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SEVEN

willa

“I have good news and bad news,” I tell Declan around a mouthful of the Pad Thai he ordered for me.

“Give me the good stuff first to cushion the blow,” he says, clutching a green throw pillow to his chest dramatically. I ignore the way his forearms flex and the tattoos covering his arms. They do weird things to my stomach.

I roll my eyes. “We finalized the rest of the tour schedule. I can make a lot of your home games. Not all of them, but more than I was expecting.” I wanted to see Declan play anyway, but we realized it would be smart to have me at as many as I could get to, so our marriage looks more real.

“Fuck yeah!” Declan yells, pumping his fist in the air. I throw my head back and laugh. I forgot how easy it is to laugh around him.

“Do you want the bad news now?” I ask, sobering a little.

“Nothing is going to stop the high from hearing my girl is going to my games.”

Ignoring the strange feeling in my chest when he claims me as his, I say, “I have to leave Thursday.”

He stops smiling. “But that’s my first preseason game.”

“I know. I can go, but I’ll need to leave right when it ends,” I assure him. “But it’s also the only preseason game I can make.”

Declan flops sideways with a huge sigh, his head landing in my lap. “Can we do that thing where I’m walking to the locker room, and you run to me yelling my name? Then when I turn, you jump into my arms and kiss me in front of all my teammates and coaches?”

“I’m not going to kiss you,” I say, digging my fingers into his side, making him squirm and slap my hands away.

“Hate to break it to you, Princess. We’re married. We’re going to kiss. And I would like the cinematic one. You can pick what kind you want.”

“So we kiss twice and that’s it?” I’m weirdly nervous about this. I’m completely comfortable with the intimacy we have now, but adding kissing feels like crossing a line. He’s, unfortunately, right though.

Declan rolls off my lap and kneels in front of me, grabbing my hands and suddenly looking serious. “I won’t ever do anything to make you uncomfortable, Princess. You know that. I just don’t see how anyone is going to believe I’ll be able to keep my lips to myself with you as my wife.”

I shake my head and look down at my lap, trying to hide my blush behind my hair. “You don’t kiss, Dec. It’s in your rules.”

“Meaningless hookups, absolutely not. Kissing isn’t how you keep feelings separate. But my wife?” he shrugs. “I’m obviously going to be kissing my wife all the damn time.”

“We’ve been married for two days, and it feels like we’re already blurring lines.”

“I disagree. We both have jobs where we put on a show for an audience, right? It’s no different from that.”

Looking at it from that perspective makes sense. I don’t need to kiss him behind closed doors and start questioning things. “Okay. I can handle it if I think of it like that.”

Declan laughs and stands. “Glad to know you think kissing me is repulsive.” His tone is joking, but his eyes look hurt.

“I don’t, but I won’t do anything to ruin our friendship, and I think kissing you without a set boundary would really blur lines and hurt our relationship once this marriage ends.”

I can’t read the look in Declan’s eyes, but he nods anyway. “So, what’s your kiss of choice?”

“I’ll think about it and get back to you,” I tell him, still trying to decipher the look in his eyes. But it suddenly vanishes, and he’s grinning again.

“Does that mean I get my movie kiss?”

“Yes, hockey boy. You can get your movie kiss.”

He points at me as he walks backwards into the kitchen. “I’m going to rock your fucking world, Willa Prince.”

Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about.