.
He turned fully toward me, his knee bumping mine under the table. “I just wanted this night to be special,” he said softly. “And now I know even more that you’re the girl for me.”
For a second, all the noise in the restaurant faded. The clinking of glasses, the hum of conversation, the music playing faintly overhead—it all blurred into white noise. It was just his words, his warm hand, his eyes on mine.
He didn’t need a ring or some grand gesture or a legal contract. He just needed to choose me. And right then, in that booth with my ridiculous flowers and my even more ridiculous panic, he was.
Kari swooned across the table, pressing a hand dramatically to her chest. “Are you hearing this?” she stage-whispered to Martha. “He’s a walking, talking romance novel.”
Martha looked like she was torn between tearing up and vomiting. “This is a lot of feelings for a meet-and-greet, you two,” she muttered, but there was a tiny smile tugging at her lips.
I squeezed Brayden’s hand back, my throat tight in the best way. “You’re really okay with… all of that?” I asked quietly. “My whole not-believing-in-marriage thing?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I’m okay with you. The rest is just details.” A smirk pulled at his mouth. “Besides, relationships blow up with or without the government involved. I care more about how we treat each other day to day.”
That made something deep inside me unclench.
So many people had tried to convince me marriage fixed things.
Or that I’d “change my mind when I met the right person.” Brayden was the first man who didn’t try to argue me into a different belief system like I was a sports contract he could renegotiate.
He just accepted it. Accepted me.
And, apparently, was just as relieved to avoid the whole wedding circus as I was.
“Also,” he added lightly, “have you met my fanbase? If I ever got married, half the internet would riot. Too high-risk.”
Kari snorted into her drink. “The drama would be incredible, though.”
Martha cleared her throat, shifting the conversation with surgical precision. “So, not to make light of how adorable you two are,” she said, “but Brayden, do you have any single, hot teammates that you’d want to set two attractive businesswomen up with?”
Her tone was casual; the grin she aimed at him was not.
I grabbed my napkin and tossed it at her. “Martha!”
“What?” she gasped innocently, ducking the flying cotton and taking a sip of her wine. “We’re just maximizing resources.”
Brayden laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I will keep it in mind. Most of my teammates are married or dicks, but I’ll keep an eye out.”
Kari perked up like someone had just dangled a puppy in front of her. “Define ‘dicks.’ Like, they’re emotionally unavailable? Or are we talking ‘will definitely end up on a Netflix documentary’ level?”
“Somewhere in between,” he said. “You two deserve better than that.”
Martha set her wineglass down with a decisive clink. “Hear that, Kari? We deserve better than dicks.”
“Good to know,” Kari cooed. “Please inform the universe.”
We all laughed, the tension draining out of my shoulders bit by bit. I looked at the three people across and beside me—my best friends, my boyfriend—and felt something that bordered on dangerous.
Hope.
Not the fragile, temporary kind I used to cling to in foster homes, the “maybe this time won’t be so bad” kind. This felt stronger. Rooted. Like the beginning of a real life I hadn’t let myself imagine before.
The rest of the night flowed easily. Kari interrogated Brayden in the gentlest, nosiest way possible, asking about his pre-game rituals, weird superstitions, favorite snacks, and whether he’d ever skated into the wrong locker room by accident.
He had. Once. Rookie year. The embarrassment still clearly haunted him.
Martha chimed in occasionally with pointed questions about his schedule, his travel, how he handled stress. She didn’t ask them like she was trying to catch him in a lie—more like she was mentally running risk assessments on my heart.
Brayden answered all of it honestly, sometimes with humor, sometimes with a quiet seriousness that surprised even me. He didn’t sugarcoat the hard parts of his life—injuries, pressure, media, scrutiny, loss. He also didn’t pretend he had it all figured out.
And every time he glanced over at me, eyes softening, fingers brushing mine under the table, it felt less like an audition and more like an introduction.
By the time dessert came—some ridiculous chocolate lava cake that Kari insisted we “all share” and then proceeded to eat half of by herself—I realized my earlier panic was gone. Completely.
No ring. No ultimatums. No pressure.
Just us.
Just this bizarrely perfect, hilarious, slightly chaotic night where my guy bonded with my girls and didn’t run screaming for the hills.
When the check arrived, Brayden snagged it without a word. Kari protested for about three seconds before shrugging and muttering something about “hot, generous men being an endangered species,” and Martha simply nodded once like she’d just stamped APPROVED on the whole situation.
As we got up to leave, Kari hugged Brayden again. “Welcome to the family, hockey boy,” she said into his shoulder.
Martha gave him a firm handshake that turned into a quick, awkward hug. “Don’t hurt her,” she said quietly.
“I won’t,” he replied, just as quietly.
And for the first time in a very, very long time, I believed it.