Page 129 of Blindside Sinner

I hug it to my chest and then I start putting it all away. I fill the drawers and most of the closet then look at the room.

There’s no sign I’ve had an in-house shopping spree or that Beck is the most thoughtful man I’ve ever met. There’s no sign that I have enough clothes—thanks to his generosity—to dress myself for a year without wearing the same thing twice. There’s nothing to indicate that Beck is the man of my dreams.

But it’s all true.

Now, I just have to find a way to get away from him for a drive across town and I have to do it soon.

Before the Bloodhound gets a whiff of where I am.

64

BECK

I’m not a nervous guy. Never have been. I’ve had the game on the line and the puck at my feet, waiting for me to take the final shot. I’ve never faltered. Never blinked. Never missed.

But this feeling that’s chewing me alive from the inside out… well, it feels a lot like what other people describe as nerves.

Sloan is sitting across from me in the den, reading a book while I watch—or, more accurately, pretend to watch—film for our upcoming game against Zane Whitaker and the Phoenix Angels.

She is dressed in a pair of black leggings and thick, fuzzy socks, one foot tucked up under her as she idly toys with a stray lock of hair. She’s reading some cheesy looking novel that, according to her, “BookTok has been raving about.” I don’t have a single clue what that might mean and I don’t care.

But I can’t stop looking at her.

And the fucking butterflies in my stomach are starting to go insane.

I clear my throat. “Sloan.”

She looks up from the book. “Yeah?”

“We’re going on a date.”

I wince immediately.Shit.That’s wrong. I should be asking, not telling. “I mean, what I’m trying to say is—I want to—We should—I…”

She’s staring at me, face blank and expressionless. “Okay. Tonight?”

Tonight sounds like it’s a lifetime away, but I nod. I don’t want to wait—I want to take her out on my arm right now and show every fucking photographer for every fucking tabloid in every fucking city in the whole fucking world that she’smine. Mygirl. No more secrets or hiding or pretending this isn’t exactly what it is.

Maybe that’s the real reason I’m nervous. Not because I have to wait or because I was afraid she’d say no… but because I knew she’d say yes.

Maybe the future is really what terrifies me.

“Yeah,” I grunt. “Tonight.”

My mind is already racing with what we could do. I want to take her to Paris for croissants. I want to take her to Tuscany for pizza. I want to take her to the North Pole to slide on our bellies with penguins and throw snowballs at Santa Claus. Fuck, I just want to hear her laugh and know that that laugh is for me and me alone. I’d bring the whole world to her doorstep to make that happen.

She doesn’t ask what we’re doing, though. She just nods again. “Okay.”

It isn’t like we haven’t been out about a thousand times. Dinner after games, coffee shop on the way to a morning skate, yada yada, blah blah blah.

But this is more.

This is adate.

This is different.

When the time comes, I don’t take her to Paris or Rome or the North Pole.

I take her to the hockey rink.

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