shot up as soon as we touched, and my spine tingled as he combed his fingers through my hair. “I should let you go. But I’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah, you will. Don’t get hurt on the road, okay?” He winked. “I need that body in working order when you get back.”
Shivering, I laughed. “You know, I always try to avoid getting hurt, but you’re definitely motivating me to come home in one piece.”
“Good.” He chuckled, wrapping his arms around my neck. “And, um, don’t be surprised if half our conversations are me gushing about this new spokesman gig.”
I smoothed his hair. “I won’t be surprised, and I won’t complain. Promise.”
He just smiled, lifted his chin, and kissed me again.
Complain about him being this happy?
Not in this lifetime.
Chapter 22
Devin
Reaching into the mailbox always gave me a feeling of dread. How many more bills would there be this time?
Today, it was mostly junk, which would go straight into the recycling bin. Or in some cases, into the shredder, then the recycling bin.
But when I made it up to my apartment and started going through the mail, there were three envelopes that were decidedly not junk. As much as I would’ve loved to toss them into the shredder, they needed attention, and it didn’t matter if I was too exhausted or broke to pay that attention. Couldn’t I spend one evening just thinking about my new hockey-related gig? Or my hockey player boyfriend? Apparently not, because adulting never ended.
One of the can’t-be-ignored envelopes contained a notice from Dallas’s school that she was in danger of repeating the entire school year because of excessive absences. Just reading that all-too-familiar form letter made my heart sick. They wanted doctor’s notes every time she missed school, but I couldn’t take her to the doctor every time. I couldn’t afford it, for one thing, and it also meant I had to take time away from work instead of working at home, which cut into my already slim bank of paid time off. And besides, when she had a migraine bad enough to keep her from going to school, taking her to the doctor only made things a hundred times worse. As it was, her mom and I had to reluctantly send her to school when she was so hungover from a migraine that she could barely walk.
I didn’t know how many times or how many ways I needed to explain this to the school before they got it through their heads. Dallas’s grades were good—as good as could be expected when she had to miss school as much as she did. My kid was miserable, and the school just kept hammering us to send her to school more or at least take her to the doctor to prove we had a legitimate reason to keep her home.
Which brought me to the other two envelopes, which weren’t any less depressing. One was a bill for Dallas’s last visit to her useless pediatrician. The full amount, of course, since we hadn’t met our gigantic deductible yet. And then there was a statement from some dental work I’d had done last summer. I’d made a payment plan with the dentist’s office so they wouldn’t send me to collections, but the balance was coming down painfully slowly.
Ugh. I needed to make more money. Maybe after I’d done the bill-paying shuffle later this evening, I’d peruse job sites again. Except as I’d explained to Jase, most places didn’t let new employees take time off, especially paid time off, and I couldn’t risk getting fired during the probationary period. Damn it.
I pushed the mail aside and started figuring out dinner. At least that didn’t require a ton of thought. Ironically, because I’d already done all the thinking—like everything, meal-planning in this house required an exhausting degree of strategizing. Though she could eat dairy, cheese was a trigger for some reason, so I didn’t even buy it. We’d learned through trial and error what foods and scents were triggers, and there was a laundry list of groceries and cleaning products that had been summarily banned from the house.
And it wasn’t just Dallas—I was one of those lucky fuckers with a peanut allergy. Of course, Dallas loved peanut butter, and despite it being a common trigger, it wasn’t one of hers. But she couldn’t eat it for at least twenty-four hours before coming to my place. One of the few things she could enjoy without worrying about her migraines, and her damn dad was allergic