Page 61 of My Pucking Perfect Goalie

“Specific...”

“Maybe I can share my trauma with you some other time,” I say, then drop my voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “It’s too dark for the holidays.”

“It’s a date,” Fallon says, reaching out and clinking her glass against mine. “We’ll trauma-dump together.”

There’s a beat of silence, then I give her a look, “How old are you?”

She laughs. “Isn’t that supposed to be a rude question?”

“Not if I’m worried you might be too young for me to trauma-dump on.”

“Dumping transcends the lived experience—besides, just think of it as giving me some of your boundless wisdom.”

“Okay, I’m notthatold.” I laugh so hard I snort, and Fallon’s laughing, too, until something goes far away in her eyes.

I stop, taking a breath and sip of my drink. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, clearing her throat. “It’s stupid, I just—I wish my friends had been able to make it out here. This is the first Christmas I’ve spent apart from them.”

“From your friends?”

“They’re more like a found family—it’s a trauma thing, right?”

I open my mouth to respond, but someone’s turned on Christmas music, and Brett sweeps her off the couch and into hisarms to dance. She waves over his back at me likewhat can you do?

If found family is a trauma thing, maybe I’m not doing it right. I watch Fallon and Brett dancing—horribly, all left feet—and mull it over in my head. I’ve never been the kind of person to have a huge group of friends. Throughout school, I always wanted to find thatoneperson—a best friend forever. And then, in college, I found her.

And look where that got me.

The bitter, aching thoughts catapult through me, and I have to swallow them down. Now is not the time to be thinking about it—about her.

“May I have this dance?”

When I look up, brain returning to the present, Sammy is standing there, his hand outstretched to me. He looks impossibly handsome—the stubble on his cheeks glinting in the twinkling lights from the tree.

“I don’t…” I start, glancing around, not sure what the others in the cabin would think if they saw us dancing. But nobody is watching. Brett and Fallon sway together quietly, Fallon’s head against Brett’s chest, their eyes closed. Grey and Ellie have disappeared. Devon is passed out on the sofa, Lola asleep with her head in his lap.

“Okay,” I whisper, “only because it’s Christmas.”

He pulls me to my feet, smiling warmly at me and tucking me into his chest. It’s warm, and he smells like cinnamon. I shouldn’t be dancing with a client. I shouldn’t be in this cabin at all.

But I’m here, and he’s warm, and I let myself drift away in the rhythm of us swaying quietly together while the snow falls steadily outside.

***

“Put your Christmas pajamas back on,” Sammy says, voice low when he pulls me into his room. His lips are on the crook of my neck immediately, his tongue warm against my skin.

I don’t know how long we danced before he finally pulled back, whispering something about going upstairs. My entire body had felt the rush of heat at those words, attraction sparkling between us as we ran up the steps.

Now, I start to laugh. “What—” but it morphs into a moan, the sound fluttering out of me. “Doesn’t this usually start with us taking out clothesoff?”

“I want to see you in them,” he says. There’s something about Sammy after the lights go off, in the dark, that’s completely different that his day-time self. His alter-ego appears, a man full of confidence.

A man that I sometimes, impossibly, actually let boss me around.

He settles himself on his bed while I dart into the hallway, looking back and forth before hurrying to my room and finding the pajamas. Rather than risk someone coming back, I bundle them in my arms and hurry back to Sammy’s room, shutting the door behind myself breathlessly. His eyes are on me, dark and serious, as I walk to his adjoined bathroom.

The man has seen me naked, so there’s no reason to get dressed in privacy. But it just feels right.

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