Page 83 of Rewind It Back

Wait...what?

When I don’t say anything, she lifts her head to look at me.

“Oh my God,” she breathes, jumping off my lap, letting the blanket fall to the floor as she does. “Oh my God! Am I not? I thought it was another one of those unspoken things.”

Both her hands fly to her mouth to cover it, but I can see the panic so clearly in her eyes.

“Hallie,” I soothe, circling her forearms to pull her hands away. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted to be, but yeah. Yes. Please. I want you to be my girlfriend. You have no idea how badly I want you to be my girlfriend.”

She closes her eyes. “Why did I do that? I should’ve let you ask me instead of assuming that’s what we were.”

I pull her to stand between my open legs as I sit on my bed. “Well, we both know I move slow and sometimes need a little push, so this is a good thing.”

She chuckles, a little defeated as her hands play with the hair at my temples. “You’re perfect the way you are. I don’t mind moving slow with you.”

I want to kiss her. God, do I want to kiss her. I’ve never wanted anything more, but what if I’m bad at it? What if I fuck up and hit her teeth or something? What if I ruin her first kiss? She’d never be able to get a do-over.

While I’m reeling and nervous and entirely in my head, Hallie leans forward and presses her lips to mine.

Well, sort of. She kind of misses and barely connects with the corner of my mouth, but it’s enough to tell me she wants this too.

Standing straight again, she swallows hard. “Just in case you need a little push with that too. This sixteen and never been kissed thing is feeling a little cliché.”

My heart is racing. My skin is on fire. But also, I couldn’t be more relieved.

Fuck it. I can do this.

“Put a song on,” I tell her, nodding to my nightstand where both my boombox and iPod sit. I wait for her to do so, running the palms of my hands along the backs of her thighs, keeping her standing between my legs.

If I’m not listening to Hallie’s yearly playlists, I typically use my iPod and headphones to listen to music. But Hallie doesn’t reach for that. Instead, she flips through my old CD case quickly before picking one and skipping to the track she wants.

“Why do I need to pick a song?” she asks.

It starts playing through the boombox speakers and I can’t help but laugh at the lack of subtlety in her song choice.

“Because I’m going to kiss you and when we listen to next year’s playlist, I want this song to be on there so we can rewind it back however many times we want to and remember this.”

Her smile blooms, and her arms wrap around my neck. “I was hoping you were going to say that.”

I slip my hand into her long hair, pull her down to meet me, and press my own smiling lips to hers.

It’s messy and mistimed, and yeah, I think I hit her teeth at one point, but it’s also so fucking perfect. And eventually, with a little practice, we figure it out together.

Chapter 16

Rio

“As of this week, you and Evan Zanders are officially the longest-running defensive duo ever in the NHL,” a reporter says in our postgame press conference. “What do you think has contributed to your successful partnership?”

I sit forward, bringing my mouth closer to the microphone, running my hand through my wet hair, fresh out of the shower. “Uh... we’re friends,” I say simply.

There’s a small laugh among the media, but that’s clearly not enough of an answer because no one jumps in to ask the next question.

I’m not totally used to being called on to do interviews. I don’t wear the captain’s patch, and as a defenseman, I’m not the high scorer on the team. My contribution is rarely noticed on stat sheets. It’s with defensive plays, big hits, and experience, so I hardly get called on for postgame media.

But of course, the one game we’re home, the onenightwe’re home, in an almost three-week span of road games, I’m called in for an interview.

My short responses aren’t getting me out of here any quicker, so I try again. “I think the reason we’re so successful on the ice is because we’ve built our chemistryoffthe ice. He’s one of my best friends outside of the rink. We talk nearly every day. Add that to many, many years of sharing the blue line, and it’s become almost automatic to know what the other is going to do in any given play.”

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