Page 32 of Goalie and the Girl Next Door (Love in Maple Falls #5)

MARCY

I can’t remember the last time I felt this at ease with someone. Comfortable, yes, but also…

Safe.

This night isn’t what I expected. It’s so much better. He’s funny and charming, sure. But he listens like I’m someone worth knowing.

I keep waiting for the spell to break. For him to make a comment that pulls me back into the version of myself I’ve worked so hard to become. Buttoned up, tightly scheduled, predictable.

But he doesn’t. He just keeps on being sincere. Every time I inch closer, emotionally, I brace for impact and then… nothing. I never would have imagined a first date could be liberating.

Maybe that’s why I’m acting so boldly.

“I need your help with a puzzle,” I say, voice steadier than it has any right to be.

Clément blinks, then leans in slightly, expression suddenly grave. “A puzzle. Right. Emotional, interpersonal, or existential?”

I pause. “Sorry?”

“I’m excellent with conundrums. We’ll need a whiteboard, some string, at least three different colored markers, ideally scented—and absolute honesty.”

“It’s a jigsaw puzzle. Cardboard. Two thousand pieces. Mountains at sunset.”

He freezes. “Oh.” His mouth twitches like he’s trying to decide if I’m serious.

“I hope you’ll help me with it,” I add, “but if you have to go…”

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

I lead him toward the cabins, the night air cool and sweet. My boots crunch softly on the gravel, and I hear him follow close behind. By the time I push open the door to my cabin, the fluttering inside me hits full swirl.

“I’ll just…” I crouch down, pulling the puzzle keeper from beneath the futon. “It’s, um, right here.”

I unroll the green mat across the floor, revealing several painstakingly completed clusters of color. The sky, part of a pine forest, a bear’s left ear.

Clément crouches beside me, peering down. “You weren’t kidding.”

“I never joke about puzzles.”

“I see that now.” He studies the image on the box of snowy peaks, pine trees, clouds just beginning to pink with sunset. “This could take hours.”

“It could,” I say, my voice breezy while my stomach does a tight little loop. “You can leave anytime.”

“Do you want me to leave?” He looks at me with the same longing that I feel, too.

I don’t even try to pretend. “No.”

Clément smiles sweetly and lowers himself to the floor beside me, crossing his legs. “ Alors , where do we begin?” He picks up a piece with gentle precision, eyes scanning the mat.

His face lights up with interest. He’s into it. This man never stops surprising me.

“You like puzzles?”

“I love them,” he says, fitting two pieces together with a soft click. “Haven’t done one in years. Life was too busy, too loud.”

Hours pass, though it doesn’t feel like it.

We shift and lean and bump knees as we build a mountain range from a thousand jagged pieces, the two of us murmuring little triumphs and softly cursing edge pieces that pretend to fit.

Clément tells me about the puzzle he and his mother used to keep on their dining table for rainy Sundays.

I tell him about the time I tried a 5,000-piece one shaped like the Eiffel Tower and cried when I realized it was missing the corners.

He makes a scandalized face. “No corners? That’s not a puzzle. That’s emotional sabotage.”

We laugh. We talk. He tells me more about how he’s struggling on the ice, and I tell him about how my dreams are bigger than accounting. Everything feels easy with him. Clicking into place.

Like pieces of a puzzle.

I glance at the stove clock across the room: 3:07 a.m. I’m wide awake. I have that rare feeling of being right where I’m supposed to be, as if something meaningful is happening, and my whole body knows it.

We fall into another comfortable silence, our hands working in quiet synchronicity. The sound of a piece clicking into place feels louder in the hush.

Then Clément speaks. His voice is easy, like he’s tossing off a casual comment. “So… how many men fell head over he els for the cute but intelligent accountant who landed in their tiny town?”

I pause, mid-reach for a piece shaped like Idaho.

“None,” I say.

He looks at me, head tilted slightly.

“I’ve never even had a real date,” I add, surprised at how steady my voice is. “People look at me and they see someone reliable and distant. I’m the ice queen, remember? Romance is wasted on someone like me.”

He studies me for a long moment, and then turns back to the puzzle. “That's funny. I've only ever felt more like myself around you. And no one would ever accuse me of being unromantic."

My whole body stills. His gaze turns from the puzzle back to me.

There’s a faint shadow under his eyes from the late hour, and a tiny furrow between his brows like he’s waiting on tenterhooks for me to laugh or look away or say something to close the moment.

But I don’t want to close it.

This is the true Clément. No spotlight. No swagger. Just a man who told the truth and is hoping I don’t run.

“I’m not great at this,” I say. “The feelings. The timing. Saying the right thing at the right time.”

His eyes search mine.

“But,” I continue, “you’re making it really hard not to want more of this.”

He exhales.

I set down the puzzle piece in my hand, suddenly aware that I don’t want to keep putting space between us—literal or otherwise. Because even if I’m not ready to say out loud what I think this is, I know what it isn’t .

It isn’t temporary. It isn’t casual .

It’s beginning.

I’m starting to believe Clément Rivière might not only be what I want. He might be what I need .

Clément shifts closer to me. A subtle lean, like his body can’t bear the space between us any more than mine can.

For once, I don’t overthink. I breathe in the quiet between us, and it smells like cinnamon and cedar and the faintest hint of clean sweat from a long day that somehow only makes him more real.

His voice is low when he speaks. “Meeting you has been the best thing that’s happened to me since I arrived in Maple Falls.”

I blink. “Really?”

He nods, the corner of his mouth twitching like he’s surprised too. “I thought I came here for hockey. For the house. For a chance to reset my life on my own terms. And then?—”

And then?

He stops, his eyes studying mine.

“I met you.”

My breath catches and I’m sure he sees it.

The thing is, I’m a woman who makes up her mind. I know what I know, and I know it well. The problem with Clément is that I’d thought I’d made up my mind, and yet here I am, and here he is, and I have to confess that I was wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I’ve seen the way people look at him, talk about him, cheer for him. He’s got fans and teammates and a whole town that swoons every time he so much as orders a coffee. He’s living out dreams people spend their whole lives chasing.

And still, he’s here tonight, with me, making me feel special with his simple truths and vulnerability that he wears on his sleeve.

“I’m doing everything I can, Marcy. Everything I can to not put any kind of pressure on you, because I understand where you’re coming from. But I can’t hold on to this anymore. I can’t keep it to myself. Everything between us feels…” He searches for the word. “Perfect.”

My throat tightens. “But?”

“But there was a call. From France. A guy I trained with wants to start a team and he’s got ambitious ideas. And he asked me to be a part of it. He asked me to come home.”

The word hits me.

Home.

He watches me carefully. “I told him I was trying to put down roots here. That I wasn’t done in Maple Falls. But he knows I’m struggling.” He gives a dry laugh, then grows quiet again. “I am a little lost, Marcy.”

I press my lips together, my voice caught somewhere between breath and disbelief.

He reaches for my hand.

His palm is firm and callused, but the touch is gentle, reverent. His fingers curl around mine like he’s done it a hundred times, like it’s instinct.

“I’m scared,” he says. “If I stay here, I could lose everything I’ve worked for. The career. The dream. But if I leave, I might never know what this could be.” His thumb grazes my knuckles. “What we could become.”

My breath shakes.

I glance at our hands, and the thought creeps in before I can reason it away: I want more than this.

More than his hand on mine. I want to lean into him and see if he’d hold me. I want to know what it would feel like to tuck my face into that space between his collar and his jaw. I want to feel him kiss me in the same way he looks at me. Like I’m the one .

I don’t even know where that kind of wanting comes from. But it’s here. And I want it. I want it so much it scares me.

“What are you going to do?” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer.

The puzzle’s been forgotten, left half-finished on the floor like a conversation paused mid-sentence.

We settle into a position shoulder to shoulder, hands around our mugs and not saying much, not needing to. His presence is so warm beside me that I almost forget the hour. My mug’s empty, my fingers wrapped around cool ceramic, and I rise wordlessly to make more tea.

He doesn’t protest. Just watches me, quiet. Maybe wondering the same thing I am—how something so simple can feel so full.

When I return and settle beside him, he shifts just slightly. I lean into him, resting my head on his shoulder. He lifts his arm and encircles me. The weight of it feels right. We sip our tea in silence, wrapped up in each other. Nothing has ever felt better.

We let the moment stretch and settle as the first rays of morning touch the windows.

“The light,” he murmurs, barely above a whisper. “It casts everything in a new glow. Even what we thought we knew.”

I turn my face slightly, and when I meet his eyes, every shield I’ve ever built cracks under the weight of his gaze.

I’m falling.

Completely, recklessly, terrifyingly falling.

I break the stare before I lose all ability to function, setting my mug down with care.

“Come,” I say softly, standing .

He doesn’t ask where. Just rises and follows.

Outside, the air is cold and still, the sky full of that rich, aching pink that comes before dawn. I lead him to the porch of my cabin, one of the only places on the ranch with a perfectly unobstructed view, and extend my arm.

He steps forward and wraps both arms around me like we’ve done this a thousand times before. His chest is warm against my back. His breath at the side of my temple. We don’t speak.

The sun crests the ridge, sudden and glorious, and the whole sky erupts in color. My breath catches. It’s too beautiful for words.

He squeezes me tighter.

I tilt my face up toward him, and he looks down at me. Despite the lack of sleep, the tangles in my hair and what must be dark circles under my eyes, he turns me and leans forward. I meet him halfway.

This kiss is slow. Like a sunrise all its own.

And just like that, our world goes still.