24. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
GIANNA
I have four hundred and seven pictures and videos on my phone from last night.
That is not an exaggeration. Ever since I landed in Vegas, I stopped being a person and became a documentary crew, and now I’m lying in a hotel bed in Las Vegas at eight in the morning going through all of them one at a time.
I pretty much filmed the entire game. I have Benson on the ice with both arms up.
Benson getting buried. Benson coming down the tunnel with his helmet off and his hair completely wrecked.
Lucy crying in the seat next to me with both hands over her face after they won.
Stanley screaming with his arms up while Aspen cheered for him.
Percy under six people. My mom, who does not take photographs, holding up her phone like she suddenly understands why everybody else does.
And Rowan.
I can’t stop staring at the pictures Benson took of us in the corridor.
I think we’re perfect together. I’m in Rowan’s arms, and he’s holding me like I weigh nothing.
In one I’m kissing him. In another I’m smiling at the camera.
My ass looks nice and round, which is obviously important historical documentation.
That’s my boyfriend.
I open our texts.
Me: Good morning, national championship boyfriend.
Rowan: Good morning, G.
Me: How are you?
Rowan: Bad.
Me: Sorry.
Rowan: I’ll live.
Me: What’s your day look like?
Rowan: Food, treatment, film, skate, meetings.
Me: So no one can come to brunch?
Rowan: No.
Me: Okay. Have a good day. I miss you.
Rowan: Miss you too.
Rowan: Girlfriend.
I smile, satisfied.
By the time I make it upstairs to brunch, Aspen and Penelope are already waiting. Lucy, Mara, and Melly come with me, and Stanley’s mom is here too. My parents are meeting us here. I stop beside the table before I sit and look everyone in the eye.
“National. Championship.”
Stanley’s mom makes an excited sound, and I already like her.
I raise an eyebrow at Aspen and Penelope. “I’m making sure everybody at this table fully understands what is happening tomorrow.”
Mara laughs. “We were there.”
I glare at Mara. “I don’t think you understand.”
“Oh, I understand,” Melly says. “Blue almost gave me a heart attack twelve separate times.”
“That’s different. Benson scored the goal that sent them here, and Rowan is playing for a national championship, and Stanley—”
Aspen looks at me.
“—also plays a really good game of hockey.”
I finally sit down, and my parents come through the restaurant a minute later.
“The Reeves,” I announce.
My mother rolls her eyes.
“National championship, Mom.” I look at my dad. “Dad? Your little boy is captain of the team playing for a national championship tomorrow.”
His mouth twitches before he even sits down. “I’m aware.”
“You don’t seem excited enough.”
“He hasn’t stopped talking about it since last night,” my mom says.
I look at my dad and grin. “Good.”
Once everybody settles in, I do not shut up about how good the guys played. Nobody stops me.
The end of brunch turns into everybody trying to figure out how to fill an entire day in Vegas while the guys are locked into team obligations. Melly wants to see the fountains. Penelope wants to walk the Strip. Mara wants to gamble, which is obviously a problem because she is not twenty-one.
Aspen has exactly three hours before she has to work.
Everybody groans at her.
“I’m not apologizing for having a job.”
“You’re in Vegas,” I tell her.
“So is my laptop.”
“That’s tragic.”
We spend most of the afternoon walking the Strip, taking an obscene number of pictures and stopping anywhere that looks remotely interesting. It’s eighty degrees in April, which feels illegal after Michigan. Melly buys sunglasses within four minutes because apparently the desert surprised her.
Vegas is insane. Everything is too big and too bright and somehow fake-looking even when I’m standing inside it. It’s almost like an adult Disneyland, except nothing beats Disney and I refuse to hear arguments.
By the time we get to the mini-Eiffel Tower, I have forced everybody into at least fifty more pictures.
Most of them will probably sit in my phone forever.
I don’t care.
I want them.
I want all of it.
Somewhere near there, we stop in a gift shop, and I find the ugliest snow globe I have ever seen. Inside is a plastic version of the Las Vegas skyline. In front of the skyline is a small green alligator wearing sunglasses. There is no explanation for the alligator anywhere. I love it immediately.
“You cannot buy that,” Mara says.
“I’m buying it for my boyfriend.”
Melly laughs.
Mara rolls her eyes.
I hold it up. “Actually, I think we all need one.”
Penelope lights up. “That’s perfect.”
“Thank you. I’m going to get one for everybody.”
“The whole team?” Mara asks.
“No. I’m not spending five hundred dollars on novelty alligators.” I shrug, looking at the rows of them. “Just Hawthorne.”
Ten minutes later, we have almost wiped out the entire line.
I hand Mara one too. “For the single lady.”
“Thanks, bitch.” She grabs it. “Nobody’s locking me down.”
Lucy’s phone pings while we are checking out. My mom and I both look at her.
“Is that my brother?” I ask.
My mom waits.
Lucy shows us the screen.
Benson: Downstairs for 30 if you want coffee.
I look at everybody. “We need to run.”
We do not run.
But we get back thirty-five minutes later.
Benson is sitting at a table near the window in the coffee shop off the lobby, and he looks like hell.
There’s a mark high on his cheekbone, his hair looks like he showered and stopped caring halfway through it, and the way he is sitting makes it obvious every part of his body knows exactly how much hockey he played last night.
“Oh my God,” I say. “Are you okay?”
My mom reaches him first. “Honey.”
“You look awful,” I add.
“Thanks, G,” Benson says, ignoring his immediate family, and looks at Lucy.
I point at Dad. “You look like him.”
Benson looks at our dad. “You gonna let her talk to me like that?”
Dad lifts both hands.
Lucy leans down and kisses the top of Benson’s head. His whole face changes, and I roll my eyes because thank God she loves him back.
I have seen Benson exhausted from hockey my entire life, but this looks different. He looks mentally exhausted.
I sit across from him. “Are you nervous?”
He looks at me. “Yeah.”
That answer settles into me harder than I expect. Benson is never cocky about hockey. Confident, yes. He knows he is good. Everybody does. But this matters enough to make him nervous.
My mom starts asking if he’s seen the trainer. He tells her he has. She asks about the mark on his face. He tells her nothing is wrong. She starts talking about how she doesn’t want him getting hurt before he goes pro.
Benson knocks twice on the table. “Mom. Come on. Don’t manifest that.”
“I’m not manifesting anything.”
“You’re saying it.”
My dad nudges her gently.
She lifts her hands. “Fine.”
Lucy tries not to smile.
I look at her and make a small circle beside my head with my finger.
Benson catches me.
He looks at Lucy and nods once like he agrees.
My dad saves everyone by asking him something about Michigan’s second pair, and just like that, Benson is talking hockey with him.
I sit there listening. Mostly. Watching my brother. Watching Lucy watch him. Watching my parents pretend tomorrow is not going to emotionally destroy them no matter what happens.
Eventually Benson checks his phone. “I have to go.”
My mom is already on her feet, but Benson doesn’t move.
She looks at him, confused. “Go.”
He still doesn’t move. “I know. I’m going.” He stays another minute anyway because Lucy is saying something quietly to him.
Then everybody starts hugging him.
My mom holds on longest and says something into his ear. My dad shakes his hand first, then pulls him in. When it is my turn, I wrap my arms around him carefully.
“See you tomorrow.”
“You’ll see me tonight.”
I pull back. “Oh. Right.”
He smiles. “Dinner at six. Ballroom downstairs. Fuller’s letting families come.”
“All of us?”
“If you’re on the list.”
I perk up. “Am I on the list?”
“Unfortunately.”
I shove his shoulder lightly.
He kisses Lucy before he goes.
I watch him walk away.
Tomorrow.
The afternoon disappears after that.
Aspen goes to work with absolutely no remorse. My parents vanish somewhere that probably involves gambling and money they refuse to give me. Mara spends ten minutes claiming her fake ID will absolutely work before Penelope tells her she is not bailing her out of a Nevada jail.
By six, everybody is tired.
Which feels unfair.
“How are the guys supposed to win tomorrow if we’re tired?” I ask.
Mara looks at me. “That’s an incredible question.”
“The time zone thing really sucks.”
“Yeah,” Mara says lazily.
Dinner is in a ballroom off the lobby. Staff is there too, including Donovan and Cole, and for once I am grateful I’m not working. Cole waves when I walk in. The whole team is already here. Naturally, the Hawthorne boys are together.
A woman with a clipboard stops us at the door. “Name?”
“Reeve.”
She checks. “Reeve family. Yes. You’re all together.”
I look across the room toward Rowan. “And Laurens girlfriend.”
My mom grabs my arm. “Gianna.”
I’m doing it specifically because it makes her uncomfortable.
Mara laughs because she knows exactly what I’m doing.
“I’m clarifying,” I tell her. “I have two reasons to be here.”
“She has a list,” my mom says. “You’re a Reeve. She doesn’t need—”
“I’m probably on there twice.”
The woman with the clipboard does not care nearly as much as my mother does.
We walk in, and I don’t walk over to Rowan. I sit with my parents and Lucy because he’s with his team and tonight feels like it belongs to them.
We eat an extremely normal chicken dinner in an extremely abnormal room.