Page 67 of Hat Trick

“And where isthat?”

He shakes his head with a small smile playing at his full lips. “In my home, Gwen.” He pulls me forward to meet him with a palm to the back of my head. I go willingly, eager for another kiss, eager for another taste of this man who has turned my world upside down. “I have you under me, on top of me”—I slap his arm and he lets out a husky chuckle—“I have you eating the food I cooked for us and drinking my wine. I’m not willing to let that go . . . areyou?”

My nails scrape the fabric of his jeans on their way to ground zero—the hard erection I see shoving mercilessly against his zipper. “No,” I whisper against his mouth, “but I sure know what’s involved in my fantasykiss.”

With a deep groan, he pushes me back onto my seat and shakes a cardboard box that’s wider than the length of my forearm. “Not yet. After.” When I fake a pout, he curses under his breath. “Fuck, you’re temptation and a half, honey. But we’re doing this first.” He shoves the box at me. “Openit.”

The brown box gives me absolutely no inclination as to what could be inside, and so I give it a little shake and hope I’m not rattling something that’s alive inside. I jerk my gaze up to Marshall’s face. “Is it apuppy?”

His laugh is the stuff of sexual fantasies, it’s so damn throaty. “It’s not a puppy, Gwen. You think I’d put something adorable and fluffy in a box with noholes?”

“I just had to ask,” I grumble, pulling the cardboard leafs open. I tilt the box toward me, palms sweaty with anticipation . . . “Thank you for the gloves?” I pluck one out and lift it this way and that. “Not exactly my size but I could do some damage in therink?”

The hockey gloves are red, thick, and tattered. Maybe this is Marshall’s way of saying he’d like for me to attend all of his hockey games? I wouldn’t be opposed to it—I love watching him kick ass on theice.

“No, they’re—” Marshall heaves out a breath and then tugs the other glove out of the box before stealing my glove away. “These are the first hockey gloves I everowned.”

Oh.

I gently try to pry them out of his grasp. If they belonged to him, then I absolutely want them. This is way better than a T-shirt of his to keep, am I right? Not that I’d sleep with these gloves—they look a little worse for wear—but I’d set them upright on my bedside table so that I can see them each night before I hit thesack.

Warmth sluices through me, and I give the gloves a hardertug.

Marshall finally lets go with a sheepish smile. “Sorry, I’m a little sentimental towardthem.”

I set the box on the island and then curl my arms around the gloves in my lap. “Would you rather keepthem?”

“No, I—” He shoves his fingers through his hair, messing up the strands even more. “Maybe it’s better if I back up and tell thestory.”

Tilting my head, I note Marshall’s high coloring. He’snervous. “Only tell me what you feel comfortablewith.”

“Yeah.” He slicks his hands across his jeans, like he’s nervous, and I’m so far deep in with him that I find the movement adorable. Yeah, I said it. Adorable. A word that no other person in the world would ever say to Marshall Hunt’s face at the risk of being knocked down to theground.

Inhaling deeply, he lets it out on a slow, even exhale. “From the age of eight onward, I grew up in the system. My foster parents—I hate to say that they didn’t care about us kids. It’s more like . . .” He purses his lips, as though trying to find the right word. “It’s like they’d been bitten one too many times in the ass by life, the system, everything. There were seven of us kids and I was the youngest. I never knew what it was like to own anything. My clothes were handed down from the oldest boy to me, passing through four other kids before I slipped them on. Food was much the same. The oldest kids went first—they were always thehungriest.”

I think back to my own childhood. Adaline may have been crazy and she may have had a revolving door of husbands waltzing through, but Carli always saw me fed. Manuel always ensured that I wassafe.

My heart aches for the little boy who had nothing, and I reach out to squeeze Marshall’s knee, offering silentencouragement.

His answering smile is fleeting. “As I got older, I started hanging with the wrong crowd. I desperately wanted to fit in. I wanted tobesomeone, other than the Gottim’s youngest foster kid. My new friends taught me a variety of life skills most people will never know. We stole bikes from the kids at MIT, hopped on the back of firetrucks like they were our own cabbie service. Because we were small, we’d climb into people’s backyards and swim in their pools during the summer. The way we saw it, everything belonged tous.”

There are so many questions burning on the tip of my tongue, but I force myself to sit still andlisten.

“We grew bolder, too. In the middle of winter, we’d stop up the sewage pipes in the neighborhood. Blast off the fire hydrant with a little work, and then let the street ice over. Our skates were stolen. We didn’t have a real net. But every afternoon, we’d do it over and over again. That’s when I met yourdad.”

Just like that, my body freezes and my brain immediately launches back to my father’s funeral. How I’d seen Marshall standing next to my uncle. Then, later, him comforting me in a sideroom.

“I don’t know whether your dad took pity on me or what, but he snagged me by the collar one day and dragged me off the ice. Shoved those gloves you’re holding into my arms and told me that if I got my ass down to the high school after I was done behaving like an asshole, he’d maybe consider letting me practice with theteam.”

Would my dad say something like that? It pains me to admit that I don’t know. My memories of him belong to infrequent lunch dates with my mother watching us both like a prison guard. I can probably count on both hands the number of times Mark James and I were ever in the same room together—Adaline saw tothat.

I swallow my grief. “Were you in high school at thetime?”

Marshall shakes his head. “No, middle school. But your dad was the tenth-grade math teacher, along with being the high school’s head hockey coach. For weeks, I’d show up and be relegated to picking up the team’s towels. I carried those gloves around with me everywhere, convinced that one day he’d let me play. One day I’d own a hockey stick and pads and skates, and I’d make something of myself. Hockey was my way out of Southie, the only reason a school like Northeastern even looked atme.”

My tongue feels swollen, thick. As much as I want to jump up and down, and point at Marshall’s home and be all, “look what you’ve accomplished,” I can’t help but feel remnants of the little girl who used to beg her mother for the chance to see her dad. I was told multiple times over that Mark James had no time for me, that he didn’t care to see me. Knowing that he had time to take Marshall under his wing burns in a way that I wished itdidn’t.

Have I really changed at all if I can’t find it in myself to put aside thepain?

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