Page 63 of My Pucking Perfect Goalie

“Somethingcame up?”

“He got my best friend pregnant.”

There’s a thick, heavy pause. I can hear the crackling of the fire, and faintly, the heavy thudding of Sammy’s heart. Or maybe it’s more that I feel it.

“Okay,” Sammy says, and I feel his hand under the blanket, forming a fist. “What?”

“We met in the dorms freshman year,” I allowing myself to think of Clara. Allowing myself to imagine her. Every version of her that I knew. The one sitting on her bed when I walked into our dorm room. The one holding my hand when I cried about not getting a scholarship I needed. The one who invited me back to her house for break, because she knew I had nowhere else to go.

Sammy is still looking at me, so I go on. “We clicked. I’d always wanted a best friend. Like, to have my person. I was so jealous of any TV show with an inseparable duo. And I thought I found mine. Clara and Finn. She was at our house all the time, hanging out with me. Then I started to travel for work, and she’d bring food over because he didn’t know how to cook, and…”

“What kind of man doesn’t know how to cook?” Sammy grumbles, and I laugh, wiping my face on my shoulder.

“The day I found out was the worst day of my life,” I whisper. “They sat me down together. To tell me that she was pregnant. And that he was leaving me. He really framed it like it was his duty—that he had no choice. Never mind the fact that he made the choice to cheat on me in the first place.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing,” I whisper, remembering the haunted expression on her face when I’d sat there, stone-faced, not even looking at my husband. Just looking at her. “I told her that I never wanted to hear from her again.”

“Jesus, Finn,” Sammy says, the words coming out as a hiss. Reaching out, he puts a hand on my shoulder and pulls me back so I’m nuzzled into him again.

Usually, I’d shy away from this. From physical comfort. But right now, it feels too good to say no. Even to a client. Even to the man who’s supposed to be no-strings.

We stay like that for a long moment. I feel his heart thudding steadily under my cheek. Our legs intertwine, and his hand rubs up and down my back, like he’s trying to ground me to him.

“Sammy,” I whisper after a long time, afraid he might be asleep.

He responds, almost immediately, like he was just waiting for me to go first, “You can call me Sam.”

Sam

When I wake up the next morning, it’s with Finn cuddled into me. I have an arm around her midsection, her flannel pajamas ridden up so our skin touches, the inside of my forearm against her stomach.

I think it too fast to try and block it away:I love you.

My heart starts to pound, and I stare down at her, paralyzed. This isn’t in the plan—it’s definitely not inherplan—but it’s happening. And it’s true. I love her.

Maybe I don’t know what that means. I’ve never been in love before—at least, I don’t think so—but this feels right. Maybe youknow you’re in love the moment you feel the urge to say the words. Maybe that’s enough.

Or maybe it’s the fact that I didn’t want to come to the cabin until she wanted to come. Or that last night, while she was telling me about what happened to her, I wanted to throttle the man who got Finn Asher and had the gall to cheat on her. To hurt her. To make her feel anything less than absolutely fucking precious.

She’s gorgeous. A genius. A literaldoctor.

I don’t want her to go back to California.

Finn takes a deep, shuddering breath and shifts onto her back, so the sunlight from the windows washes over her face.

Sometimes, when playing with Clementine, I would get this overwhelming sense of awe: a little person, brought into existence by my friends. Impossible to think about. Astounding that between Grey and Ellie, they managed to craft an entire being with toes and fingers and thoughts about Dino nuggets.

I feel an echo of that now, watching as Finn starts to wake up. It’s this feeling of awe, a sense that I’m encountering something amazing. The fact that Finn exists at all is astounding. The fact that she’s in my bed right now, blinking slowly and gazing up at me, a blush rising to her cheeks, is almost impossible.

I love when she blushes. I like knowing I have some power over her like that.

When she surges up, catching my lips with hers, I wrap my hands around her wrists, slowing her down. I pin them to the mattress, kiss her deeper and harder, but not fast. I want to take my time with her.

I read somewhere that it takes women twenty minutes before they’re even ready for penetration, so I take my time, working my way over her neck and collarbone, pulling back every time she tries to increase the pace. Finn is not just a quick fuck to me. And I don’t think she thinks of me that way, either—not after crawling into bed with me last night. Cuddling together. Telling me about what that asshole did to her.

I’m not going to say it yet, but I pour my love over her, lavishing it on her with kisses and touch, feeling her hips and her stomach, hand curving over the little soft spot just above her navel. That spot where she wants a baby to grow.

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