And because if it’s not McKnight, Imight actually lose my damn mind.
I lift my hand, twirling my finger.Turn around. Now.
The boys are still skating around me, whooping for our win, but I can’t processanythingbeyond the clench in my gut and the pounding in my chest. I left the jersey for her, but did she put it on or did she wear one she already had?
She points to herself and feigns confusion. I sigh in exasperation.
“Turn around, Abrams,” I yell across the ice. She grins at me before turning around agonizingly slowly.
McKnightis blazoned across her shoulder blades like a brand. I exhale hard, relief crashing over me in a way I absolutely refuse to examine right now.
My heart is thumping wildly in my chest, and if it could speak, I swear it would be chantingmine, mine, mine.
She turns back around with a little wave and saunters out with the crowd leaving the arena. I’m still standing there like an idiot once she’s gone, unable to make my brain and legs connect long enough to actually move.
Finn hoots and hollers next to me, pointing at Monroe as she exits into a sea of people. “Told ya! New mom!”
Beck skates up next to us and chuckles, slapping me on the shoulders. “Oh, yeah. You’re fucked, buddy.”
Chapter Seventeen
Monroe
Rhodes (10:20pm):Come out with me and the guys.
Monroe (10:30pm):And hang with all the puck bunnies? No thanks.
Rhodes (10:31pm):You won’t be with them. You’ll be with me.
Rhodes (10:35pm):I’m celebrating. I don’t want to celebrate without you.
Rhodes (10:36pm):Please?
Monroe (10:37pm):…fine. Because you asked so nicely.
Rhodes (10:38pm):Leave the jersey on.
I’m buzzing with nerves when Rhodes arrives at my apartment fifteen minutes later. I can see his friends in the car, shoving one another to the back seat. Beck, Finn and JD, I think. A chuckle escapes my lips watching them—I can hear their voices through my front window, but I don’tthink they know that.
I’m still wearing the jersey that showed up on my doorstep early this afternoon, with a very severe-looking blonde attached to it.
“Uh, hello?” I said to the woman on the other side of my door. She had been holding a garment bag and she’d looked impatient.
“Ms. Monroe, I presume?”
“Yes?”
She’d nodded once and handed the bag with a note pinned to the outside to me. “This is for you.” Satisfied that she’d done her job, I think, she turned on her heel and walked back to the blacked-out Audi in front of my apartment without a backward glance.
Back in my apartment, I’d opened the note before looking inside the bag. One ticket to tonight’s Wolverines game fell into my lap, for the family and friends section.
Monroe—
7:00p. Wear the jersey.
R
I’d unzipped the bag to see the familiar red-and-blue logo on the front of the hockey jersey. I’d flipped it over to see “McKnight” embroidered across the shoulders.