Page 12 of Undeniable Love

Through the night, Meredith slowed down her drinking of whiskey sours and switched to a Coke, and by the time Caleb and Cameron decided they’d had enough too, Meredith was leaning against me, her head on my shoulder like this wasn’t our first time meeting.

Like I wasn’t the one who freaked out a few hours ago at her bold statement.

Instead, my arm was draped around her, hand settled low on her hip. My thumb had dipped beneath her cropped sweater, and I was brushing that thumb along the silky, soft skin of her lower back, drunk on her vanilla-scented shampoo or perfume.

“I should head home too,” she murmured. Sleepiness and possibly the whiskey made her words slow. She turned to me, shifting closer so my arm was still on her lower back. Her hand hit my chest and a zap of it speared straight through my shirt to my beating heart.

“The hotel the team has me in right now is where your brothers are staying. Want to come back with us?”

She gave me a lazy, soft smile. “I think their room might be full.”

“Good thing mine isn’t.”

“All right then, hotshot. Show me your place.”

If her brothers weren’t right there, I’d kiss her. The storm brewing in my chest that hadn’t stopped all night demanded it. But I could wait.

Hell, I didn’t care what we did once we got back to my room. I’d spend all night talking to Meredith if that was what she wanted and I already knew I’d never grow bored.

“You fools ready yet? We’re waiting.” It came from Cameron, and he and Caleb were standing at the end of the table, arms crossed over their chests. They weren’t identical twins but similar enough they’d be impossible for a stranger to tell them apart. It was the smirk lifting at the corner of Caleb’s mouth that would have made me know which one he was if they were dressed alike.

It was the same look he gave opponents on the ice before he told some nasty your mom joke that would send them spinning into a rage.

“What?”

“Hurt her and you die.” He shrugged. “That’s all.”

“Oh, is that it?” Meredith asked, sweet as apple pie.

“That’s it,” Cameron chimed in. “I also paid the rest of the tab, so let’s get out of here. It’s getting fucking cold.”

It was November in Nashville. Thanks to the heat lamps, the cold hadn’t bothered me all night. “Still a hell of a lot better than Indiana.”

“Don’t remind me. Winter is bullshit.”

“And that’s why I’m never moving back to Colorado,” Meredith sang and looped her arm through mine. “Never again will I live where it snows six months out of the year.”

She had a point. Born in Toronto, I’d moved to New York when I was five. I now held dual citizenship, but other than the occasional visit to my mom, I never returned to Toronto. And those visits were either before May or after October.

The hotel the team put me up in until I could find my own place was right across from the arena where the home games were played. Craziest thing, waking up that morning with a picture of me slapped onto the glass, reflective walls of the arena with long-time power players like Maxim Rolffe and Alexei Petrov. But there I was, all ten-foot-tall full body of me, caught in a media blitz I’d done before I played my last game in Virginia last week, decked out in the blue and white of the Avengers uniform.

“You’re really big,” Meredith cooed, her body leaning against me as we passed the arena.

“Things your big brothers don’t need to hear!” Cameron shouted from in front of us.

“Idiots. Do boys ever grow up?”

I couldn’t remember ever truly being a kid, but when it came to Cameron and Caleb, they’d had a different life. “Most do, I figure.”

“Thank goodness. God bless the women who find those two yahoos.”

We headed into the hotel and when the elevator stopped at her brothers’ floor, Meredith gave them both hugs that lasted so long, I had to hold the elevator door open for them. “Love you guys,” she said, and I didn’t imagine the sniffle or the sly wipe beneath her eyes.

“You’re still here in the morning, come find us before our flights leave. We’ll have breakfast, all right?”

“I’ll text.”

“Good.” Cameron slapped my back and wished me luck and Caleb clasped our hands together, wrenching me toward him as he pounded on my back harder than necessary.

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