Page 72 of My Pucking Perfect Goalie

I still can’t tell her about my dad. When I try to, the words stick in my throat.

“Dad,” I sigh one morning, my hand in his. “I think I’m in love with her. I mean—I know I am.”

His monitors beep steadily. Outside, snow is falling, adding to the blanket of white covering Burlington.

“Do you remember when I was a kid, and I asked you how you knew you wanted to marry mom?” I pause, watching his face for any sign that he can hear what I’m saying. “You said that it’s just something you know. In your gut. That you feel it there, and it’s never a question. That’s how I feel about Finn. I’ve felt like that since the first time I saw her. Like I was hit by a truck, or struck by lightning.” I laugh, cringing at the way that sounds. “It’s true.”

In April, we go with everyone else to the big city-wide egg hunt. Clementine runs around, squealing and pulling me away to show me the eggs she’s found, her little hands turning them over in wonder. Finn watches on, her hands tucked into her coat, her eyes wide and soft.

It’s too soon to talk to her about having a family, and what that would like. Knowing Finn, I think there’s a chance she doesn’t want kids. Maybe she wants to focus on her career. I want her no matter what she says, but I hope that she wants what I want.

A family. Lots of kids, us all together in a house. Matching pajamas on Christmas and movie nights and fort-building together. I’d teach my kids how to play hockey and get really involved in whatever they were into.

We talk to our managers and agents about the deal with Lululemon. The lawyers are still in the process of drawing up the contract, but it looks like it will go through.

“Get on your knees,” Finn says, and I do. Then, I bend her over my bed, my hand on her back, her soft gasps muffled against the duvet.

When we’re alone, electricity sits hot and heavy between us, the promise that at any moment we could shift into each other. I taste her on the couch, fuck her on the kitchen counter. When she sucks me off in the shower, the water sliding down her chin and dripping onto her chest, I swear it’s the hardest I’ve ever come in my life.

On the ice, it’s like my new dedication to improvement rubs off on the other guys. Brett gets even more serious, and starts to dominate the ice in new ways.May brings playoff hockey and endless hours of preparation. Finn practically moves into the practice facility with me. In between, we go to the botanical gardens together. I learn that Finn loves the smell of lilacsbecause they remind her of her freshman dorm, the first place she felt totally free.

I look at properties online, thinking I should buy her a house where I can plant lilacs outside the windows, so the scent comes through in the Spring. We advance through the first round, then the second. The city is electric with playoff energy. Signs in shop windows, jerseys everywhere you look. My save percentage is the highest in the league.

When we scrape through the playoffs and are confirmed to compete in the championship against the New York Rangers, Finn surprises me with a set of lingerie. She pushes me down onto the bed and runs her tongue over my body, slots her hips against mine. Every time I have her is better than the last.

I keep waiting for the moment that we slow down, want each other less. But it never comes.

June arrives with the Stanley Cup finals and humidity that hangs heavy over the city. I stop by the hospital before each game, telling Dad about upcoming match-ups, about strategies Finn and I have worked on.

“I'm going to ask her to marry me,” I tell him during one visit. “After the finals. I already picked out the ring.”

I pull it out of my pocket and open it, even though I know he can’t see it. I wonder what he felt when he picked out a ring for mom. More than anything, I wish I could ask him about that stuff, wish I had someone to show me the ropes.

We practice. We strategize for the first game in the Stanley Cup against the Rangers. I come home, and Finn makes me laugh so hard I cry by telling me about her first client, who was deathly afraid of clowns.

The ring sits in my dresser drawer, tucked inside an old practice jersey. Sometimes at night, I take it out and look at it, imagining how I’ll ask her. Imagining our future together.

“Sam!” Finn calls from the living room. I quickly stash the ring away again, turning and smiling at her as I come out.

“Come on,” she giggles as she pulls me down onto the couch with her. “I’ve been waiting for youforever.”

Finn

“Finn,” Dr. Chen says, stepping into the room, a strange look on her face. Outside the window, the trees are green and swaying in the sunlight. Having not experienced winter in years, I’m still astounded that just months ago the entire city was blanketed in snow.

“Yes?” I’m sitting on the end of the examination bench, wearing the flimsy little smock I always have to put on for these appointments.

Dr. Chen’s hair is pulled back, and she clears her throat. I’m usually great at reading her, but for some reason most of my brain shuts off when I’m in this clinic.

For the past few months, I went through the motions, taking my medication and following my prescription plan, but I’ve been so distracted that I almost forgot about this appointment completely—an appointment to check my levels and move to the next steps.

But I’ve already planned to tell Dr. Chen I want to put this on pause until I talk to Sam about it. We’ve yet to have the family discussion. The one in which I have to admit to him that I want kids—but only if they’re mine, biologically. And that so far, I haven’t been able to achieve that.

Coming to this appointment is a forced meeting to face my fear. When my alarm went off this morning, I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t want to crawl out from under Sam’s arm and drive to the clinic for this appointment, but that rigorous rule-follower inside me forced the issue.

We’re going on six months of being together now. Six months of nothing but happiness—we haven’t had a single fight. Sam basically always wants things howeverIwant them.

“I just want to make you happy,” he’ll say, pressing a kiss against my temple.

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