Page 12 of It's Mother-Pucking Christmas!

“So go down to the wife store or order one on Amazon.” Pete zipped up his coat.

“I prefer my wives locally grown.” Rick snickered.

“Look, College Boy.” Mike clapped his hands on my shoulders. “You have to date and do a test drive before you can propose marriage.”

“Yeah, the type of girl who’ll marry you the day she meets you is like a big fucking red flag,” Pete added.

“Fucking tell me about it,” Coach muttered.

“You might as well dump all your money in the parking lot, set it on fire, and punch yourself repeatedly in the nuts,” Erik joked.

“If you live streamed it, you’d actually probably make a profit,” Pete mused.

“Would be less humiliating than the marriage.”

“I want something real,” I said firmly.

“You need to do matchmaking,” Mike offered.

“Scam.” Coach coughed.

“I can’t be thinking about this right now,” I told the guys. “We have the big game coming up.”

“Amen!” Coach threw his hat.

“Okay, how about in January? New Year’s resolution.” Mike threw an arm around my shoulders.

“Fine.”

“Better yet, after the hockey season,” Coach yelled over his shoulder as he left with the assistant coaches.

“But Dakota isn’t that type of girl. I want a nice girl, from a big loving family like I never had.”

My friends looked at each other.

Rick sighed. “Hard truths oncoming, man. The type of girl you’re describing? From a big loving family with married parents and wonderful siblings and loyal extended family that decorates the house for Christmas and eats breakfast together like you see on TV? Those girls want guys from nice families, families like their own. Not foster kids who don’t even have their dad’s last name.”

“And who none of his foster families wanted. Yeah, I got it.” I scowled.

Mike put me in a loose headlock. “He’s not trying to be mean, but you can’t live in Christmas fairy-tale land. You gotta work with what you have.”

I shoved off my teammates.

“Don’t be mad,” they shouted after me.

“Nice going, Utah.”

“I’m not mad. I’m just late,” I called.

As I droveover to the animal shelter, I tried not to let it get to me.

But the guys weren’t wrong.

I knew that.

Had lived it.

Part of why I’d insisted on going to college, not trying for the NHL brass ring, was because I wanted it—I wanted that dream girl. I wanted to be welcomed into a loving family embrace for once in my life. But the girls I dated in college? They always found some reason to dump me and choose the guy who had somewhere to go home to for Christmas, who didn’t just hole up in the college dorms and practice hockey by himself over winter break like a weirdo.

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