25. Colton
COLTON
She looked stunning. I kept stealing glances at her as my hand rested against her knee.
Her hand fell lazily, and I couldn’t help how precious it looked sitting on top of mine.
My skin was tan and hairy. My hand, gigantic.
Well, compared to hers, at least. Her chubby little fingers slid along my skin, the light tan of her skin contrasting with the darkness of mine.
I wanted that dress she wore on my fucking living room floor.
“So, where are we headed?” Brynn asked.
She broke the silence in the car, and I let the silence sit for a beat. “Somewhere with a view.”
“Mmm, I love a good steak.”
I grinned. “Especially if it’s paired—”
“—with a nice bourbon?” she asked coyly. And when I grinned at her, she gave me the sweetest giggle. A giggle meant only for me. “I’m more of a wine and steak person myself.”
“What wine do you drink with your steak?”
She snickered. “Whatever’s strongest.”
I barked with laughter. “Spoken like a true college kid.”
“Hey now,” she said as she nudged me playfully, “I haven’t been in college in a hot second.”
“Yeah, neither have I,” I said with a smirk.
She nudged me again, only this time her laughter filled the air in the cabin of my car.
I enjoyed how easy things were with her.
We arrived at the restaurant and I clocked the hostess the second we walked in.
She didn’t reach for the reservation book.
She just smiled, said, “Mr. Mercer,” and led us straight through to the elevator.
No wait. No “let me check.” We rode up to the rooftop level and stepped out into the warm desert night, and I watched Brynn stop walking the second she saw the view.
The Strip stretched out below us in both directions, every light in the city going at once, the kind of thing that was impossible to look at and not feel something about.
She stood there for a second with her hand on the railing and I stood beside her and let her have it.
I’d done enough research to know this was the best rooftop in the city, and I didn’t want the team coming up and interrupting us at every turn.
Or the fucking press, for that matter.
They led us to a table at the edge of the rooftop with nothing between us and the city. Brynn sat across from me and looked out at the Strip and was quiet for a moment in a way she almost never was.
“I grew up here,” she said, “and I still can’t get used to it.”
I looked at the Strip and then back at her. “Good,” I said. “Means it’s still worth looking at.”
We didn’t do much talking as we ordered drinks and food. We debated over appetizers for a while, but I just went along with whatever she wanted. I had no food allergies. I’d try anything twice, just to make sure I did or didn’t like it. Whatever she wanted to eat was fine by me.
I wanted to know more about her.
“So, Brynn, tell me,” I said as I handed my menu to the waiter, “tell me about the book you want to write.”
She paused for a second, as if she didn’t know what I was talking about. Then her eyes brightened. “Oh! Yes! Well, it’s a work in progress. The bar and the stadium keeps me pretty busy.”
I nodded as the waiter delivered our drinks. I nodded my head in appreciation before I picked up my bourbon and took a glug. “So, is it written?”
She shrugged. “Well, I mean, yes. But I keep changing my mind about things.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Tell me about it.”
She relaxed as well, sipping her wine as she crossed her leg over her knee. I couldn’t see the motion, but I did see the shuffling of her torso as she propped herself up onto one side.
What I wouldn’t have given to see how the motion plumped up her thick thigh.
“Well,” she said with a heavy sigh as our appetizer was delivered in what felt like immediate fashion.
Brynn squealed and grabbed her fork before she stabbed at a garlic-roasted shrimp and brought it to her lips.
I watched those juicy, glossy lips of hers curl around the fork, sliding that shrimp off the prongs.
I’d never been so jealous of cooked fish in all my fucking life.
“Mmmmm,” she hummed as she chewed. “Good god, that’s good.”
I grinned as I took a stab at the shrimp. “Glad you like it.”
She cleared her throat after washing the food down with some wine. “I’ve always wanted to write a self-help book of sorts.”
About grief. “About what?”
“Grief,” she said, making me grin to myself, “Loss. You know, a book to help older kids who have joined the ‘dead dad’ club.”
“It’s a hard club to be in. Even if you don’t know the parent before they pass away.”
She held her hand out toward me. “Exactly. For someone like you, you’re just… born into it. You didn’t have any power or control over what happened.”
“Neither did you.”
“But you get what I’m saying, yeah? It’s like…why should we have to struggle with this thing that no book or person seems to really, genuinely understand?”
Her beauty, I found, was only second to her caring nature. “And you want to write a book to help close the gap in that market?”
She shook her head. “No. I want to write that book so people don’t have to struggle the way Mom and I have struggled.”
She went quiet for a second, stabbing at another shrimp. Then, like she hadn’t meant to say it out loud: “I even have a title. Have had it for years.” She shook her head softly. “Stupid, probably.”
“What is it?”
She looked up. “‘The Part Nobody Tells You.’ That’s what I’d call it.” She held my eyes for just a second before she reached for her wine. “Anyway.”
“That’s not stupid,” I said.
She didn’t answer. But she smiled down into her glass, and I filed it away.
I stabbed another shrimp and took a bite. “Is everything good between you and Victoria?”
Her brown eyes grew unfocused for a second, and I vowed not to bring her mother up for the rest of the night. “I’ll talk to her in the morning after she’s had some sleep.”
And just like that, I dropped the topic. “Fair enough.”
I expected the dinner to grow silent, like most did. But instead, Brynn plucked another shrimp off the plate with her fork for herself and peered at me from beyond her wine glass.
“Ready for the big game this weekend?”
I chuckled as the waiter brought out our food. I waited until he was gone before I answered. “We’re as ready as we will be. Though, I think the boys are struggling to sleep.”
She snickered. “I don’t blame them. When my dad coached the team—”
“Your father coached hockey?”
She smiled brightly and nodded. “He played for them, actually. Back when they were still minor league. When his playing days were done he transitioned into coaching, and Mom bought the team so he could stay in the game. He coached them right up until he died.”
I searched her face for a while before turning her back to the conversation. “What did he do before the opening games? Did he have any rituals?”
That seemed to pull her out of her trance and her smile broadened. “He used to run them ragged during practice the day before, and then he’d bring them all to the bar for food before telling them to rest up. He swore up and down that the hard practice and the full belly helped them to rest.”
“I don’t doubt it.” And it wasn’t a half-bad idea, either. “What else did your father do with the team?”
I’d never seen a woman beam with such pride before she started in on all of the things her father did with the team back when he coached it.
A man who played the game his whole life and then coached it until the day he died, with his wife buying the team just to give him that.
That wasn’t a small thing. That was a whole life built around something he loved.
Either way, it was a legacy I needed to understand if I was going to move this team forward.
And if there were traditions he established, I’d like to revive those.
If for no other reason than to make her smile like that.
“He always bought new jerseys for every season,” she said, shaking her head, reliving the memories of her dad. “It drove Mom insane, him wanting to order and reorder jerseys for each season. We ended up with a room in our house that had nothing but those yearly jerseys mounted on the wall.”
I chuckled. “Sounds like he was proud.”
She nodded. “Very proud. He’d christen the ice every year, too. With the Zamboni? He’d come in early during game days to run the Zamboni himself over the ice. He had this insane thing he used to do where he’d fill the Zamboni tank up with treated water from the river.”
“From the river?” I asked. “Just, like, the river that runs just outside of town?”
She nodded. “That’s the one. He’d get a couple of buckets, treat it for god-knows-what, and then he’d put that into the Zamboni and use it to resurface the ice for the games.”
“Do I even want to ask why he did that?”
She grinned. “Dad was always an outdoorsman, and his belief was that since hockey started outdoors, there needed to be a little bit of the outdoors inside of the arena.”
“Huh.”
I kind of liked that.
Brynn finally cut into her steak and took a bite, and the moan she gave while she chewed pulled me into a completely different headspace.
Gone was the conversation about hockey and games.
Gone was the conversation about family or whatever else bullshit we would’ve come up with.
I slid my foot beneath the table toward hers, not stopping until I felt my pant leg brush against her bare calf.
And as she peeked over at me from across the table, the city lit up behind her like it was trying to compete, I licked my lower lip before I asked the first of many questions I wanted an answer to.
We finished dinner slowly, the way neither of us seemed to be in a hurry for the night to end. When the check came, I didn’t reach for it so much as I just set my card on top of the folder without opening it. The waiter was gone before Brynn could even clock what happened.
“You didn’t even look at it,” she said.
“No,” I said.
She watched me with that look she got sometimes, like she was trying to decide if she was impressed or annoyed. “Must be nice.”
“It’s not something I think about,” I said honestly. “That’s probably the most honest thing I can tell you about it.”
She considered that for a second. Then she nodded once, the way she did when something settled right with her. “That tracks, actually.”
“I want to say something,” I said, “and I need you to let me get through it before you say anything back.”
She set her fork down. “Okay.”
I kept my voice low. “I should’ve stopped the second I figured out what was going on the other day.
You should’ve had time. More than a lunch break in my office.
More than me moving too fast because I didn’t slow down enough to pay attention to the signs that were right in front of my face.
” I held her eyes. “That’s on me, Brynn.
Not on you. You didn’t do anything wrong.
But I did, and I’m telling you that straight. ”
She opened her mouth.
“Not done,” I said.
She closed it again. Her cheeks were pink, but she stayed quiet.
“You chose me,” I said. “I understand that. And I’m not going to sit here and make you explain yourself about it, because you don’t owe me an explanation.
But you’re not a woman who does things halfway, Brynn.
I’ve known that since the first night you stood behind that bar.
So the fact that you chose me — chosen or not — means something.
And I want to do right by it.” I reached across the table and covered her hand with mine.
“I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not going to go weird on you.
But I am going to be more careful with you than I was. You deserve that.”
She stared at me for a long second. “You’re not going to make it weird?”
“Not weird,” I said. “Just better.”
The breath she let out told me she’d been carrying that since Tuesday. She picked her fork back up. “Okay.”
“Okay,” I said back.
“Tell me something,” I said as I picked up my fork and stabbed at my potatoes. “How did you end up working at The Hideout?”