Page 72 of Sweet Thing

Dinner at the club—what a joke. Where would I take Adeline on a date? A nice, romantic restaurant where we could be given privacy in a dark, candlelit corner. Where no one would know us.(Because what you’d be doing was all wrong, asshole.)I didn’t know much about fancy food, but Adeline probably did. She’d traveled the world, and I bet she had a shit-ton more savvy than me who went nowhere and knew nothing.

Was she regaling MacFarlane with stories of her travels? I loved hearing the brief mentions, her excitement. I loved listening to her soft voice, especially when she sang to Tilly and Mabel. We hadn’t discussed the fact she wrote a song about me to entertain her sister. She’d seemed embarrassed about it, so I let it slide. But now I was thinking,she wrote a song about me! And my beard!

I rubbed it now, thinking about abrading Adeline’s thighs with my stubble-rough jaw, my beard soaked from her liquid pleasure. My chest felt itchy. I scratched but it was no good because this itch was under my skin. Inside my chest.

MacFarlane was always posting shit on Instagram. They’d left only an hour ago, so he probably hadn’t had a chance to upload pics, or maybe he’d have some common sense and keep it on the down low. Did the guy really want to be messing about with his captain’s daughter?

If I couldn’t, then why should he?

There would be hell to pay if he hurt Adeline. I knew this how? Because I’d thought through every scenario involving this woman for myself and come up with the only conclusion that made sense: hurt her and die.

That was what Theo would think.

Except I needed to keep my paternal thinking for my own daughter, who right now was making noises that might be interpreted as singing along to Disney.

I resisted checking out my teammate’s social media and focused on being in the moment with my daughter. She’d abandoned the movie and now she was rolling around on her back, waving her hands in the air. One of her booties had somehow landed on the other side of the pen, so I had no choice but to take possession of her baby foot and give it a squeeze.

Oh, she liked that! I tried to see Vicki in her smile, but all I saw was my mom. I hadn’t thought about her in years. Sven had removed all trace of feeling I had for her, but Mabel’s smile brought it rushing back.

She couldn’t help dying and leaving me in Sven’s care, but I sure wouldn’t have wished a six-year-old kid on a gruff asshole like Sven Nyquist. Barely twenty when I was born, he hadn’t matured much by the time he had to take me on full-time. Now here I was, in my father’s shoes, forced to take on a kid I barely knew. But I could do better.

The muddle of emotions swirling around in my head hacked me off. My mom, Sven, Mabel, Adeline. I flicked a glance to my phone, resisted the impulse, and picked up the remote instead. Hockey would be the perfect distraction right now.

Boston was 2-zip up in the second period. I tried to get into it, but even a goal to narrow the deficit and the prospect of a Denver comeback couldn’t elevate my mood. It wouldn’t hurt to check my Instagram account, see if anyone was giving me shit about Mabel.

There was a new reel on there. Adeline must have added it after I’d given her access and told her to go crazy. A fun video of Kershaw and me, it showcased some of our best moves over the last couple of years, and even a few times we messed up but were laughing about it afterwards. The video was intercut with stats and details on our records. People loved it.

D’Legends!

Best defense in the game!

Superglutes and Superdad.(I laughed out loud at that one.)

I would never have expected a charm offensive like this to work, but Adeline really knew what she was doing. More interesting was that it was posted this afternoon after I had pissed her off. She didn’t have to do this nice thing, yet she had because she was a good person.

In related news, I was a total dick, who still needed to know what MacFarlane was up to. Yep, he’d gone ahead and posted on Insta. The club, the drinks, the mini-burgers. One of Adeline with his arm around her. Her expression was deer in the headlights as she raised a flute to the camera. She didn’t look happy, which I knew intimately because she had looked happy a couple of nights ago when I kissed her. She had looked abandoned and wanton and so damn needy that my entire body tensed with the pleasure of that memory. Then she’d looked scorned or maybe, scornful of my inability to take it any further. She had to know what a mistake it was.

But this thing with MacFarlane? That would be an even bigger one.

Adeline

“So Rosiejust shoved him in the dumpster. It was absolutely priceless.”

Rowan laughed his head off. “She seems like a cool chick.”

“She is.”

We were an hour in, and Rowan was close to hammered, getting his wrist rehab in with every raise of a glass. He’d given up any pretense of romantic or sexual interest in me, instead reserving his dubious charm for the servers who had started on the bottle service. We’d also acquired a few fans who loved that Rowan MacFarlane was here, drinking in their orbit.

“So what’s the deal here?” I tapped his phone.

“What?” He looked a little worse for wear, but suddenly alert to my query.

“Boden just texted.”

He looked down at his phone and Noah Boden’s message:Man, Kershaw is pissed. He called asking where you took his sister.

“Why’s my brother pissed?”

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