“Why’d that guy fall down?”

Fiona pointed down to the ice, just in case Kelly wasn’t sure where the action happened. Since she was busy scanning the crowd for Jake, the little finger showing her where to look was needed.

It was just over halfway through the first period. Kelly had figured out that the game was divided into periods and not halves or quarters, so she figured her hockey knowledge for the night was met. As soon as Hannah had mentioned Jake didn’t seem to be in the lineup, Kelly’s focus had become singular: find the man she couldn’t stop thinking about.

It made absolutely no sense that Jake continued to fill her thoughts. They’d spent maybe a half an hour together over two months ago. He’d probably moved on, and for all she knew, he had a girlfriend. When they’d met, she’d had a boyfriend, but that had changed along with everything else in her life.

“The ice is slippery, Fee. Maybe this winter we’ll go ice skating and I can show you.”

Fiona smiled as she turned around in her chair to look at her aunt. The kids were both sitting in seats along the railing, while the three women in the suite sat in the row behind them. Simon was only somewhat interested in what was going on out on the ice. Kelly had given him some crayons and a coloring book, and that seemed to be keeping him occupied.

His sister, on the other hand, was fascinated by what the players were doing and kept asking questions. Kelly had learned quickly as she spent more time with the girl that she never stopped asking questions.

“Why are peas gross?”

“Why don’t boogers taste like anything?”

“Why does it rain?”

Those questions were all relatively easy to come up with answers that Fiona at least bought temporarily. It was when she asked her favorite, or rather most popular, question, that Kelly had problems answering.

“When are mommy and daddy coming home?”

The question had been asked less and less over the two months since her parents died, but at least every couple of days, it came up again. Kelly tried to explain they weren’t coming home, but Fiona either didn’t understand that or she didn’t believe her.

Kelly wouldn’t say the two of them butted heads. Fiona just seemed to be going through a phase where she thought she knew better than anyone around her, especially her aunt. Kelly couldn’t blame her. Even after two months, she felt like she was fumbling around with no clue how to get going in the morning after she woke up.

“Why do we have to wait until winter? There’s ice right there.”

Sometimes it felt like Fiona challenged Kelly because she thought she was an idiot. It made Kelly wonder what her sister and brother-in-law must have said about her in front of the kids. It was horrible to think ill of the dead, but there seemed to be a vibe Kelly sometimes got from Fiona. She was probably just being paranoid, lack of sleep was known to do that.

“That ice isn’t for everyone, Fee,” Kelly responded.

She wished the little girl would just turn around and watch the game, sans any more questions. Having to pay attention was taking away from her look-for-Jake time.

“If you’re serious about wanting to skate, I happen to know the owner, and she may be able to pull some strings to get you down on that ice.”

Fiona’s eyes widened at Nina’s words. Kelly’s did the exact opposite. Kelly needed her cousin to be the pain in the ass she’d always been, not the friendly, nice-to-kids person she’d been recently.

Nina still had her bitchy side. It had been on display when she’d taken them all out for hamburgers earlier in the week. Something had been wrong with her order, and after everything was said and done, the restaurant was left feeling like a hurricane had just hit it.

“Can we go skating now?” Fiona asked, her eyes twinkling at the idea.

Kelly rolled her eyes. Obviously, the answer was no.

She hoped the subject would be long forgotten before a possibility to skate popped up. There was a time she loved any kind of physical activity. Burning off calories had been a habit when she was in rehab. She needed the endorphins, learning to crave them instead of the drugs.

Eventually, the exercising became an issue. She wasn’t eating enough to keep up the routine of running half marathons on a treadmill each day. Passing out on a runway had been her rock bottom. After that, she’d gotten away from all the bad influences in her life and tried to start fresh in a different state, where no one knew her.

But, fate was a bitch, and she’d landed back in one of the cities she hated most. Things were way too accessible and phone numbers to get things hadn’t changed. Not that Kelly was looking for any hits. That had been a one-time thing like she’d promised herself.

Be that as it may, knowing that the possibility was out there didn’t make the upending of her life any easier. Neither did little miss ask-eight-hundred-questions-an-hour.

“No, we cannot go skating now. Turn around and watch Uncle Brady and Uncle Curtis so you can tell them how they did later.”

Fiona stuck out her lower lip to pout, but she followed the instructions. Kelly wasn’t sure who initiated the titles, but both men had somehow become uncles to the kids and their wives were aunts. With how much Kelly depended on those people to help figure things out, it seemed natural. At the same time, it felt kind of weird to suddenly have this huge family.

Hannah and Nina didn’t replace the sister Kelly lost, but they had become good friends. Having friends wasn’t a luxury Kelly had been acquainted with since high school. Finding out that Nina – the only person in their family gossiped about as much as Kelly – could be comforting made Kelly at times think she was whacked out on something.

Yet, it was Nina who suggested Kelly bring the kids to the game and even sit in her box. Kelly had been nervous about taking the kids out. They didn’t spend all their time cooped up in the house. Fiona’s school had started up, so they had to leave the house for that. Overall, though, Kelly tried to keep the excursions to a minimum.

If it wasn’t for the draw of maybe seeing Jake again, and the fact that Nina had used her “if you say no, I’ll kill you” voice, Kelly wouldn’t have come. The idea of other people seeing how much she sucked at being a parent didn’t help the anxiety she was trying to cope with every day.

“The rumor is that eventually kids get easier.” It wasn’t the first time Hannah had shared that wisdom, or the first time Kelly rolled her eyes hearing it.

Hannah’s two kids were asleep and had been since they’d gotten to the game. Even when Ollie and Liv weren’t sleeping, they seemed to be the poster children for the kids every parent wished they had.

“I don’t know about that,” Nina said as she glanced up from her phone. “Brady is twenty-seven and still acts like he’s three sometimes. He likes to play hide and seek with my stuff for some reason, and this afternoon he decided to hide one of my vibrators. I still haven’t found it, not that I need to use it or anything. I happened to throw it out of my drawer while I was looking for something, and he scooped it up and took off.”

“What’s a vibrator?”

Kelly shot Nina a glare for making it possible for the question to come out of Fiona’s mouth. The woman was a lot nicer than Kelly remembered, but she needed to get a filter installed.

“It’s probably better if you wait to ask that question when you’re closer to sixteen, maybe fifty depending on how protective your aunt is.”

The evasive response would have been bad enough coming from any of the women in the suite, but hearing the deep voice from somewhere behind Kelly made her squeeze the edge of her seat and sit up straighter. She’d been looking for Jake, not sure what she’d do if she found him. Hearing his voice right there, she wasn’t sure what to do.

They hadn’t exactly parted on great terms. He’d seen her in a moment of weakness, and since he hadn’t called, it was clear he wasn’t as interested as he’d been at the reception. Knowing that, one would think Kelly would be smart enough not to go looking for trouble by showing up and doing everything she could to see him, but no one had ever accused Kelly of being smart.

“There you are, Jake. I was starting to think you got lost.”

Kelly wasn’t about to turn around to verify whether the voice was only in her head, but she saw Nina look over her shoulder with a small smile on her face as she spoke. Hannah also looked at the newcomer, but she looked more tense than happy to see Jake. Her eyes moved to Kelly quickly, and Kelly could see the analyzing going on in her head.

Hannah probably didn’t have warm fuzzy feelings about Kelly and Jake being in the same room together when she saw Kelly frozen in place. Every time Kelly tried to bring him up, just attempting to get information about the man, Hannah changed the subject.

“You’re Jake?”

Fiona stood up and turned around again. Kelly saw her eyes squint slightly in concentration. As far as Kelly knew, there was no reason for Fiona to perk up at the name.

“That’s my name. What’s yours?”

“Fiona,” the little girl said proudly. Her chest puffed out as she straightened her back.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Fiona. Are you having fun watching the game?”

Kelly pictured Jake moving deeper into the suite as his voice got closer. He didn’t sound pissed off, which was nice to hear. He could’ve just liked kids, though. The fact that she had no clue whether that was true reminded Kelly that she knew absolutely nothing about him.

What she did know without a question was that his voice instantly caused her body to become hyper-aware. She swore she felt the air move and rush around her as he got closer. Kelly was too afraid to turn around to see how close he was, but she got a whiff of the sandalwood she associated with him.

She’d searched for information online about him. It was horrifying to think he’d probably done the same thing. She figured that was why she hadn’t heard from him, after he’d sounded genuinely interested in her well-being.

She wasn’t surprised to find there didn’t seem to be any skeletons in his closet. It was interesting to learn they’d been living in the same city for three years and hadn’t run into each other. In a city with over a million people in it, it shouldn’t have come as a shock, but New York was even bigger, and they’d run into each other almost immediately.

“My aunt Kelly says your name sometimes when she’s sleeping.”

Kelly sat motionless, hoping and praying that she hadn’t just heard Fiona say those words. The girl was going to be the death of her.

“Really? I think I’m going to have to talk to your aunt Kelly about that. Do you mind if I borrow her for a few minutes?”

Jake was directly behind Kelly’s chair. Whether it was real or just her imagination, she felt heat coming off him. Not enough to warm her in the freezing arena, but there was a subtle change in temperature.

Kelly watched as Fiona shrugged and turned around to watch something on the ice. The crowd had started yelling and screaming. The building could’ve been on fire and Kelly wouldn’t have noticed or cared.

“I guess that means it’s up to you whether you want to go for a little walk.”

Barely moving her head, Kelly answered in the affirmative. She glanced over to Hannah, directly on her right. Since the woman had been evading questions about Jake, it wasn’t out of character for her to have a frown on her face.

“Can you watch them for a few minutes? I don’t think they’ll need much attention. You just have to keep an eye on Simon to make sure he doesn’t stick any of those crayons in his nose.”

He hadn’t gotten one stuck, yet, but it was only a matter of time. They were just big enough and his nose just small enough that Kelly had almost banned the crayons altogether when he’d come running in the living room one night with both nostrils full of a crayon.

“I’ve got them. Try to be back before intermission, if you can. I’ve got to run down to talk to some people and leaving Nina alone with children is worse than asking a rock to watch the kids.”

Nina scoffed and waved off the comment. From what Kelly had seen, the claim wasn’t true. If Liv would’ve been awake, there was a good chance she’d be in Nina’s arms. For some reason the woman was fascinated by the one-year-old. Kelly had heard her mention that it was because the little girl had the best hair she’d ever seen, but chances were there was something else going on.

Kelly smiled as she stood. Part of her had wanted Hannah to say no. She wanted to see and talk to Jake, but after their previous failed attempts at having a conversation, she was afraid.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I’m starving, so I thought we could walk around the concourse until I find something that calls to me,” Jake said.

Taking and holding a breath, Kelly turned to face the man who’d been haunting her dreams. Evidently, enough so that she said his name while sleeping. How Fiona knew that, Kelly wasn’t sure, since the girl was supposed to be asleep herself. All those thoughts flew right out of Kelly’s head when she got a look at the man waiting for her.

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him in a suit, but somehow, he seemed to fill this one out even better. His muscles looked like they wanted to burst out of the black fabric. It wasn’t just his chest, even his pants fit snuggly, hinting at the powerful body beneath the surface.

Meeting his eyes, Kelly tried to smile, but it felt like it came off as more of a grimace. Her stomach fluttered as she maneuvered around her chair to take Jake’s outstretched hand. Accepting it, she curled her fingers around his, hoping he wouldn’t let go. Her head felt like it was swimming, and a little extra support while they walked around was welcome. She had to tell herself that seeing him was the reason she’d come, even if seeing him made her feel like her stomach was about to fall out of her body.