Kami

I’ve never felt like more of a total disaster than I do on the ride out to Nick’s parents’ place.

We were supposed to go to my place and have crazy monkey sex to celebrate his shutout, but because I flipped out when Aunt Hilda mentioned my stupid drunken ramblings about how I was finally going to go for it with Nick and marry him by this Christmas, I feel like some manipulative puck-chaser.

And then when I tell myself it was never about wanting him just because he’s a really hot hockey player, I start to feel all stalkerish and weird like I might be one of those people who sees a celebrity on TV and thinks that they’re actually talking to me when they smile and make their secret gestures to their family, because I can see past their celebrity-ness to the person inside, and I just know we’re meant for each other.

Except it’s not like that.

I don’t think.

Oh my god. I’m crazy and I just don’t know it.

“Did I tell you what I did to Berger to pay him back for Sugarbear?” Nick asks as he steers us out of downtown, completely oblivious to the second mental breakdown I’m having.

I tell myself I’m a normal, healthy adult who’s had a crush on her best friend’s brother for years, because I did actually know him—kind of—all the way back in high school even though he was a year ahead of me and didn’t know I existed because I was not a hockey puck, stick, jersey, skate, or rink, and I concentrate on the fact that Nick’s back to playing pranks, because of course he is.

This is normal.

“Please tell me it didn’t involve anything live,” I say, because this is also normal.

He laughs. “Nah, after your stunt with the penguins, not even the Berger twins and Frey together are willing to risk it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Coach knows it was you, doesn’t he? You called him and worked it all out before those birds ever hit the ice.”

He’s damn right I did, but admitting that would be akin to giving him power, and no matter how much I like him—rightfully or crazily or whatever—I can’t.

Also, I still felt like a horrible human being, because the penguins could’ve been legitimately traumatized, and I’ve never been one to go running to the teacher just because I didn’t like what someone else was doing. “I used to sneak out of my parents’ house and go over to Muffy’s house so we could write anonymous love emails to our secret high school crushes.”

“What? No, you didn’t.”

“I did. And we’d sometimes sneak a beer because we needed liquid courage on occasion.”

“No, you were—fuck. We went to high school together. Why do I always forget we went to high school together?”

He doesn’t seem to be asking for an answer.

Not with that face. He’s scowling. At himself.

“You were on your way to a hockey scholarship.” I shrug and squeeze his thigh. “You had other things on your mind.”

“I’m a real dickweed.”

“Stop,” I say on a laugh. “You’re trying. That’s the important part. And you always have, in your own special way.”

He cuts a you’re not helping look at me in the dark, and I start to relax for the first time since we left Chester Green’s.

“I’m not saying that shipping a thousand dick cookies to Felicity’s ex was the right way to make your point about him being an ass who needed to leave her alone, but your heart was in the right place.”

He shakes his head like he’s seeing himself for the first time, which is also crazy, but he just looks so…astonished.

Like he’s having one of those life epiphanies where you’ve sort of known that Earth rotates around the sun, but you didn’t actually realize until right this minute that that makes Earth secondary in the solar system, because the sun actually can survive without Earth.

“Do you know how rare it is for someone to be able to focus as hard on one thing as you do?” I say softly. “And not just focus on it, but succeed at it? You have dedication at a level most people will never be able to understand, much less apply.”

He’s still frowning. “You save animals’ lives every day.”

“Trust me, it’s definitely not every day.”

“Maren’s saving the environment.”

I hide my surprise that he knows what Maren does for a job, because that’s not going to help here. “She has a passion. Everyone has a passion. I like to think they do, anyway.”

“I just stop a puck from going in the net.”

“There’s value in entertainment, Nick. You give people an escape. And something to cheer for. And you give kids a role model.”

He cuts another look at me.

“Most kids don’t know about the dick cookies. Or that book you wrote.”

He cracks a grin at that one. “Those royalty checks all go to charity,” he says.

“I know.”

Crazy man wrote a book mocking another one of Felicity’s ex-boyfriends, and even though he published it under a pseudonym, people know it was him.

Hopefully not people under the age of twenty-five, or better yet, forty-seven, because it’s really terrible in both the plot and the writing, and I’m pretty certain he meant it to be, but it sells, and he writes a check every month to a local organization that provides supplies for women’s shelters.

Because he’s not a bad guy.

He’s just a little blind sometimes.

“And no one gives gifts like you do,” I add.

He doesn’t even smile at that. “I’m trying, Kami,” he says instead.

“It doesn’t take much,” I whisper. “I’m pretty easy when it comes to you.”

He pulls my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles.

And it’s the most perfect thing he could do.