Page 99 of Home Ice

Tonight is the last game of the Sting's road trip and the last game of my three-game suspension. I haven't watched the previous two. I should be there with them, not watching on a television. But Lily insisted on tonight.

She flew back home with me from Denver, telling the team she needed time to deal with everything that happened. Then she came here to this house and hasn't left since. I know because I've been watching and waiting for her to come where she belongs. At least she hasn't cut me out. We've talked on the phone and texted, but it feels like a long distance relationship. And I don't like it.

When I walk into the kitchen, Lily looks up from the cutting board where she's dicing garlic. Or trying to. A loose hair falls over her face. She blows it to the side. I want to tuck it behind her ear for her, but I don't trust her with that knife in her hands. Not that she would stab me on purpose, but she might accidentally cut me. The way she's cut herself at least twice that I know of today. "It's not about the size of the television." She waves the knife absentmindedly, and even though I'm three meters away, I still step back. She doesn't notice it before she turns around and starts dicing again.

I don't know what it's like to have a secret just thrown out there like that, but I know this one isn't as bad as she thinks. She already knew that I cared about her, not her past. Now she knows the team feels the same. Kayden has filled our team group chat with so many links about gender and transgender history that I've had to mute him. Lily isn't part of the chat, but I've made sure she knows all the positive and supportive reactions from the boys. And that's all they've been. Supportive. Every single one of them.

"I'm with Brant," Chloe says from the living room sofa. "This thing is tiny. Can we please go to his place?"

Lily looks up and that same hair swings into her face again. Fuck it. I cross the room and wrap one hand around her waist from behind and use the other to tuck the hair behind her ear. She leans back into me, and I know she's missed this as much as I have. I have to shift so she won't feel that I'm already getting hard from just half a second of contact with her. "You spend twenty-three hours a day staring at a six-inch screen," Lily tells her. "I don't think you have room to complain about a... whatever size this is."

"Forty-five inch," Chloe and I say at the same time.

"Whatever. The point is, it's way bigger than that thing." Lily gestures toward Chloe's phone, and since she fails to set the knife down first, I lean away while grabbing at her wrist to make sure nothing becomes severed. "You can go if you want, but you won't be able to eat any of this delicious dinner I'm making."

Chloe starts to stand, but when I shake my head at her, she sinks back into the sofa with a disappointed sigh. "Chloe and I are looking forward to the meal," I speak for her, "but the reason we're really here is the company." Lily turns to give me a smile. Anyone else might think it's the same smile she would have given me last week, but I can see the difference. The corners of her lips don't go quite as high, and her cheekbones—is it normal for a man to spend as much time looking at a woman's cheekbones as I have in the last couple of months? Those gorgeous cheekbones don't swell with the same pride they would have before.

I know it's because of Denver. The fight. I'm not a man who usually does things like that—hell, I'm not a man who ever does things like that—but I will always defend my girl. Both of my girls. Maybe she doesn't like that, but I will never stand by and let either of them ever be disrespected.

"Brant couldn't have said it better." Lily is now trying to cut a truffle into slices thinner than the cheap toilet paper I used to buy when I was single. While she's talking. And while my arm is wrapped around her and holding her tight to my chest. A cold sweat rolls down the back of my neck, and I make sure all my fingers are tucked in. "Tonight is all about the company," she says. "That's why I invited Silver. The rest of you are sort of a package deal."

"Ouch. Good one," Chloe calls out.

Silver lifts his head at the mention of his name and sniffs the air. He seems to debate if whatever he smells might be edible—a debate that takes him more than a few seconds—and then he gets up more out of obligation than desire. Even though he's coming with the hope of food, he seems less than enthusiastic about what he might find.

"You're not the only one who can hide her feelings behind a layer of sarcasm designed to keep people at a distance so she doesn't get hurt," Lily says. Chloe stares, I assume waiting for a punchline, but there isn't one. "Anyway, sorry kiddo. You're stuck with me for tonight."

Chloe rolls her eyes. "Ugh, worst news ever." Her lips curl into a smile just before she buries her face back in her phone screen. And I realize I have two smiles in my life that I would move the Wasatch Mountains for. One shovelful at a time. How the hell did I end up so lucky?

I press myself even tighter against Lily's back. "We could just have pizza and beer like most people do when they watch a game."

She whips around to face me. My hand that was wrapped around her stomach falls to her ass, and I think I wouldn't mind keeping it right there forever. I grip the countertop beside her with my other hand, pinning her in place. "Is that your way of saying that you don't trust my cooking?"

"It's my way of saying I could have that pretty little ass of yours pulled down tight on my lap right now if we would order delivery."

"Gross!" Chloe gags. "Learn to keep your whispers more whispery."

"Beef Wellington is way better than pizza. Besides, this night is..." Lily draws her lower lip between her teeth as she pulls in a breath. Her eyes move between me and Chloe in the living room. When I walked in earlier, I noticed that the shelves she'd kept empty for as long as I've known her have a few things sitting on them tonight. The wall that's normally just blank white has a framed painting of a flower on it.

"This night is going to be perfect, no matter what." I finish the sentence for her. She relaxes just a little as I kiss her forehead.

CHAPTER 60

A VAGUELY HUMAN-SHAPED HEAP

LILY

"Why is nothing going right tonight?" If Brant and Chloe weren't here, I might just toss the Beef Wellington into the trash and then collapse into a vaguely human-shaped heap in the center of the kitchen floor and cry. No, I take that back. I would definitely do that. Even with them, I'm tempted. Silver would probably just come and try to cuddle me, though, and getting dog cuddles makes it almost impossible to wallow in self-pity at the levels I deserve right now.

I spent the whole day on this. I browned each side of the beef—not cheating on sides three and four, even though I wondered if anyone would really be able to tell. I chopped the mushrooms and shallots for the duxelles. By hand, because Dad doesn't own a food processor. I even looked up what the hell a duxelles is. That alone should have given me bonus points with the cooking gods. It should have earned me a halfway good entree. Or at least an edible one.

I didn't call Em to bail me out the way I always do when I try to make something from a recipe on the internet. In fact, I haven't talked to her at all this week. She has no idea what I'm doing. If she did, she would just try to talk me out of it.

"It's like burnt toast." Brant peers over my shoulder at the beef Wellington that looks more like a lumpy log of coal than a beef tenderloin covered in puff pastry. "Scrape off the dark parts and it'll be mostly fine. At least the potatoes are good."

He sticks a fork into the truffled potato gratin that the internet calls the perfect, fool-proof side that is guaranteed to impress. Pretty sure it's not supposed to look like a bowl of cereal where the part of Frosted Flakes is played by slices of potato. Some of which are the thickness of a fingernail, while others would somehow have been smaller if I'd left them as whole potatoes. And don't forget the thinly sliced truffles that give the whole soupy mess a taste somewhere between plain wet earth and decomposing wet earth. The expensive cap to a meal that already cost almost half of my paycheck.

Tonight was supposed to be special.

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