Page 102 of Sven

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Sadly, I don’t really know her very well, I hope, for Winnie’s sake, she can get her act together, but there’s not much I can do besides pay for treatment,” he said before getting a forkful of mac and cheese.

As his mouth closed around the hot bite of noodles, he blew on them. “Hot...”

Natalie laughed as she blew on noodles, then put them on Winnie’s tray.

“Holy shit, that’s good. Where did you learn to cook like that?”

“Every good southern girl can cook mac and cheese.”

“Have you thought about how to handle things with your dad?” she asked carefully.

“No. Although I will say that I had an amazing practice. I actually had fun playing hockey with my teammates, and sadly, I’d forgotten that was even a thing. I think the pressure my dad always put on me to be as good as he was got to me more than I thought it did.”

Her hand slipped into his. “That’s really great, Sven. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

Smiling at her, he realized he’d almost forgotten what it was like to have someone in your corner, too. Having Natalie by his side meant more than he could say, but he would show her.

After Sven got Winnie to sleep, he came down on the couch to Natalie, who was watching reruns on his big TV.

“Do you mind if I turn on a game? I’d like to watch the Predators game since we are playing them tomorrow.”

“Of course,” she said, tossing him the remote. “Should I head out to the pool house?”

“Don’t even think about it,” he said, flopping on the couch and pulling her feet onto his lap.

“Why do they have to switch during face-offs?” she asked as one of the players was called to switch.

“It can be for a couple different reasons, like stick position, making body contact, things like that.”

“Gotcha.”

“What about that? What does offsides mean?”

“Offsides is when an attacking player enters the offensive zone before the puck.”

“You sure do know a lot about this hockey stuff,” she said, smiling over.

“Yeah, I know a thing or two.”

During the intermission, he got up and got a drink, but when he came back to the couch, he lay down and rested his head on Natalie’s chest and wrapped his arms around her.

“Comfy?” she asked in amusement.

“Incredibly,” he said as she moved his head nuzzling her breasts like he was snuggling into a pillow.

She continued to scroll on her phone as the commentators talked about the teams. Sven glanced at her phone at different pictures of different classroom layouts, organization systems, and all that kind of stuff.

“Do you miss teaching?”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I really do.”

“Did you always want to be a teacher?”

A laugh bubbled up. “Yeah, I did. I remember playing school with some of the neighborhood kids when I was little. I was a tough teacher even then.” She ran her hand through his hair. He loved that she did that. “It was just something I always knew I wanted to be. I love kids. I love learning new things. It just seemed like an easy choice.”

“Did you always teach kindergarten?”

“Yeah, I was heading into my third year at that school. When I was a student teacher, I taught second grade, and I liked it, but there is just something about kindergarten I really loved.”

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