Page 37

37

Liam

D espite the steady movement of her ribcage against me, I could tell that Lenny wasn’t asleep. If she hadn’t removed her ring earlier, mid-handjob, when I told her the coolness of the silver against my heated skin was too much, I knew it would be spinning faster than the speed of light now.

I waited.

“You said you wanted a hockey team once,” she eventually whispered.

My hand stilled where it was rubbing circles on her naked thigh. “Huh?”

“You said you wanted enough kids to field a full squad once.”

“Oh, that. Weren’t we like twelve when I said that?”

“Well, I was twelve when I said that I didn’t want them and I haven’t changed my mind, so who’s to say that you haven’t?”

It was a fair point.

“Yeah, I stopped wanting a hockey team a long time ago.”

“But…?”

“There is no but. I’m indifferent to the whole thing, which is probably a sign that I don’t want kids. So I’m not going to wake up one day and feel like I was deprived of something because I fell in love with a woman who has made it abundantly clear for almost the entire time that I’ve known her that she doesn’t want them. We have friends. I’m sure some of them will have kids. We’ll be that aunt and uncle who have a mysterious amount of money and do fun things.”

“Liam, you were on a multi-million-dollar contract for nearly a decade. There is nothing mysterious about the amount of money you have.” She poked me in the side.

“Fair, but the rest of my point still stands. We can fly in, spoil them, leave, and then sleep through the night. Or at least I will sleep through the night, you will do whatever it is you do with your sleep schedule.”

“We’ve shared a bed for the past week, you know I sleep.” She poked me again. “Now is probably also a good time to establish that being with me means you can’t give up condoms because I’ve not met a birth control that suits me and I’m not going on it again.”

“I was never going to ask you to do that. I have no issues with using condoms. I’ll live. Although there is an option that has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me,” I tacked on.

“I’m not asking you to do that,” she mumbled.

“I know you’re not. I’m just saying I’d do it. Once we get out of the honeymoon phase, I can get the snip and then we are free to go at it like nobody’s business.”

She rose up onto her elbow and looked down at me. “Do you have a breeding kink that I need to worry about?”

“Do you mean do I get turned on by the idea of your body being swollen with our child? Not at all. You’d be miserable and then at the end of the whole thing, there would be a legit person that we would have to raise. So really, at what cost? Also, I just don’t think you’d take me seriously if, in the throes of passion, I referred to filling you up with my seed and putting a baby in you.”

She laughed. “A sure-fire way to make me drier than the Sahara. You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. We don’t have to keep talking about this right now. But I’ll do it, one day. I’d say I might not tell you when it happens, but there are seven days with no sex at all, so you’d probably notice. While we’re kind of on the subject, I also won’t revoke your face-sitting access if you don’t get your hair yanked out of your body every six weeks by a ball of sugar paste.” I realised, as I finished, that I had shown my hand, and that hand was that this was not just a passing thought I’d had at this very moment, but was something that I had actively looked into in the last week or so.

“Which did you Google first, vasectomy procedures or sugaring?”

Before I could answer, a phone started vibrating on the bedside table. She twisted around to grab her phone, and I nipped at the skin on the side of her breast.

“Hey Max,” she said, excitement in her voice.

“Hey yourself,” the voice of my former nutritionist came through the phone. I had questions about how Maxxy knew Lenny.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

“Need to talk to you about this party. ”

“Shit! Give me a second,” Lenny muted the call and looked at me with an apology already swimming in her eyes. “So, I have literally just remembered that I’m supposed to be going back to Detroit tomorrow.”

“Because you’re having a party?” She rolled her eyes at my obvious confusion over the whole sentence.

“Yeah, I didn’t plan it. Kai was, I guess rightfully, a bit presumptuous and thought that he would combine an engagement party with New Year’s Eve. So he sent out all these invites, which I forgot about until my final week at work when Maxxy mentioned she was going to have to deal with the setup because I was here, not in Detroit.”

“How do you even know the nutritionist of the Panthers?”

“Oh, Maxxy was my freshman roommate, and we clicked. She’s my best friend and the reason your entire team can eat countless baked goods. I tweak the recipes of their favourites so they fit in with their meal plans, which I get from good ol’ Maxine.”

“You do that?” Just when I thought I couldn’t love her more.

“Yeah, it’s not that big a deal. That team keeps me in business. Don’t worry, your birthday brownies were full of all the good shit.”

“Wait, when did he propose?”

“September,” she replied, reluctantly. I knew why.

“He didn’t?”

“Technically, no. My birthday was on the Sunday, he proposed on the Saturday.”

“You spent your thirty-first birthday alone?”

“No, I spent it with Max,” she unmuted the call. “Sorry about that. What about this party?”

“Well, I am looking at all the decorations and they are very…”

“Engagement heavy?”

“Yeah, so unless you’re marrying number seventeen after ten days, the decorations are non-existent. What do you wanna do?”

“Are even the balloons contaminated?”

“There are a lot and the ones that don’t have some engagement reference on them are gold, which doesn’t really fit your overall vibe. But don’t think I didn’t notice just now that you avoided acknowledging my comment on number seventeen. Which, let’s be real, is the real reason I called, because I can deal with the decorations. Can we circle back to who you are dating? When and how did you meet the man who broke a thousand hearts?”

Lenny looked at me, her eyebrows pinched together. “Is that a thing?”

It was. I tried to avoid it, but it followed me around, and Teddy liked to rib me for it when he thought I was enjoying retirement a little bit too much. Which was often.

“You’re avoiding the question once again,” Maxxy said. Lenny rolled her eyes.

“Short answer, we met at the airport when we both flew home for Christmas.”

“No, that is not going to cut it because I know you, and there is no way you would have done half the things I’ve seen splashed over the internet with a person you had known mere days. So, long answer, please.”

I smiled because I’d always liked Maxxy, but I liked her even more now knowing just how well she knew my girl .

“Remember I told you about that guy in high school…” she trailed off and let Maxxy fill in the blanks. Maxxy didn’t take long to piece it together.

“Of course, your ‘the one that got away’ is Liam fucking Mulligan. It should be illegal for the two of you to be together. Too much beauty in one place, the cheekbones alone.”

“Yeah, I get it, he’s very attractive. Can we get back to the party? Do you feel like bracing the store for decorations that will make the bakery look less like, well a bakery?”

“Is that jealousy I detect in your tone there, Alana?” Maxxy teased.

I heard it too. It was less obvious than it had been with Chantelle, but it was still there just under the surface. I pressed a kiss to her temple.

“No. Maybe. I don’t think so. Are you going to answer my question?” she huffed.

“I already said I would. The decorations really were just a cover for me to get the gossip on you and Liam. Wait, will he be coming to this party?”

“Yeah Maxxy, I will see you there,” I answered, setting off a string of semi-muffled curses.

“Were you ever going to tell me that he could hear this conversation?” she asked when she had stopped swearing at us.

“I didn’t think it would matter; we’re only talking about a party. Sorry, I should have said it was on speakerphone.”

“It would have prevented me from banging on about how hot your boyfriend was. To your boyfriend.”

“I wouldn’t say you were banging on. You just mentioned it a couple of times. Besides, unfortunately for us all, he knows he is good-looking, so no harm done really.”

“Careful there, Len, I think that was almost a compliment.” I pressed a series of kisses along the line of her neck.

“Did he just call you Len? A nickname? I swear to God, Alana, when you get back to Detroit, we are having a full debrief on this. I want all the details. Starting from high school.”

“It goes back to us being toddlers, but fine, I will give you a full debrief on me and Muller.”

“And now she’s out here calling him Muller like that’s his name,” Maxxy started mumbling to herself. “I’ve been low-key annoyed at you for dumping this task on me because you went back home, but knowing that in leaving, you reconnected with the literal love of your life, I can’t be annoyed at you anymore. But I’m serious, Alana. Full. Debrief.” Maxxy hung up and Lenny threw her phone back on the bedside table.

“So, you’re coming back to Detroit for New Year’s,” she said to me.

“You really think I’m going to deprive you of your first New Year’s with the one that got away?” I pulled her in closer, she settled against my side.

“I hate that you heard that. I can’t even say that it’s a lie, but it is going to make you insufferable.” Her words were muffled against my neck.

“You’re mine too. The one that got away, that is. And I can’t wait to get all your New Year midnights now.”

I felt her eye roll against my skin before she lifted her head and pressed her lips to mine.