Page 49 of My Pucking Perfect Goalie

“It’s an order, Braun.”

Something flashes behind Sammy’s eyes, but he relents, reaching out and taking the last Dramamine from my bag. I don’t tell him that I already took some this morning, in preparation for the day—let him think he owes me something.

Somehow, Sammy has bravely tackled every single ride I’ve forced him onto, up until this last one. When we got off, he struggled to walk in a straight line, his face mildly green.

“All that spinning,” he’d said, the wordspinningcracking a bit, and it made me laugh. When I laughed, he laughed, then he put his hand over his mouth, like it might make him gag.

“Come on,” I say now, after he swallows down the medicine. “We’ll take a break.”

We both use the bathroom, and when I come out, I see Sammy’s snagged a little table outside a lemonade stand. On the other side of the path, there’s a giant pig and the smell of smoked meats drifting toward us.

“Are you okay with sitting here?” I ask, glancing at the pig worriedly. “That smell doesn’t bother you?”

“Already feeling better,” Sammy assures me. “In fact, there’s a sign for ‘meat on a stick’over there. Doesn’t even say what kind of meat. I’m kind of into it.”

“Jesus,” I laugh, rolling my eyes as I slide onto the bench. He holds out a lemonade to me and I accept, taking a tiny sip. It may be early December, but this drink almost sends you right to June.

“So,” Sammy says, a moment later, after we’ve paused to do some people watching. My eyes keep catching on the children walking by, and I’m glad for Sammy talking. I don’t want to be too obvious. “You know about me growing up in Wisconsin. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Well, what’s your family like? Are you going back home for the holidays?”

I don’t mean to, but I snort immediately, the idea of going home for the holidays so backwards to me that it makes my chest hurt.

Sammy’s eyes widen and I shake my head.

“What—”

“No, no,” I say, raising my hands. “I don’t talk about personal stuff with my clients.”

Sammy stares at me for a moment, his jaw working, and I wonder if he might bring up what happened between us. How personal it was. My stomach tightens, and a strange part of me actually wants him to say something about it, to put it in the light.

“We’re fake dating,” he says instead, raising an eyebrow at me. “So I need to know about your family. What if Harper asks?”

“What if Harper asks aboutmyfamily?” I laugh. “Are neither of you very good at flirting?”

“I’m just saying…” Sammy leans forward, and the scent of his cologne wafts over to me, bold and heady. I turn my head and take a deep breath, trying to clear out my sinuses with the meat smells from the pig, but the cologne is stuck there. Imprinted.

“We have to sell it, right?” he says.

We certainly sold it in New York. Until you apologized, and I ran away.

“Believe it or not, we might have the whole family situation in common, a bit,” I say, slowly, sucking in a deep breath. “Mine is also pretty complicated.”

“I’m listening.”

“No, really—it sounds like something out of a movie.”

“Listening more intently.”

I laugh, then roll my eyes, then suck in a deep breath, astounded that I’m actually about to tell this man about my entire fucked up family situation.

“Okay,” I finally relent, ignoring the prick of tears that pushes against my eyes when I think about it. Years of therapy and avoiding the topic means it’s so far back in my head it doesn’t normally affect me. So when it does resurface, it’s almost like a dark reminder that this really is the story of my past.

“So, the first thing you should know is that I was—kind of—adopted. This lovely couple in New York. Not the city—they lived out in the country, had this huge house. I loved that house. It was the kind you’d see British kids go to spend the summer. Huge, with trellises of climbing ivy andgrounds, just so muchland you could walk through. My dad—my adopted dad—he had horses.”

“Okay,” Sammy says, with so much tender curiosity on his face that I have to look away.

---