Romancing the Grump (Appies, #4)

by Jenny Proctor

The more time that passes, the more I wish she were beside me, holding my hand, grounding me. She matters to me like my family matters to me. It doesn’t feel right to be with them…without her.

But I can’t just text her that I love her. Wait. Do I love her? Is that what this feeling is? I think my chest might explode, and I lift a hand to my sternum, rubbing up and down like that might somehow help to diffuse the building pressure.

“Dad once told me that I can’t have both,” I say. “I can’t play hockey and also have a family. Not without making everyone miserable.” Mom narrows her eyes. “He said that, did he?” She huffs out a disgruntled laugh. “The big idiot.” “It was true, though, wasn’t it?” I say, pushing back. “He couldn’t do both. Even when he wasn’t playing, he couldn’t leave the game alone.” “Nathan, your father was a drunk,” Mom says. “It wasn’t hockey that made him a bad father. It was alcohol.

Mom mentioned the genetic component of alcoholism

“I can’t think of anything more tragic than you keeping yourself from having a life outside of hockey because you’re afraid of winding up like your dad.”

But for the first time, I’m realizing it isn’t just about letting myself love Summer, it’s also about letting Summer love me. A peaceful warmth flows through me, reaching all the way out to my fingertips and all the way down to my toes. It’s what I want. She is what I want.

I wouldn’t wish my sister’s happiness away for anything, but I’ll be glad when the night is over and I’m no longer surrounded by so many happy couples. Flint’s entire family is here, celebrating his return after two months shooting on-location in New Zealand. He has three older brothers and one younger sister, all married, some even with kids. Plus, his parents are here, and my parents are here, and Lucy is here with her new doctor boyfriend, who is, incidentally, absolutely too old for her.

he’s curious by nature and loves to make people feel seen and appreciated.

I’m about to ask what makes her so sure when Lucy’s doctor boyfriend, Eric, walks into the kitchen, hesitating when he sees us sitting side by side at the counter. I know that look. The way he’s gazing between us, panic barely concealed. I can’t contain my scoff—he genuinely can’t tell us apart.

If guys couldn’t figure out a way to tell us apart, they weren’t worth our time.

“Lucy, honey, your phone’s ringing,” Mom says from across the living room, and Lucy jumps up and hurries toward her. “Oh, it’s probably just the hospital,” she says. She grabs the phone, glancing at me over her shoulder as she hurries down the hall, away from the commotion of the party.

Across the room, a slight commotion breaks out when several of the Hawthorne brothers converge on the front door. “Who is it?” Perry asks. “Does anyone else have the code?”

When his gaze meets mine, he smiles. The big smile. The real one. The one I saw through the plexiglass when Nathan and I were first pretending at the game. Heat spreads through my chest. Take that, Dr. Eric. Nathan knows who I am with one glance.

He drops his face, pressing it into my hair. “I missed you,” he says. “I hated being away from you.” His words ease the tension I’ve been carrying around all weekend, and I lean up, pressing a kiss to the side of his jaw. “I missed you, too.”

He leans into my touch, his eyes closing for a moment. “I love you, Summer,” he says, and my breath catches in my throat. I wasn’t expecting him to start there—to go right for it—and now it happened so fast, I feel like I missed it. “Can you just…say that one more time?” I say, my voice trembling. Nathan squeezes my hands. “I love you. And I’m sorry I didn’t say it before.

I push up on my toes and press my lips to his. His mouth is warm and soft and yielding, and I melt against him, pouring every ounce of what I’m feeling into the kiss. I need him to know how much I appreciate that he’s trying. That he’s willing to be vulnerable, to risk love.

“I don’t deserve you. But I’ll spend every day trying to live like I do.”

My heart has been craving this for days, but now my body is craving him too, heat coiling low in my belly. Nathan’s eyes flash with desire, his expression molten as he drops his mouth to mine. He kisses me deeper this time, his tongue brushing across my bottom lip and stealing my breath. Holding onto my shoulders, he shifts us backward, sitting down in the nearest chair and tugging me onto his lap. I sense his control—his awareness that we’re in my sister’s backyard with over a dozen people just around a row of hedges and through a glass patio door. The fire is banked for now, but I find myself thinking, as he kisses me again and again, what it will be like when there’s no need for that control. When he can love me with his heart and his hands and his body.

how did you know who was who?” Nathan’s expression shifts, like he can’t even believe I had to ask the question. “I just knew,” he says. “It seemed pretty obvious to me.” A tiny confetti cannon explodes in my chest. And he didn’t even have to look at my shoes.