Chapter 46
SAM
We haven’t talked about what happens after today, and I can’t seem to stop wondering what happens now. I don’t want to leave her side now that I’ve got her in bed next to me.
“Do you want to come join us for dinner tonight?” she asks.
“Are you sure?”
She hums her reply, nodding against my bicep.
“While I’d like to be really selfish and keep you all to myself, you’re kind of a fan favourite in that house.
” She pushes herself up to kiss me, her right leg hooking over my waist, until she’s straddling me.
“You’re a fan favourite in this house too, come to think of it. ”
“Thank god,” I say, pulling her down to me as I reach over to the side table and fumble around for a condom.
Rosie bats my hand away and grabs one herself, sliding down to my knees and dealing with things on her own. My girl takes charge like a champ.
My girl. Fucking finally.
A sound that doesn’t even register as human leaves me when she sinks down and instructs me not to move. It’s reminiscent of our first night together, and I do as I’m told because that was one of the hottest experiences of my life.
“I need you to be quiet, too,” she says as her nails dig into my pecs. “I want to see how quiet you can be while I ride you.” She starts a slow pace, adding a little hula to her hips every third time or so. I lose count quickly. If I’m going to stay quiet, I need to focus on doing that only.
“Touch me,” she commands, and my hand is reaching for her before I’m even aware of it.
“Good”—she gasps, grinding down—“boy.” She moans as she goes off the second my thumb connects with her clit, squeezing around me so tightly I see stars.
Rosie coming on my cock is the most incredible sensation I’ve ever experienced, and the realization that this moment is going to be repeated for the foreseeable future is what sends me right over the edge behind her.
It’s the quietest I’ve ever come, but I’ve always been a good listener, and I’m not about to break the rules now. I want to be invited back after all.
“Prince!” Maggi squeals, grabbing my hand and pulling me into the house before the door has even opened all the way.
“Roo,” Rosie scolds. “Let Sam get his shoes off before you drag him through the house.”
Maggi stops abruptly but doesn’t drop my hand. Instead, she stands there with her fingers wrapped around mine, waiting as I slip my shoes off and set them alongside everyone else’s. And then she goes right back to pulling me along behind her.
“Mags.” Martha sighs when she sees us come into the kitchen. She’s still shaking her head when she looks at me. “You’re a very good sport, Sam. Welcome back.” She hugs me and I hug back with my free arm while Maggi stands there watching, pulling me along the minute Martha steps back.
“You got Stuart going,” Thomas calls from a room off the dining room. “I didn’t think it was possible.” He appears at the door. “How’d you do it?”
Wilton Stuart, a lock forward who stepped into my old role, had been, to put it plainly, shitting the bed.
I’d been warned that he wasn’t exactly handling things well.
Lots of negative self-talk and isolation from the rest of the team.
It’s easy to fall into those habits when it feels like you’re the weak link.
And Wilton truly believed he was, despite the team having a winning record.
Sometimes those are the times your shortcomings get highlighted.
I’d been tapped from the moment I’d signed the contract to work with him.
I sat with him on the team bus. Pulled him aside after practice before he had a chance to go off and hide.
Escorted him to the team therapist to make sure he attended his appointments.
On the one hand, I felt like a glorified babysitter, but on the other, when he started to improve, when he didn’t need me to encourage him to engage with others, and he celebrated small victories on the pitch, that’s when it felt like I had actually done something by being there like that.
“He put in the work, got his head back in the game,” I say, giving Thomas just enough information without oversharing.
He stares back in that way dads do when they know there’s something you’re not telling them, and something pings in my chest. It has been so long since a father looked at me like that—there’s a strange comfort in it.
“Well, good for him.” He finally says, nodding and retreating back into the room, as Maggi continues to guide me through the house and out to the conservatory.
There are fewer plants now, with several being at Rosie’s place, and the vase is obviously missing in the corner. As usual, a puzzle sits in a state of disarray on the coffee table, and Maggi pulls me down next to her.
“Mommy said we can work on this until dinner,” she informs me in a serious tone.
“How many puzzles do you have on the go right now, princess?” I ask while I sort the pile of pieces that are in front of me.
“Two,” she says, without looking away from the table. “This one and at our house.”
Our house. I know she means her and Rosie’s, but one day I hope that I’m included in that bear hug of a phrase.
“Sam,” Maggi says as she fits a puzzle piece into place, her tongue sticking out from the side of her mouth while she concentrates.
“Yeah, princess?”
“You can live at my house, if you want.” She shrugs as if she’s just suggested the most uncomplicated arrangement in the world.
“Oh yeah?”
“You love Mommy.” Again, dropping things like they’re nothing.
“I do,” I agree, a creak pulling my attention to my right to see Rosie standing there, eyes wide, and my stomach drops.
“Hi, Mommy,” Maggi chirps, completely oblivious to the fact I inadvertently declared my love for her mother.
“Hi, Roo,” Rosie says, stepping the rest of the way into the room and dropping to her knees on the other side of the table, her composure returning. “Can I join you?” she asks.
“Mmhmm,” Maggi hums, attention on finding the spot her next piece goes.
“Can we finish before dinner?” I ask, hoping to get my heart rate back to a normal speed.
Maggi stands and looks down at the puzzle, hands on her hips while she appears to debate whether or not finishing before dinner is in fact possible. She reminds me of an old coach I once had who paced back and forth with his hands the exact same way, forehead drawn in silent thought.
“No,” she concludes, plopping back down beside me and going right back to work.
“I appreciate your honesty,” I say, peeking quickly up at Rosie, who is trying not to laugh before another expression crosses her face. Concern, maybe?
“Roo, do you have to pee?” she asks, and I look down to see Maggi squirming. She’s been doing that the entire time.
“Nope,” she says happily, her attention still on the puzzle.
“I think you should probably go try,” Rosie coaxes gently.
Maggi looks up at me as if I’m going to disagree with her mother.
“I bet I can finish this horse faster than you can pee,” I challenge, waving the puzzle piece I’m holding around.
Her eyes go wide, and she jumps up. “No way,” she squeals, squeezing behind me and running from the room.
A heaviness descends on the room, and I have to work up the courage to look across the table at Rosie. When I do, her eyes are on me, but she drops her gaze immediately, failing to keep her smile from growing.
I love you. The words are right there, but saying them right now doesn’t feel quite right. I love you. They dance between my brain and my mouth, teasing me with their weight.
“When she gets all”—she squirms in the same way Maggi did—“that’s her pee dance. It’s a bit different from her usual fidgeting.”
“I’ve got a lot to learn, I guess.”
Rosie smiles softly at me. “You’ll figure it out.”
“I’m do—” Maggi announces as she comes back into the room, only to have Rosie cut her off and stop her dead with a look.
“Did you wash your hands, little miss?”
Maggi nods, but the second Rosie’s eyebrow goes up, that nod turns into a shake, and she skips back out of the room.
“She’s usually very good about washing her hands. But when she’s excited, well, hygiene goes out the window.”
I nod in understanding. “Little things childless people don’t even think about,” I confess.
She shrugs. “You don’t have to know it all today. Or even tomorrow.” She connects the sections Maggi and I were working on with a single piece. “But definitely by next Friday. You should have it all figured out by then.”
She had me going for a beat. But her serious expression cracks, and her honey laughter fills the room.
“Maggi surprises me in at least one new way daily.” She sighs.
“Right as I feel like I’ve got a handle on this parent thing, something happens that makes me question my abilities.
The first time she peed her pants,” Rosie whispers, leaning over the table and eyeing the door.
“She had been fidgeting, and I hadn’t really thought about it.
I felt like such a failure. People prepare new parents for certain things during the first year.
And then you convince yourself that you’ve got it all figured out.
Nope. Turns out you never stop learning, even if you have to be the one who appears to have it all figured out. ”
“Dinner,” Maggi calls dramatically, jumping into the room and landing in a full squat that has my knees screaming just from seeing her do it.
Both of them offer me a hand, and I take them, pretending they’re helping me up.
“Guess what we’re having,” Maggi urges, her hand still wrapped around mine as she leads me to the dinner table.
I sniff the air and pretend to think. “Dino steaks and mashed asparagus?” I guess, and Maggi is instantly lost in a fit of giggles as she shakes her head. “What’s so funny? I thought that was a pretty good guess.”
“That’s a silly guess,” she teases.
I twist my face in confusion, making her laugh harder. “Really? It smells exactly like that to me.”
“It’s spaghetti and meatballs,” she crows, pulling out a chair. “You can sit beside me, Sam.” She looks up at me, big brown eyes full of hope.
Martha walks in with a basket of bread and sets it on the table. “Bloody hell, I was going to ask him to sit beside me.” She huffs.
“Are we arguing about who gets to sit beside Sam?” Thomas asks, walking into the room behind his wife with a platter piled high with magazine-worthy spaghetti and meatballs.
“What about me?” Rosie asks, coming up beside me, her hand resting on my lower back and warming me through.
I look around the room at the MacTavish’s who are all looking at me with hope. I can’t decide if this is a joke, a test, or a bit of both.
“While I’d like to accommodate all requests,” I say, using every second of media training I’ve received over my career. “In the name of fairness, I will have to honour the first request.”
Maggi cheers and jumps about until her mother calmly tells her to settle down and to take her seat, and then it’s all clinking of silverware on plates and “please pass this” and “please pass that.”
It’s the first family dinner I’ve been a part of in years, and I worry that I look a bit too blissed out while everyone talks about their week, including Maggi, who got to be crayon collector at school last week, a very prestigious job by the sound of it.