It’s not really fun to ride in a convertible when you’re stuck in traffic,” Pete muses as we hit some traffic and sit there like mannequins in a storefront.
The people inside the cars around us are staring. “You’re breaking a couple hearts just sitting there, Rem,” Riley chuckles from the back and angles his thumb over at a car filled with coeds.
They start squeaking when I look at them, and my guys laugh.
Turning straight ahead, I curl my fingers into my fist and slip my ring back on, then I survey my knuckles. I’m so ready for the season. Brooke is already packing for Racer. Seems like the plane luggage is going to be full of baby stuff, strollers, and everything Racer has invaded us with since he was born. I’m fucking anxious to have Brooke just for me for a night where she doesn’t need to hurry out of my arms and tend to him.
“Hotel suite ready?” I ask Pete as the traffic finally starts easing.
“Yep.”
“My iPod?”
“Yep. Took it this morning, and headphones.”
“Every detail to the T as discussed?”
“Everything,” Pete says.
I raise a brow at him, but he starts to drive forward, leaving me musing on the word everything.
I can’t wait to take her in my arms.
I can’t. Fucking. Wait. To marry her again.
The first time I married her, it was in City Hall, now we’ll be in a real church.
I wanted to ask her to marry me with a song after last season’s final, but Racer decided to drop by early, and I ended up proposing with Brooke in the beginning of labor in my arms, breathing in short, panting breaths of pain. “The song was supposed to ask you to marry me, but you’ll have to settle on me doing the asking,” I’d whispered, looking intently into her eyes. “Mind. Body. Soul. All of you for me. All of you mine . . . Marry me, Brooke Dumas.”
“YES!” she’d cried, laughing, and crying. “Yes yes yes,” she’d repeated, and I’m so fucking glad she kept saying yes because I couldn’t hear it enough. I’d wanted to win the championship for her. I wanted to feel worthy of her. Right then and there, with that one word, she made me feel like I was.
And hours later I was half mad with pain watching her give birth, and I barely thought I could take it when I heard the first cry of our—our—baby. I wanted a girl as perfect as Brooke, and instead, she gave me something I never knew I wanted: something perfect that looks like me.
