Page 95 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

Her eyes lift to meet mine, full of empathy. “Maybe it’s time to stop the churn. I mean, you at least have to tell them you bought this house at some point.”

“I’ll think about it.” I will not be thinking about it.

To end that topic and also because I can’t help myself, I brush my thumbs over her cheeks and drop my mouth to those delicious, gorgeous pink lips.

She presses her mouth back against mine and tickles my lips with her tongue before easing back just slightly.

“You know, just now was the first time I’d thought about how awful Divina is since just before you showed up at the pig lighting yesterday,” she says. “You’ve taken my mind right off it.”

She has that effect on me too. Making me slip out of my reality. And that’s exactly what I can’t let happen. My reality has to be one hundred percent commitment to the game with no distractions until I’m out of it.

But my body does the opposite of what my mind knows is sensible—my fingers lock together at the small of her back, like I never want to let her go. This endless push and pull just might kill me.

“I’m happy I distracted you.” I rest my chin at the top of her forehead, closemy eyes and sigh.

Is that all we are to each other? Just a distraction?

My phone pings in my pocket and saves me from trying to figure out what the hell the answer is to that question.

“You should check that,” she says, sliding her hands off me and taking a slow step back, breaking the lock of my fingers.

I pull it out and my heart immediately sinks to my stomach, leaving a gaping hollow in my chest.

COACH PETE

This afternoon’s remote PT session will be in-person instead. I’m sending Kristin up there to check your shoulder. Shoot me your address.

“Has something happened?” Natalie’s hand is on my shoulder.

“No, why?”

“Your whole body just went tense. Is it bad news?”

That depends entirely upon how the line between good news and bad news has shifted over the last seven days.

“It’s nothing. Coach just wants to send the head physical therapist to check on my shoulder.”

I leave out the part where I know that means they want me for the game against the Ironmen on the twenty-third. And if I’m anywhere close to the right side of being healed they’ll tell me to play.

And that would mean returning to New York and getting back on the schedule, with no time to come here to see Natalie before she leaves.

But despite the tearing sensation in my chest, my brain says that getting called back to New York sooner than I’d thought probably wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

It’s definitely a way out of these increasingly complicated feelings.

Because if I stay here, I’m only going to get deeper into Natalie, and I can’t let that happen. She might fit with my mind and my body and, oh Jesus Christ, my heart, but she does not fit with my life.

CHAPTER 30

GABE

“And you’d better not be sneaking any goodies from that bakery,” Kristin says as she walks backward from my front porch to her car.

Her large bag of PT equipment—most of which it feels like she’s spent the afternoon using on me—swings from her shoulder. “The nutrition folks will go berserk if you’ve been indulging in the local treats while you’ve been hiding away.”

If only she knew exactly what local treat I’d been indulging in. “That means you loaded up at Kneads Must on your way here, right?”

She opens the back door and inhales. “This smell is going to make me salivate all the way home.” She puts her bag on the back seat, presumably carefully avoiding the baked goods, and slams the door.

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