Page 64 of Play the Game
It’s both profound and wildly simple.
“You’re up early.” Her voice is a little raspy, like this is the first time she’s using it this morning. I like that her first words of the day are mine, and mine hers.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Walking over to where she sits, I set the coffee down on the table by the swing, move her notebook over, and slide in next to her, putting the blood pressure monitor down between us.
“Do we have to?” she asks, anxiety flashing in her eyes like it always does when it’s blood pressure time.
I take her hand and kiss it. “We sure do. I’ll hold your hand.”
She wrinkles her nose but holds out her arm. I attach the cuff and hit the button on the machine, holding her hand as it does its thing. As always, her eyes stay right on mine, as if watching me lessens some of her anxiety. I really like that thought. When the monitor beeps, I give a satisfied nod at the number and reach over and grab her mug, handing it to her. “Take your blood pressure; get a treat.”
She blows out a breath as she takes the coffee, and I slide back so I’m sitting next to her. “Glad that’s over. Thanks for this.”
My heart gallops when she unwraps herself from the blanket with her free hand, tossing it over me so we can share. Wrapping my free arm around her, I press a kiss to the side of her head. We sit like that for a few minutes, enveloped in the pre-dawn quiet as the stars start to wink out, swing rocking lightly, and the winter air cold on our faces as we stare out at the street of my childhood. The place I became who I am. Where I learned how to be someone who could be a partner. A father. I realize, suddenly, how much I want to be both of those things with her.
Only with her.
It’s as perfect a moment as I’ve ever had.
Evan takes a sip of her coffee and gives that happy little hum I love so much. “Good call on the peppermint.”
I take a sip from my own mug, stroking my thumb over the softskin of her neck. “I know you’re still making up for all the pumpkin spice lattes you didn’t get to have when you were sick all the time, but I thought if there was ever a day for peppermint, it’s Christmas.”
Evan smiles, still looking out over the snow-covered front lawn. “You thought right. So why couldn’t you sleep?”
I tug the blanket tighter around her when she shivers a little. “Didn’t like being alone in bed.”
She gives me a side-eye that makes me laugh. “Don’t you pretty much always sleep alone?”
“I do, but I’ve never slept alone when you were right down the hall. I didn’t like having you so close but not quite close enough.”
“Close enough meaning in your bed?”
I grin and kiss her cheek. “That’s exactly what I meant.”
She shifts, turning to face me. “I’m going to tell you this one thing because it’s Christmas, and I feel like on Christmas it’s important to be honest, otherwise Santa doesn’t bring you the good stuff.”
I chuckle, taking another sip of my coffee. “Lay it on me, Rhodes.”
“I had to talk myself out of sneaking into your room at least ten times last night.”
I can feel my grin spread. “Ev, that’s the best news I’ve ever heard. You totally should have. It would have been very high school of us.”
Evan gives me a wicked grin. “I don’t think anything that would have gone on in that room would have been high school appropriate.”
“Shit,” I mutter, shifting a little on the swing, my brain suddenly overrun with ideas of what we could have gotten up to in my bed last night. “Now I really wish you had snuck in.”
Evan bumps her knee with mine. “No way was I having sex with you for the first time in your parents’ house.”
I glance pointedly at her stomach. “I’m pretty sure that babyin there would tell you it absolutely would not have been our first time.”
Her face heats, and if her brain was anything like mine, it just served her an image of the two of us up against the window in that conference room. “Maybe not, but it would be the first time it—” She cuts herself off, slamming her mouth shut.
“The first time it what?”
She shakes her head. “Never mind.”
“No way, Rhodes, you can’t leave me hanging like that.”
