Seven Months Later Avery
Seven Months Later
Avery
Tanner’s flight home had been delayed. She’d been desperate to pick him up from the airport but the bus was already laid on and his car waited for him at the Ludlow Heights Arena in Grand Rapids. Bel and Leo had talked Avery into meeting him at the bar instead.
“I never get to see you these days,” Bel wheedled, and her pout could have won awards. “Drew won’t watch Gilmore Girls with me, and he doesn’t know all the quotes from Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I need Avery time.”
Bel had been living with Drew for five months, and complaining about the whole Gilmore Girls thing for four and a half of them.
“This is not an argument you’re going to win, Ave. You might as well give in graciously,” Drew said while Leo suppressed a grin. “Although I’d like it to show in the records that I absolutely do know all the quotes from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”
“It’s bad enough to be let down by Tan—the least you can do is show up for your friends.” Bel was shameless.
“He’s delayed, not giving you the finger,” Avery reminded her. “He’ll get here as soon as he can.”
“Then there’s no reason not to come with us!” said Bel.
There was a comfortable hum inside the Rusty Barrel.
It still felt different to experience the evening on this side of the bar, but Avery had been more than happy to hand her shifts over to someone else.
She didn’t need them anymore with the upswing in upholstery orders after Jackson had put her in touch with a couple of antiques dealers he knew.
She now had a satisfying waitlist for restorations and not enough hours in the day.
Avery’s friends had meshed easily with the ones she and Tanner had made through Sam, the gap left by Gemma’s absence now that she’d left town and moved away becoming less noticeable over time.
She’d sent Avery a letter, three months after leaving Pine Springs—two pages of heartfelt apology that healed a little of the hurt.
In a twisted kind of way, Avery’s experience with her parents had given her some sympathy for Gemma’s remorse; one-sided love had not been kind to her mom.
It took two people to create a real love story.
“I still can’t believe you landed a stalker. What with me nearly set on fire, that’s a lot of action for a small town.” Leah was always up for swapping trauma stories.
“Elenie was beaten up and arrested. Her entire family is a bunch of douche-waffles and most of them are in prison. If this is a competition, she definitely wins.” There was a lot about Florence Martinez that reminded Avery of Bel.
“Great. Thanks for getting that out there. My favorite thing is airing my dirty laundry. Go, you.” Elenie’s low-key complaint lacked heat.
“I was at school with your stepbrother.” Avery realized she hadn’t mentioned it before.
“Ty or Dean?”
“Tyson.”
“Same grade?” Elenie asked.
“Yes. He hit me in the face with a basketball once.”
“My commiserations.” When Elenie’s face turned guarded, Roman folded an arm around her waist and squeezed.
Avery smiled. “I only had to avoid him at school. You had to live with him. Plus, it was how I met Tanner—we bonded over bloody noses, so it wasn’t all bad.”
“Remember that Delia is Avery’s aunt. Skeletons in closets come in all shapes and sizes,” said Bel.
“Oh my god, yes!” Leah twisted a silver ring around her thumb. “She scares the crap out of me.”
Avery grinned. “Me too. But I have a secret weapon now.”
“And that is?” Elenie sounded intrigued.
“Tanner.” Avery rolled her eyes. “Aunt Delia loves Tanner.”
“Fuck me running, is there no one that boy can’t twist around his finger?” Sam muttered in disgust. “Sometimes I’m so disappointed in the female population of Pine Springs.”
“I think you’ll find it’s not just this town,” Leah laughed.
“Rein it in, Raven. You want to lech, you do it in my direction.” When Jackson shot her a glare over the neck of his beer bottle, she leaned into him with such a sweet smile that his expression softened.
“How did you two meet?” Bel asked them.
Sam and Kash chuckled. “Now that’s a fun story,” said Sam, propping his elbow on the bar and getting comfortable.
“I was kind of foisted on Jax as a housemate.” Leah jumped in to stop Sam telling his version. “Let’s just say it took him a while to realize how lucky he was.”
Jackson choked on a swallow of beer. “She was a royal pain in my ass. Still is.” But his lips curved and he tugged Leah closer.
“And you and the chief?” Bel asked Elenie.
Roman draped an arm around his wife’s shoulders when she turned to look up at him, the wedding band glinting on his finger.
Elenie’s gray eyes were warm. “We met in the diner, got to know each other at the town fair, fake-dated and split up, then I went undercover as a CI. The usual.”
Martinez gave a gruff laugh, a slow smile lighting the planes of his usually serious face. “Yeah, pretty standard stuff.”
There were so many follow-up questions to that, even Bel didn’t know where to begin. But just as she took a big breath and was about to dive in, the main door swung open and Tanner strode through it, still wearing the suit he’d traveled in and clutching a gift bag.
His eyes found their group immediately and the grin that split his face sparked a matching one on Avery’s lips. Coffee and sunshine, sand and waves—he was everything addictive that was good for her soul.
She met him halfway across the bar and his arms opened for her to slide right in.
“Damn, I’ve missed you.” Tanner breathed the words into her neck.
“It was only four days,” she reminded him.
“Four long, lonely, bleak, and miserable days,” he grumbled.
“But you won.”
His dimple flashed. “Of course we fucking won.”
“Shoulder OK?” she asked.
“Shoulder, teeth, good looks.” Tanner ran through the usual checklist. “All perfect.”
His recovery from the surgery had been even swifter than they’d hoped.
With the weeks of physio and strength training progressing quickly to on-ice drills, the prospect of how his shoulder would hold up to full contact had terrified them both, but they needn’t have worried.
Within six months, he’d been back, stronger and more fierce a player than ever, determined to make the most of this second chance.
Avery loved seeing Tanner on the ice—his talent, his commitment, even the brutality, captivated her every time.
Though she tried to travel with him as much as possible now they were well into the regular season, she’d had to pass on this away game in Minnesota because she had too much work on. Not a bad problem to have.
When his lips dropped to hers, there was ease and adoration in the heat of his mouth, and welcome and comfort in hers. Beneath the palms of Avery’s hands, the tension leached from his muscles.
She understood exactly how he felt.
With everything right in her world now that she was back in Tanner’s orbit, Avery leaned into his reassuring bulk.
His broad hand circled the curve of her neck like a clay vase on a potter’s wheel, and she swallowed against the faint pressure of his thumb, beating him to the words he was always so generous with.
“I love you so much.” That flare of molten gold in his eyes thrilled her every time. “Everything is better when you’re home, Ace Face.”
Tanner
Those words on her lips. Fuck. That was all his dreams come true right there.
Cursing every minute of the delay that had kept the team grounded, Tanner hadn’t drawn a relaxed breath until he passed the Pine Springs town limits. Though he was thrilled to be a fixture on the Rapids top line, he’d turned into a sap who hated being away from home. Unless Avery came, too.
Time without her was a big “no, thank you” these days. She was the center of his world and he was forged to be her satellite. All he wanted was his arms around her and his nose in the curve of her neck. He needed Avery’s touch to relax him.
As Tanner slipped seamlessly into the group of friends who gave no thought to his public persona or earning power, he couldn’t stop touching her.
Threading his fingers through Avery’s, particles of electricity sputtering between them, he listened with half an ear to Sam’s update on the purchase of their latest renovation, and Leah’s description of the chaos Hazel had caused at a recent book club meeting.
“Talking of which—” Avery squeezed his hand. “Mom says she’s going to move back into central Pine Springs. Now she’s such a regular at book club, she wants to be even closer to her friends.”
“That’s cool.” Avery’s relationship with her mom had slowly taken on a healthier balance, with Violet’s need to lean on her daughter becoming more diluted as she rebuilt her social life.
She’d even taken to meeting up with Delia here and there over the past six months.
“I’m sure Sam can find her something and we’ll help her settle in.
Must be something in the water around here—Mats is thinking of making the same move. He’s talking about retiring.”
“Really?”
He’d grown even closer to Mats, and the two of them were talking about setting up a rotational buddy program to work with local youth teams if Mats moved to Pine Springs.
Several of the Rapids players had promised to sign up.
Still helping out at Ella-Jane’s Stick & Puck sessions when he wasn’t traveling, Tanner found the idea of encouraging and coaching the next generation of players an exciting one. Mats said he had a skill for it.
“I think his accident has changed stuff for him,” Tanner said, toying with Avery’s fingers, “although it’s hard to pry much out of him. It’s easier to get him talking about our plans for the buddy program.”
The big guy was like that—quietly motivational, reliably steady. He’d offered solid support during Tanner’s recovery and the messy aftermath of Arlo’s various deceptions.