Page 159 of Friendzone Hockey
“I guess I’ll allow it,” he says. “But I’ll be right there, your faithful knight in shining leather jacket.”
I should probably gather the courage to tell him what I’ve called him since the day I saw him behind this bar top.
I should.
Probably.
What are the chances I could get him to tattoo Dash’s Mercenary Angel on his left forearm?
Chapter
Thirty
NOW
Stacey
It’s been a long day in the sun. My body’s kinda wrecked. All I wanna do is crash next to Dash. Consume him.
The only light is the muted yellow from the old lamp on my bedside table. Dash makes fun of me for not updating my shit, but there’s been little time.
“I’ve married my father,” he said yesterday.
“Take my credit card,” I said. “Buy us whatever you want.”
But now I like him there, just like that, reading by my old lamp, the darkness surrounding him. My eyes land on what he’s reading, and I approach with caution. I said he could. I admitted that I was too scared about what I’d find in Mom’s secret journal.
I finally told Casey about it, and he won’t touch it with a forty-foot hockey stick. But he’s fine for me to do what I’d like. Dash asked if he could be my filter, read it first, relay it to me in sugar-coated language.
He looks up, eyes glazed with fresh tears.
Uh-oh.
“Sorry,” he says, wiping his eyes. “Don’t mind me, you know how sensitive I am.”
“Okay, that’s enough.” I stride over and tug the book from his hands. He relinquishes it easily, rolling onto his back. I tuck the journal away in the bedside drawer where it can’t hurt him.
“D-Do you want to know?” he says, staring at the ceiling. “Your dad wasn’t a bad guy.”
“Then why are you crying?” And tearing my heart to smithereens?
“Because the story’s still heartbreaking, and it could have happened to us.” That sends him into chest-heaving sobs. “It could have happened to us, Stace.”
Sitting on the bed, I pull his arms around me, and then I yank him up so he can wrap himself around me like a koala and cry into my neck.
“No, it wouldn’t have. It didn’t,” I add. But there’s an anxious swell in my stomach. Whenever I got close to having Dash, I came up with excuses—Casey was the one to point that out. It was because of Mom. Without realizing it, I’d absorbed her pain about whatever happened with her and Dad. It put a guardrail on love.
He suddenly pulls up. “Fuck, I’m doing it again. I was reading that journal for you, and now you’re the one consoling me.” He bares his teeth, making a frustrated sound. “I can do this. Ican.”
I trap his wrists in my hands before he can make a dive for the journal.
“What are you smiling at, Stace?”
“You. I love you.”
“I love you, too, but I suck. I’m a shitty husband. Why do you bother with me?”
“Dash,Dash. Take a breath.”
