Center Ice (Boston Rebels Book 1)

AUDREY

“That’s the last of it,” Colt says as he carries two boxes through the front door. They’re balanced between his arms and held in place by his enormous hands on the bottom of the first box, and his chin on the top of the second. Behind him, Zach Reid and Ronan McCabe each have a box in their arms.

“I shut and locked the moving van,” Zach says, nodding to the keys that sit on top of the box in his hands.

“Thanks so much,” I say, grabbing the keys and hanging them on one of the hooks by the door. “Can you drop those two in Graham’s bedroom?” I nod toward Colt’s boxes. “And those two can go in my and Drew’s room,” I say, nodding toward Zach and Ronan, and thinking that it’s a damn good thing Drew installed a temporary pole in his bedroom so we can take it down and put it back up whenever we want.

“For you, anything,” Colt says and moves down the hall, followed by his teammates.

Behind me, the crowd in the kitchen is boisterous. I turn and head in there, loving the sound of our friends and family all coming together for our moving day. The kids are playing in the living room, and McCabe’s daughter is asleep in her infant car seat on one of the chairs, completely unfazed by all the noise.

The adults are gathered around the island, helping themselves to all the brunch foods that Jules brought over for the occasion. Morgan and Paige are kicking back what has to be at least their third mimosa each, and Lauren’s bemoaning the fact that she has to be responsible for toddlers.

“Have another drink,” Jameson says, pushing the champagne bottle across the counter toward her. “I’ve got them.”

Lauren laughs, and says, “You don’t have to ask me twice.”

When I come up next to Jules, she wraps her arm around my waist and rests her head on my shoulder.

Colt and the guys come up on the other side of her, grabbing plates and piling them with food.

“I’m going to be lonely without you,” she says.

“I’m only going to be a few minutes away. And we work together. You’ll see me all the time.” I’m trying to remain upbeat for her sake, but the hardest part about deciding to move in with Drew was the thought of leaving Jules all alone. For years, it was the four of us—Jameson, Jules, me, and Graham—in our childhood home. And now Jules will be truly by herself for the first time in her life. Jameson and I are still close by, but I know it’s not the same as having us in the house.

“I’ll come over and torment you whenever you want,” Colt adds, poking her in the side so she jumps up from where she’s resting against me.

“Please, don’t. I won’t be that lonely,” she says. “In fact, I’m changing the code for the doors just so you can’t amble in whenever you feel like it.”

“Pfft.” The sound that escapes his mouth is part laugh, part scoff. The man lives to rile her up, and has ever since she was a gangly kid. “Like that would stop me.”

“Hey,” Drew says, his mouth close to my ear. I hadn’t realized he relocated from the other side of the island, where he was chatting with his mom and sisters. “C’mere, I want to show you something.”

He takes my hand, and I follow as he leads me to the door in the hallway that opens to the staircase up to the roof deck. He closes the door behind me and pushes me up against the wall, trapping me there with his hips as they press into me. When his mouth descends on mine, pulling my lower lip between his and nipping at it with his teeth, I laugh. “So this was just a ploy to manhandle me without our family and friends seeing?”

“There are entirely too many people here. We should have hired movers.”

“Movers wouldn’t have made sense,” I remind him. We’d considered it, but given that the only furniture we were bringing was from Graham’s bedroom, and the rest of our stuff easily fit in boxes, it made more sense to do it ourselves. “Besides, our family and friends wanted to be here with us. Everyone’s thrilled. And I love seeing Graham surrounded by his whole family—yours and mine—and all these other friends who love us.”

Three months ago, I couldn’t have even envisioned a world where Drew’s family and mine not only knew each other, but genuinely liked to spend time together. I couldn’t have imagined all the love that constantly surrounds us now. It’s the most perfectly unexpected gift, and I will be forever grateful.

“I do too,” Drew says, dipping his head to run his nose along my jaw. “I just didn’t realize that with you and Graham living here, and me always wanting to get you naked, there are going to be endless opportunities to practice my self-restraint. I don’t want to traumatize my kid.” He lets out a deep rumble of a laugh that’s barely audible.

“Pretty sure that you having the opportunity to practice self-restraint, both on and off the ice, is a good thing. And while Graham will get our days, you will have all my nights,” I assure him.

“Away games are going to be even harder now that I know what I’m missing at home,” Drew says. It’s not the first time he’s mentioned this, as the team has another week-long road trip coming up in a few days.

“We’ll manage,” I tell him. “Like we always do.”

“Can’t wait for you to see what I picked out for this trip,” he says with a grin. Every single time he’s away for more than a night or two, a new black diamond-patterned box arrives for me. At least it gives us both something to look forward to while he’s gone.

“We need to get back to our friends.”

Glancing at the stairs, he says, “Okay,” then opens the door to the hallway, and when we exit, Colt glances over from where he stands at the island and smirks at us.

“Colt totally thinks we were just getting it on in the stairwell,” I say to Drew as he exits behind me.

“Whatever. Let him think so,” Drew says, then puts his hands on my hips, pulling me back against him as he dips his head toward my ear. “Because even though it didn’t happen yet, I fully plan on fucking you on those stairs one of these days.”

“Sounds…uncomfortable,” I tease as I walk away toward the kitchen.

DREW

“What do you think of your new room?” Audrey asks Graham as I slip through the door from the hallway to his bedroom. His hair is still wet from his shower, and we’ve already gone through all the pre-bedtime rituals: brushing his teeth, picking out his pajamas, reading stories.

“It’s bigger than my old room,” he says as he climbs into his bed and settles himself, sitting up against his pillows.

“Sure is,” she says. I’m trying to figure out how she’s feeling about putting him to bed in a new house. She seems worried, but Graham seems totally fine. I don’t know how the kid isn’t exhausted.

After our friends and family left this afternoon, Audrey wanted a little time to get Graham’s room ready—she said she was fine living amongst boxes for a bit, but wanted to make sure everything in Graham’s room was unpacked so he’d feel right at home. I’d taken him over to the Esplanade—the park that runs along the Charles River in the Back Bay—and we’d thrown the football around, chased the ducks, walked all the way to the new park they just built, and then raced each other back. I’m exhausted just from keeping up with him.

“This room’s really quiet, though,” he says. “Dad, can you turn on the crickets?”

My throat tightens as the realization washes over me that he just called me Dad for the first time. He’s referred to me as his dad when talking to other people before, but he’s never addressed me that way. My eyes meet Audrey’s, and she appears to be having the same thought.

“Sure.” My voice comes out about an octave higher than usual. I turn to the dresser and hit the button for the white noise machine. It glows with a pale blue light, and the nighttime sound of crickets fills the air. “Is that better?”

“Yeah,” he says, moving his pillow so it’s flat on his bed, then laying down. “Can I have one more story?”

“Sure,” Audrey says, “but just one.”

“Will you stay too?” Graham asks me.

“Of course.” I take a seat on the end of his bed, facing Audrey where she sits next to him so he can see the book as she reads to him. And as I watch them, I’m overcome with the exact same feeling I had in our kitchen earlier today. Gratitude. Complete and utter gratitude.

This could have gone so many other ways. If I hadn’t been traded. Or if Audrey hadn’t let me back into her life. Or if Graham hadn’t adapted to the idea of us as a family. There are so many other ways this all could have gone. And I’m so fucking grateful that we’re here now, together—the family I always wanted eventually, and didn’t even know I already had.

When we say goodnight to Graham, Audrey grabs the baby monitor off his dresser. She didn’t use one anymore at their old house, but their bedrooms were right next to each other. Now that we’re going to be sleeping down the hall, with a bedroom and bathroom between our room and his, I understand why she wants one. And it’s a good thing she has it, because I’m about to pull her out of our condo entirely.

In the hallway, I nod my chin toward the door to the stairwell we hid in for a moment of quiet. “Earlier today, when I pulled you in there, I really did want to show you something.”

“Does it involve sex on those stairs?” She gives me a little wink. “Because my back is sore from all the unpacking, and I really don’t think my body can handle that right now.”

“No, actually, that wasn’t on the agenda.”

She follows me up the stairs, and when I hit the lights and open the door to the roof deck, we step out to the amazing view.

Below us, the now bare branches of the trees along the grassy expanse of the Esplanade stretch along the muddy Charles River, so dark at night that it’s perfectly black. On the other shore, the white dome of MIT’s most prominent building is lit up, and the lights of the other Cambridge buildings make them glow.

“You hung lights?” Audrey asks, looking up and taking in the strands of string lights that hang from a center location on the brick wall behind us, and fan out to the tall posts I had installed along the low wall opposite. I wanted to make sure it added some ambiance, but didn’t block the view. “It’s so beautiful up here. I can totally picture us sitting on those couches”—she gestures to the two outdoor couches facing each other, which are currently covered for the winter—“on warm summer nights.”

“We should get some of those outdoor heaters too, so we can enjoy this space even when it’s cool,” I say. I don’t know what brought on today’s amazing weather, but we got one of those freakishly warm winter days for our move. Even with the breeze tonight, I’m plenty warm in my sweatshirt, but any other year in early December, and this space might already be covered in snow.

I haven’t spent much time up here by myself since buying the place, but I’ve tried to make it a space that Audrey, Graham, and I can enjoy together three seasons of the year.

“That would be perfect,” she says as she turns toward me, and then gasps as her eyes land on the back of the roof deck. “Oh my god, Drew!”

She walks over to the planting boxes that I built along the back wall. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

“I wanted you to be able to have your rooftop garden here, too.”

“I can’t believe you even remembered that I have one,” she says in awe.

She’d never taken me up to the roof deck space off her third floor, which I know used to be part of Jameson’s now-vacant apartment. But she’d talked about how much she loved gardening up there in the summer.

“Believe it or not, I listen to everything you say.” I shove my hands in my hoodie. “I’m not only thinking about getting you naked when you’re around.”

She trails her fingers over the two tiers of planters, with their wood composite exterior and their lined plastic bins that I’m told will be perfect for the herbs and vegetables she grows. “I appreciate this so much.”

I come up behind her, wrapping my arms around her abdomen. “I want to make sure you feel like this is your home too, not just that you and Graham are moving into my space.”

“I already told you,” she says, melting against me, “wherever you are feels like home.”

“Well, I’ll do whatever I can to make sure there’s another Boston contract when mine’s up at the end of the season, so that this can be our home for a while longer. Or if they do offer me another contract and you want to look for another place, we can do that, too. Whatever you want.” I mean that last sentence with my whole heart. Whatever this woman wants, I will make it happen for her.

She tilts her head back against my chest and lifts her chin to trail kisses along my jawline. “I think we’ll be very happy here, unless you really do want to start growing our family soon. And then, we may need a bigger place.”

“Believe me, I can’t wait to give you more babies.” Just the thought has my whole body humming. “Whenever you’re ready, you just tell me.”

“Look at us,” she says. “We had a child first, reconnected later, fell in love last. It’s not the typical way of doing things, but I wouldn’t change a single thing. I love where we’ve ended up. And even though I’m not quite ready to have more kids, believe me…when I am, you’ll be the first to know.”

She tugs on that gold disk of her necklace, the one I now know has a moon engraved on it.

“You do that when you’re nervous,” I say.

“Do what?” She looks up at me.

“You run that moon between your thumb and forefinger.”

She huffs out a laugh. “Do I? Jules does the same thing. I didn’t even realize I did, too.”

“You have the same necklaces?”

“Yeah, they’re from our mom. Mine has the moon, hers has the stars.”

“What about the sun?”

“My mom had that one. We buried her with it.” I hold her close to me, knowing there isn’t anything I can do to take away that loss except to love her through it. “It’s funny,” she murmurs against my chest, “me being the moon and Jules being the stars.”

“Why’s that funny?” I ask.

“Because the moon is anchored to the Earth and can only reflect the light of other stars, whereas the stars shine on their own.”

I tilt her chin up and look down at her. “Is that what you think? That you can only reflect the light of others?”

“I think…maybe that’s what I thought, until you came back into my life. With you, I feel like I shine on my own.”

My throat is tight and my eyes water. I didn’t think there was anything she could have possibly said to make me love her more, and then she goes and says that.

“Audrey, you already shone plenty bright on your own. It’s why I was attracted to you in the first place, because the love and beauty just radiate out of you. But if I make you feel like you don’t have to hide that anymore, then that’s perfect.”

She brushes her lips against mine. “And I wasn’t tugging on my necklace because I was nervous, it’s because I was worried.”

“What are you worried about?” I ask, wanting to ease any fears she might have.

“What if we wait to have kids, and find out we can’t have any more?”

“Why in the world would you be worried about that?”

“I don’t know, it happens.”

“Audrey, we’re a team. And if for any reason we have issues getting pregnant again, we’ll deal with them—together—as they come.”

“Okay,” she says, and takes a deep breath. And then her hands move to my hips as she pulls me tight against her, “but maybe we should practice, just to make sure.”

A rumble of laughter shakes my chest. “I think that’s a phenomenal idea.” I run my hand up her neck and hold her chin in place. “We’ll probably need lots and lots of practice.”