Page 121 of What if It's Us

After a while, she starts laughing, breathless and exhausted, her whole body rocking in my lap.

“What?” I ask, grinning against her temple.

She wipes her nose on the back of her hand, then gestures loosely to the chaos all around us. “We just had sex on an IKEA manual. I’m not sure if that’s a new high or a new low.”

I peer over her shoulder and realize there’s a perfect impression of her knee in the soft padding of the folded instructions, right where the cartoon dude is giving a hearty thumbs-up.

“I think you improved the design,” I say. “Manuals should always come pre-broken in by hot sexy parents-to-be.”

She presses a kiss to my collarbone and sighs, blissed out. “These babies are going to inherit our utter disregard for instructions.”

“Or our ability to improvise,” I offer.

Marlee snorts, nuzzling her face deeper into my chest. “You, me, and a battered blanket in a sea of baby stuff. This is the life I always wanted and I didn’t even know it.”

I smooth her hair, sticky with sweat and static, and kiss the crown of her head. I think about how I used to measure my life by ice time, by points on the board, and numbers on a jersey. Now it’s measured by the minutes she laughs in a day, by the way she sighs when she’s happy, by the miracles growing inside her.

“I always wanted you,” I say, and it’s sappy as hell but I mean it with every cell in my body.

She doesn’t reply, but the way she fits herself into me says enough. Eventually she goes quiet, her breathing soft and slow, lashes trembling until she’s almost asleep. I’m content just to hold her, this girl who wanted nothing and then everything, this girl about to be the mother of my triplets. The woman who will hopefully love me through every fear I have about becoming a father. The woman I love with every fiber of my being.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

MARLEE

The buzzer sounds, ending the second period, and the usual swirl of chaos begins. Fans filing out for snacks, music thumping, the team clearing the ice. It feels good to be in the arena watching the man of my dreams do what he does best.

Okay, second best because the tongue lashing I got between my thighs this morning when Ledger woke up might be the very thing he does best in this world. Not going to lie. Still smiling over the sound of him calling me a good girl, I take a minute to stretch and reach for my water bottle but also notice that Layken isn’t moving.

She’s got this weird grin on her face, the kind she wears when she knows something I don’t.

“What?” I ask, suspicious. “What’s wrong?”

She shrugs way too casually. “Nothing. Just…stay put.”

“Layken.”

“Seriously. Stay here. And don’t pee. Or cry. Yet.”

“What are you?—”

Just then Lumin, aka Ella, skates onto the ice and over to the boards right in front of where Layken and I are seated. She crosses the wall and up the few stairs stopping at my seat as the crowd cheers for her obvious shenanigans.

“Lumin! What are you?—”

She takes my hand and with her other hand on my back, gently guides me down the stairs to follow her. “Where are we going?”

Without saying a word, she gestures toward the doorway to the ice where a few arena staff members are waiting for me. “What’s going on?”

Katrina, one of the staff members I’ve talked to several times, smiles at me and opens the door to the ice. The lights in the arena drop and a spotlight beams across the ice, sweeping toward the tunnel.

A familiar voice crackles through the speakers: “Ladies and gentlemen, before we begin the third period, we have a very special intermission surprise from your very own number thirty-three—Ledger Dayne!”

I blink as the crowd roars around me.

Wait. What?

I look toward the tunnel just in time to see him. Ledger skates out under the lights, looking straight at me, grinning like a maniac.

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