Page 79 of Unrivaled

But he was only half right. He didn’t mind leaving behind Linda, Big Max, Logan, Tanya, Nora, and the kids. But he couldn’t seem to keep his hands offhisMax. The morning of the twenty-sixth, they spent half an hour in their bedroom with the door closed and made out until their airport shuttle arrived.

Never in a million years could Grady have seen this coming.

He felt kind of stupid about that. It seemed obvious in retrospect that he’d spent the past few months falling for Max. Max was the one he wanted to talk to about his terrible dates, and the standard he hadn’t been willing to admit he was holding them to. Max was funny and offbeat and kind in an irritating way, like a dog who could tell when you were sad and kept putting its drooly head in your lap for pets.

And he was—though Grady could never admit this either—silly. In Max’s eyes, the world and all the people in it were there to poke fun at. The only person who’d seen that side of Grady in the past fifteen years was Jess, who couldn’t reject him because he was the only family she had. Being with Max gave Grady permission to be silly too. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that freedom.

It turned out there was such a thing aspleasantly surprised. Max still got on his nerves, only now Grady felt all sappy about it.

Finally the alarm on Max’s phone went off and they couldn’t put it off any longer. They gathered their bags and opened the bedroom door.

Nora looked up from reading on the couch, raised her eyebrows, and cleared her throat.

“Subtle,” Max said.

Grady thought maybe she had a point. Max’s chin and neck were blotchy red with beard burn.

“Not the word I’d use,” Nora said cheerfully. Then she started singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”

There was a pileup in the driveway as everyone lined up to say goodbye while the driver handled the luggage. Even Grady got hugged within an inch of his life, though the embraces took less time than Max’s did. Max was still talking to his parents when Grady made it to Milo and Carly at the end of the line.

Milo was shier than his sister, and Grady didn’t think the kid had spoken more than two sentences to him outside the board game on Christmas Eve and a thank-you for his gift. So it knocked Grady for a loop when the kid squinted up at him in the sunshine and asked, very seriously, “Uncle Grady, are you and Uncle Max going to get married?”

Grady’s first impulse was to say no very loudly. He’d spent the past fifteen years determined to keep everyone he could at arm’s length because he couldn’t lose what he didn’t have.

His second thought was,I should be so lucky, which made him want to run screaming into the Atlantic. It was a wild swing from his gut reaction and a huge leap from where they stood now—they hadn’t even used the wordrelationship, never mind defined it—to that potential future.

Somehow his feet stayed planted and his mouth stayed shut, for which he was grateful. No one else seemed to have heard the question.

Grady took a deep breath and held it for a moment. Then he pitched his voice low enough not to be overheard and hoped he wasn’t jinxing anything. “Tell you what. If I’m around for Christmas next year, ask me again.”

And then that was it. Grady went home and slept like a log. The Miami house Max had rented was nice enough, but the mattress in their bedroom left something to be desired.

Practice on the twenty-seventh felt like a new beginning. Grady didn’t know if it was because he was in a good mood or everyone else was, but the guys were flying. Even Fletch, the dour-faced defenseman Grady usually resented for not pulling his weight, brought his A-game energy.

“You have a good break, Ace?”

Grady smiled at him, and it felt natural for the first time in a long time. “Yeah, actually. You?”

“Really good. Nice to catch up with the whole family.”

Not long ago, the words would’ve made Grady bristle, like it was a reminder that everyone elsehada whole family, and he only had Jess. Looking at it from the other side of a mental breakthrough, Grady couldn’t detect any intentional malice.

“How’s your sister doing?”

“Jess?” For a minute the question didn’t register as being related. “She’s great. I’m picking her up at the airport after this.” Fletch didn’t need to know about her relationship situation, so he left out the bit about her girlfriends.

Frowning, Fletch said, “Oh. I assumed she was with you for Christmas. What did you do?”

Went to Florida and accidentally got a boyfriend.“Vacation in Miami.”

“Oh, good call. We’ll get enough of the snow.”

It was the friendliest conversation Grady’d had with the guy in years.

He was still in a good mood when he picked up Jess, Polly, and Amanda from the airport. Jess flung herself into his arms like a kid. Her grin stretched from ear to ear. Grady didn’t need to ask what had put her in such a good mood.

He remembered Amanda from the first time Jess dated her; she was a tall, pretty blond with broad features and an easy smile. “Merry Christmas, Baby Armstrong.”

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