Page 133 of Rookie Recovery

More pieces defining the place that had well and truly become my home.

The place I was meant to be.

I smiled and leaned over the coffee table to grab my laptop, take it back to the kitchen island. My business class popped up to meet me as I opened the computer. Brady trotted over to bring a chewed-up, partially beheaded stuffed clown to keep me company.

“What are you doing?” Bowie left the stove to come stand beside me. His head tilted as he studied the screen. “Business class? Still? I thought you finished it.”

“Sorta.” I wrapped my arm around his waist and hauled him to my side. “I’m making sure they’ll send me a certificate saying I passed the damn thing.”

“So you can start your own practice.” His blond brows furrowed, so I leaned in to press a kiss to the closer one. Smoothing away the worry lines. He was too young for worry lines.

“No. Just to say that I did it.” I kissed his temple, his cheek. “I’m not leaving the Bobcats.”

He turned towards me, green eyes round and wide as fat coins. “Really?”

“Really.” I bowed my head and pressed my mouth against his. Spoke the next words against his lips. “This is where I belong. With the team. With hockey. With you.”

He groaned.

Melted like chocolate against me as my tongue slid between his lips. God, I would never get used to him—the way he could be so hard and so soft at the same time. Muscle and tenderness, smooth skin and sharp lines. The taste of him, like mint. The smell of soap and aftershave.

All of it perfect and inviting and mine. Mine.

I broke off the kiss as it started to tip the scales from tender to lusty. Slid my nose along the line of his cheek to his jaw. “Have I told you that I love you today?”

“Well, I mean, yes.” He chuckled against my throat. “But tell me again. In case I forgot.”

“I’ll settle on, my God you’re sexy and I might forget about dinner and blow you instead.”

Something poked me in the kidney. I looked down. Bowie was jabbing at me with a goddamn spatula. “Bad, Kitty.”

“You don’t want me to blow you?”

“No, you’re still going to blow me. Twice, for being a bad Kitty and cause I haven’t seen you wank in two days. But after we have a nice dinner that I have spent hours cooking.”

I laughed, and opted not to mention that he’d been in the kitchen for ten minutes. “Deal.”

“I need you to fall in love with this new recipe.” He grinned as he swept around the counter and to the stove. “My ego is feeling neglected.”

“It’s not,” I sighed, but I knew I’d indulge him anyway. He was an excellent cook, but I loved him enough that I might have believed he was, even if he wasn’t.

I needed to close the chapter on this stupid business class, though. Print the certificate saying that I could open my own practice. If I wanted to. Would make staying with the Bobcats that much more meaningful—because I was choosing to stay. Because I could walk away anytime. And didn’t.

Why would I?

I loved hockey. I loved the team. I loved Bowie. And I knew, as sure as I’d ever known anything, that I was where I belonged. In life, career, love.

For the first time, my house felt like a home—looked like one. I hadn’t thought about it much since Bowie had moved in, but now that I was, the difference was both subtle and shocking.

Maybe it was the collection of sticks in the corner—three of them clearly taller than Bowie’s rather haphazard arrayment of brands he was trying out. Or the slippers popping out from under the TV. The forest watercolor Bowie had dug up at a garage sale and hung on the wall opposite that weird stock-printed Pier 1 tree. Or the framed Bobcats team photo on the bookshelf next to the TV stand.

Beside it, another framed photo showed me and Bowie, arm in arm. Bowie grinning and me trying not to smile like an idiot right back. I was failing.

It was really fucking hard not to smile when he was around.

“You ready for tomorrow?” I toweled off the last dish in the rack. A few feet away, Bowie parceled leftovers into Tupperware containers, humming something a little too off-key to be identifiable. I didn’t care. I just wanted to touch him. Hold him. Remind him I loved him.

Remind him he was going to kill it in his first season game as a Bobcat.

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