Howie
One Month Later
Ella’s place is two floors below Jason’s, but it feels like a different world entirely.
She got the keys and, thanks to McKenzie and Aarthi, started thrifting and gathering all the furniture and decorations I’d expect to see in a movie depiction of the perfect girl pad.
Everything here feels soft and cozy, and I am frankly jittery with excitement at sleeping here. As soon as she gets a bed.
Today, the Fury has an off day, so the guys and I are all helping her get settled—putting together IKEA furniture, hanging art, and all the stuff she might need tall guys to help with.
I stand in the living room with a power drill and a curtain rod while Spinner and Rookie argue over their interpretation of the instructions for assembling Ella’s bookshelf.
Mayhem is silent in the kitchen, unpacking glassware, handling each Thatcher Stag original piece as if it were a work of art. He and Ella are probably the only people I know who could casually use actual designer cups and not worry about breaking them.
Suddenly, Rookie shrieks in the process of unpacking books for the new shelves. “Dude,” I hold my ear. “What is your problem?”
Rookie waves a book around. “What is this? Why is my baby sister reading this?”
I squint and notice a shirtless man on the cover of the book, and, glancing in the box, it’s not the only romance novel she had shipped here from Minnesota.
Ella walks into the room, hands on her hips, and frowns at him. “Jason Rujkowski. Did I question the violent murder videogames in your home? I thank you for keeping your opinions to yourself.”
She plucks the book from his hands, clutches it to her chest, and then sets it on her shelf in pride of place.
McKenzie and Aarthi emerge from where they’re stocking the bathroom, helping themselves to a few oohs and aahs over Ella’s book collection.
While Rookie grumbles, I finish hanging the curtains. My girl needs privacy for when she’s reading her naked-man books … or doing other things in her living room.
She smiles, and I see it, the recognition of what I'm doing. I lift the rod into the brackets, and the dark gray fabric falls straight and even, and the room transforms.
"Perfect," she says.
"I know."
Spinner starts organizing a lunch order when Mayhem's phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. He glances at the screen, and something happens to his face. I've seen Mayhem take a cross-check to the spine without flinching, but whatever is on that screen makes him go pale.
He sets down the Allen wrench, stares at his phone, and his jaw works in a way I've never seen from him, like something cracked in his skull.
“Mayhem?” I set down the drill. "You good?"
He looks up. His eyes are wrong. "I have to go."
Spinner snorts. “You chasing a lady friend, Mayhem?” Our friend glares at Spinner, who holds his hands up in supplication. “Sorry. What's actually wrong?"
"I just… I need to handle something." He's already grabbing his jacket from the back of a chair, moving fast. All of us—Rookie, Spinner, McKenzie, Aarthi, and Ella—stare at him in disbelief. Mayhem doesn't bolt from a room like the floor is on fire.
We all watch Mayhem shove his feet into his shoes and reach for the door.
“Cameron,” I say, dropping his real name to convey the gravity of whatever is going on. "Talk to me."
He pauses with his hand on the knob and seems to get his shit together, because when he turns, his face is composed again. “I’m fine,” he says. "Congratulations on the place, Ella."
And then he's gone. The door clicks shut, and his footsteps echo down the hallway, and the rest of us stand in Ella's half-assembled apartment in silence.
"What the hell was that?" Spinner asks.
Rookie shakes his head. "I've never seen him move that fast off the ice."
Spinner licks his teeth, then asks, "Should we go after him?"
"No," I say, though it goes against every instinct I have. “And quit bugging him about the ladies.” Mayhem let slip the other day that he’s been seeing the team psychologist, so something is definitely up with him. "He'll come to us when he's ready."
I don't know if that's true, but I know that chasing Mayhem when he doesn't want to be found is like chasing a puck into the corner against a guy twice your size. You'll just bounce off.
Spinner and Jason exchange a look. The energy in the room has shifted. The easy moving-day banter replaced by the quiet concern of men who love their friend and don't know what to do about it.
Ella breaks the silence. "Okay. Everyone out."
Spinner blinks. "What?"
"Out. Go home. I love you all, but I need to be alone in my apartment for ten minutes." She herds Spinner toward the door with the authority of a charge nurse clearing a trauma bay. “Go eat your meatballs. And thank you. Truly.”
"You sure?" Jason asks from the doorway.
"I'm sure. Thank you for today. All of you." She hugs her brother and each of the girls. I reach for my jacket as everyone heads to the hall toward the elevator.
"Not you," Ella says.
I set the jacket down.
She closes the door, turns to me, leans against it, and we stand in her living room looking at each other.
"Hi.”
"Hi?”
She pushes off the door, crosses the room to me, and puts her hands on my chest. I cover them with mine. Her ring finger is bare, but I can picture something there, someday, and the thought doesn't scare me the way it would have three months ago. In fact, it turns me on.
"I bought a really nice bed," she says. "With my first real paycheck."
"I heard. California king."
"It won't be here until next week."
"That's a shame."
"It is." She slides her hands up my chest to my shoulders. "We'll just have to make do."
I look at the floor. The rug Aarthi helped her pick — soft, thick, big enough for two people who don't mind being close. The late-afternoon sun hits it through the gap between the curtains, and it glows.
I like what my girl is thinking.
I pull my shirt over my head as Ella strips, and we sink together onto the rug, tangled in each other. She smells a little sweaty and a whole lot mine as I lay her back and hover over her curves.
Through it all, she looks up at me with those sharp, steady eyes. "I love you, Bernard."
"I love you, Ella."
I make love to her on the floor, slow and unhurried, sweet and so very good, because there’s no one to hide from and nowhere to be.
Her hands grip my shoulders. My mouth finds her neck, her collarbone—anywhere I can paint with kisses.
She wraps those solid legs around me and pulls me deeper into her and says my name, and I say hers, and we move together in the way we've learned, the way our bodies figured out before our brains caught up.
"I love you," she says again when she's close.
"I love you," I say when I feel her tighten around me.
"I love you," we repeat together, and I bury my face in her hair and let go.
We lie on the rug in the quiet. Her head on my chest. My hand in her hair. The curtains filter the river light to a warm gray, and the room smells like new paint, cardboard, and us.
Ella traces a circle on my stomach. "You gonna check on Mayhem?”
"Tomorrow,” I tell her. And then I roll her on top of me, smiling as her hair falls around us in a silken curtain. “Tonight you’re mine.”
She hums against my chest. Content. Whole. Home.
Ready to see what has Mayhem so upset? Grab Playing it Safe to fall in love with him and BB—a defender on the Pittsburgh Uprising women’s hockey team.