His thumb rubbed across my cheek. “I know, sweetheart. I better go.”
I put my hands on his face, and he smiled big at the gesture. “I’ll miss you,” I told him sincerely. I tried not to think too much about what that meant. If I thought too much about that, the doubts would start to creep in again.
“I’ll miss you too, sweetheart. So much,” he whispered, and then he kissed me again, his tongue sliding across the seam of my lips.
“Baby,” I protested and tried to push him away. “You have to go.”
He groaned and rested his forehead against mine. “I know. I hate leaving you.”
“I know, but you gotta go play hockey. Stop taking bad penalties and make sure you protect the slot in front of Metzy.”
He laughed. “Okay, coach!”
“I’m your favorite coach.”
“A sexy coach.”
I pushed him away. “Oh my God! Leave now before I make you really late and Kat Metz calls me asking why you aren’t on the jet again.”
It might not have been the first time that Riley had been late getting to the jet and the GM’s assistant had called me demanding where my horny husband was. I think the travel team called her because she was scary and kept all those hockey boys in line. I hadn’t met the woman yet, but I had mad respect for her. She got shit done.
He gave me one last lingering kiss, and then he was out the door. Him leaving all the time was not getting any easier. I knew it was bad, but I was secretly glad the Bulldogs weren’t making the playoffs because then I got to spend more time with my husband. I tried to push down the feelings of why that was.
I spent the next couple of days while Riley was on the road working on the edits for this new book. The first draft was painful, and I did have to rewrite a lot of it. Riley had given me a lot of the same notes as my editor, which was kind of surprising, but also really sweet that he cared enough that he read my book and wanted to help me make it better. I did hole myself up for a couple days, but only so I could hunker down and get work done.
I tried to talk to Dinah, but she hadn’t been responding to anyone. We had gone to the last home game together and grabbed lunch beforehand. Noah had taken a bad hit in the game, and they made him sit out because of concussion stuff. Her reaction was weird about it, though. We had talked before the game, and she seemed really unsure about her feelings for him since he had told her he loved her and she hadn’t said it back yet. I felt like she was ready to say it back, but Noah took that hit, and she freaked out. A few days later, when Riley told me she broke up with him, I felt awful for the young guy. I had been trying everything to talk with her. TJ had, too, since the three of them had been close before she and Noah started dating, but she had shut everyone out.
It was hard to watch our guys take the hard hits and wreck their bodies, but that was what they signed up for. I guess watching Riley do it all his life, I had grown accustomed to it. I really liked Dinah, and it was great to have a new writer friend in this city to bounce ideas off of. I didn’t like how she hurt Noah and how she was shutting me out right now, though. I was going to have to try her again and coax what happened out of her. I didn’t understand why she would break up with him because he got hurt during a game. He played hockey! It was kind of expected.
I groaned again at her dodging my calls and put my phone down, but then it flashed with my brother’s name showing up on the screen. Finnegan never called me, so I assumed the worst.
“What’s wrong?” I asked suddenly, my heart pounding in my head, thinking something had happened to one of our parents. I might not ever see eye-to-eye with my mother, but that didn’t mean I didn’t care about her. Or worry about her health.
Finnegan laughed on the other line. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Oh. Well, then what do you want?” I asked.
“Nice to talk to you too, Fiona. No ‘Hi, Finnegan, how are you? I haven’t seen you since my bizarre-ass wedding. That was really fucking weird, huh?’ RUDE!”
“Bite me.”
Finnegan and I were like typical siblings in that we bickered constantly, and him being older, I was always his annoying little sister. We didn’t always agree, and he was kind of a douche, but he was still my brother, so I guess I was supposed to love him or some shit.
“So, Mom’s literally making me call you because she knows you won’t answer.”
I rolled my eyes. Last time I talked to mom, she hammered in the grandkids speech again. I ended up being a total brat and hung up on her. Since then, I had been screening her calls and texting her that I was super busy. Which wasn’t exactly a lie, but she still called it my “little writing career” and didn’t take my livelihood seriously. Now that I was married to Riley, I think she thought I was going to become a housewife and abandon my writing. No, I worked damn hard at this stuff, and there was a reason I was able to quit my job to do it full time. Although I had been debating if I
