“Make sure what’s okay with Lucy?” Jim’s voice comes from behind me, then he’s plopping in the chair beside me.
He smiles and nods his greeting to the group. “Ladies.”
“We want Ella to come to brunch with us Saturday to help plan Mollie’s wedding,” Clarke explains.
“I’ll hang with Lucy while you brunch,” Jim replies, his eyes coming back to me with an easy smile on his face.
I frown. “But it’s game day.”
Just like tomorrow is also a game day and I have no expectations at all that Jim will think to text, call, or send me flowers for the hell of it. I mean, even if he has been doing that the last few weeks, his pattern for years is to isolate and be one with the game all day. I’ve always given him that latitude.
“No problem,” Jim says, causing me to jerk my chin inward. “We’ll hang until it’s time to go to the arena. If you’re not done, I can bring Lucy with me. You can pick her up there.”
I’m speechless for a moment. Game days are the only times I gave Jim absolute impunity to ignore me in any way he deemed fit. He was in game mode from the moment he woke up, but now he’s going to hang with Lucy so I can go to brunch?
Taking my silence as acceptance, Jim grins and plants a kiss on my mouth. “There. It’s settled.”
“Awesome,” Pepper exclaims.
“But if you’ll excuse us,” Jim says gallantly, taking my hand and tugging me from my chair. “I want to take my wife on a Ferris wheel ride so we can see the city of Phoenix from the top and then make out.”
The women snicker, except for Willow. “Right on.”
And just like that, Jim once again proves he wants to be a different kind of husband and I’m left to ponder Clarke’s words, wondering if I shouldn’t just let go of my fears.
CHAPTER 14
Steele
Everyone’s dressed and ready to battle the L.A. Demons tonight. We can hear how loud the home crowd is from down here in the bowels of the arena, as this has become our biggest rival in the league. It all stemmed from just a little under a year ago when Tacker was goaded by one of the Demons’ players, Lars Nilsson, and lost his shit on the ice. He attacked Lars and rendered him unconscious, earning a ten-game suspension.
Shit like that happens all the time and fans don’t usually hold on to those things, but in this instance, it has spread far and wide that Lars was trying to provoke Tacker on the ice by callously talking about the plane crash that killed Tacker’s fiancée.
Tacker was piloting, so he suffered enormous guilt and wasn’t in a great frame of mind. Yeah… no one on the Vengeance minded the way he retaliated, even if it cost him and us a suspension.
Since then, Tacker has worked through his demons, found true love in a wonderful woman named Nora, and married her. He’s moved on, but everyone is anticipating that Lars Nilsson hasn’t. The few times we faced off with the L.A. Demons since Tacker’s suspension, he’s tried to make a play for him, but our team closed ranks. Not because we thought Tacker would explode again or get suspended, but because the guy finally has peace and we want to keep it that way.
Coach is calling everyone into the main area of the locker room for a last-minute pep talk, and I bet Lars Nilsson will be a part of it.
Before I head that way, I grab my phone and send one last text message to Ella. She and I have been texting back and forth throughout the day, but I wanted to get a last word in.
Headed out for warmups. Just wanted you to know I love you. Call you after the game.
I don’t wait for her reply because I don’t have time. I put my phone in my cubby before joining the team. Doesn’t mean she’s still not partially on my mind, though. I have found in the last several weeks that she’s always on my mind, and I wonder why it wasn’t always like that. Had I become too complacent?
Regardless, she’s the most important thing to me, so it’s no wonder. Last night when we rode the Ferris wheel and it stopped for a good five minutes at the top because I slipped a hundred to the carnie, we didn’t make out like I had suggested. We talked about