Page 72 of Goalie's Obsession

I reach across the table, brushing her knuckles again. “I wanted to give youme, Lucy.”

The silence between us goes thick and charged.

Her eyes drop to my mouth.

I rise from my chair, walk around to her, and pull her up gently by the waist. She comes willingly, melting into me like shebelongsthere.

My hand slides up her back and her heavy breath hits my throat.

“If I kiss you right now,” I murmur, “I’m not stopping.”

Her eyes flicker up to meet mine.

“Good,” she whispers.

I kiss her like a man drowning. Like every defense I’ve built—every wall I’ve mortared with jokes and locker room swagger—is finally crumbling under the soft press of her lips.

Andfuck, she tastes like chocolate and wine and something better than all of it—something likehome.

It doesn’t matter that I’ve kissed her before. It wasn't like this. Not with my whole goddamn heart on the line.

I deepen the kiss, hand curling at the back of her neck. She melts into me with this tiny, desperate sound that rips through my chest like a shot on goal I didn’t see coming.

And that’s when the voice creeps in.

She only wants you because you’re on top now. Because you’re Connor Walsh, the guy with the Cup. The guy who’s finally worth something.

It’s the same voice that crawled into my head after Teagan dumped me. After my shoulder blew out and my name stopped showing up in draft rumors. After every “sure thing” vanished like smoke and I was drafted far away to Iron Ridge.

I stiffen for a second, every muscle coiled tight with memory and doubt.

But then Lucy pulls back just enough to breathe against my lips, her thumb brushing over my jaw like shefeelsthe shift in tension.

She looks up at me. Open. Unafraid. Honest in the way only Lucy can be.

And that’s when I remember—

Lucy didn’t fall forConnor Walsh, the brand.

She fell for the idiot who wore mismatched socks to Ethan’s birthday brunch. The guy who can’t stop cracking dumb one-liners when shit gets too serious. The one who never quite felt like enough—until she looked at him like hewas.

She saw the real me before I did.

The part that isn’t just saves and stats and stupid attention-seeking playoff beards. She sees the man underneath the jokes.

The one who's terrified he might finally have something to lose.

My hands tighten on her waist, grounding myself in her heat. And then it hits me, low and hard like a slapshot to the gut:

I love her.

Not because she spent fifty grand on a date.

I love her because she makes me feel like more than just a goalie.

She makes me feel like aman.

Someone who deserves to be wanted. Loved. Seen.

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