Page 46 of One Pucking Wish

Her posture sags before she gives a defeated shake of her head and slumps down onto the sofa.

“I guess I wanted to see you.” I lean against a wall, opposite the sofa. “A few of the guys know, but I guarantee they won’t speak of it again. Your job is safe, and your reputation is fine.”

She snorts. “My reputation is so not fine. No…that’s pretty much shot.”

“You’re worried about being judged by a handful of hockey players? You’ve worked with us. We have no room to judge you. Why does it matter what anyone thinks, anyway?”

“I don’t know. It just does.” She shakes her head.

As I take her in now, the realization of my feelings hits hard. I’m obsessed with this woman. That reality is undeniable. It’s more than being insanely attracted to her. It’s as if we have this invisible connection, a pull toward one another that’s always been there. Unhealed traumas morphed this unearthly pull into something else—hatred or, at the very least, annoyance. Yet I can no longer stick my head in the sand and pretend that’s all it is. The pair of us is broken. There’s no question about that. Yet I can’t help but feel that together, maybe we can be whole.

These ideas in my head sound cheesy even to me. Perhaps I’ll never have the courage to voice them out loud, but I feel them, nonetheless, and something inside me demands that I honor them.

I approach the sofa and extend my hand. “Come here.”

Her brows furrow as her big brown eyes dart from my hand to my face with uncertainty.

“I don’t bite.”

She forces a laugh. “I doubt that.” But she takes my hand, and I pull her up.

I thread my fingers through her thick curls, tilting her face toward mine. “I want you… and not in the way I’ve had you but in all the ways I haven’t.”

Pulling her head back slightly, she swallows hard. “What do you…?” Her words are soft as her voice trails off.

Lifting my shoulders, I shrug. “I’m not sure what that entails, I only know that I lied to you. I think about Vancouver all the fucking time. Yet the truth is, I thought about you long before then. I’m not good at this. I have no idea where to start or what to do, but I know I want you.”

Dead. Fucking. Silence.

If she wasn’t blinking, I’d question whether she was still breathing. My heart races inside my chest. I pull my hands from her hair and drop them at my sides. My breath is shallow, and my mind becomes fuzzy. I’m stuck in this place of uncertainty. Is this a rejection?

Finally, she dips her chin in a nod and says, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

The corners of her mouth tilt up in a slight grin. “I think it’s crazy. We’re probably the two people least equipped to be in a relationship…” She quirks a brow. “You are asking me to be in a relationship, right?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?” she scoffs. “This is serious, Gunner. You need to know.”

I throw my hands up. “Cut me some slack, Penny. I’ve never done this. I don’t do labels. All I know is I want you.”

“Only me?”

“Only you.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” We’ve regressed to speaking like cave people. At this point, I think it’d be more clear if I just threw her ass over my shoulder, took her to the bedroom, and sealed the deal. This back-and-forth is giving me a headache. “So… what do we do now?”

After a beat, she says, “Let’s nap.”

“Nap?”

“It’s been an exhausting month.” She takes my hand and leads me to her bedroom. “I’m emotionally spent. Aren’t you?”

“Uh, yeah, okay.” Maybe nap is code for the fun stuff. Regardless, I’m in.

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