me a few times he never wanted to piss off my mother.
I think the entire hockey nation felt the same.
“I want to hug her. I want to hold her. I want to never let her go.” Alice was tearing up, talking about Cheyenne.
They knew about her. There’d been too much news coverage over us, and over her to keep any of it in the dark. News broke about Deek, then he took a plea deal. He was in prison now, and he’d be there for ten years. All those events shone even more of a spotlight on Cheyenne, but she was handling it fine.
In her words, “The masses learned they love a little Cheyenne, so I’m out and about. I might as well be myself. They’ll love the wavy train just like you do.”
Sometimes Cheyenne said things that didn’t make sense to me, but it was her.
I was learning how to translate. I was also loving how much she accepted that I loved her, and if I loved her, then with her way of thinking, everyone else was going to come and love her, too. Which made sense to me because why wouldn’t they?
Maybe that’s what the ‘wavy train’ was. I didn’t know, but that was Cheyenne.
Sasha and Melanie had been at her side, almost every day. That meant they were over at the house, a lot.
Except today.
Cheyenne told them to hold off to meet ‘the fam’ until the hockey game. They were watching it in Margo’s box, who had fallen in adoration of Cheyenne as well. She was pushing for Cheyenne to do something official for the team, or even to write a book about her life.
The most Cheyenne had agreed to doing was starting a podcast with Sasha and Melanie.
It was called Decking with the Tomcats.
They tried for Dicking with the Tomcats, but there were issues with that name so they changed it. Reluctantly.
It was in the top five most popular podcast in the local area.
The girls were becoming celebrities in their own right.
“You gotta promise me that you won’t fuck up this relationship.”
We were back to my mom lecturing me about Cheyenne.
“What?”
“You. I know you. I know my son, and I know that you’ve not had a relationship except for a silly girl in college.”
This was uncomfortable.
“I know you kept girls in other cities when you traveled and you’d call to visit them, but there wasn’t anything exclusive about it.”
“Mom.”
She spoke over me, gripping my arm, “I know this because Kathryn Meomeuooux met one of those girls, and do you know who Kathryn Meomeuooux is?”
God, no.
“Do I want to know is the real question you should be asking me.”
She ignored me, giving my arm a jerk. “Kathryn Meomeuooux runs a crafting Etsy shop in Pine River. She’s across the river. I hold the market in Pine Valley, but not across the river. That’s her. She’s my competitor, Cutler. And she found out all about your girls and it wasn’t a fun scene when she tried to lord that over me at one of our sales events. She had a booth across from me.” She let go of my arm, giving it a soft pat and stepped back. Her voice turned cheerful and her whole demeanor brightened. “But, that’s all done for now because you met Cheyenne. You realized you’d be absolutely stupid to do anything to lose that girl, because she’s one of a kind. I didn’t raise you to be stupid. She’s nice, and smart, and she doesn’t have an ego.”
I grinned at her. “Ask Cheyenne about her wavy train.”
“That’s healthy confidence. You want that in a woman, too. Do. Not. Lose. Her.” A pause. A mean glint showed in her eyes. “Ever.”
I was a little scared of Killer Mama Alice myself now. “Not planning on it, Mom.”
“Good.”
Another pat on my arm and she lifted up on her toes. She pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Now go and make your momma proud on the ice. Fucking reap, Cutler. Fucking reap. Named you that for a reason, I did.”
Yes. Still scared.
“Got it, Mom.”
56
Cheyenne
The crowd was beyond tonight.
The crowd was always beyond, but it was a playoff game and so the crowd was beyond beyond.
You feel me? Good.
I was golden.
I’d embraced my new lease on life, and that was the life of loving and being loved. Not that I hadn’t loved before. I had all sorts of golden goodness love for Sasha and Melanie, but being loved by someone like Cut and then his family? That was