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Ho-ly fuck. A literal angel is rushing toward us. Long white-blonde hair falls down her back over a creamy sweater that’s hitting her mid-thigh and covering tight black leggings tucked into knee-high riding boots. Her pale cheeks are flushed red, and big doe eyes are locked on Izzy. She doesn’t even see me here, but there’s no way I’ve missed her. It feels like someone just smacked me with a two-by-four.
I understand needing to be a responsible adult . . . but seriously. Every day? Like every single day? That seems a bit excessive.
When it rains, it pours. Literally . . .
Some days, I pray for silence. Just a few minutes. Show me a mother who doesn’t, and I’ll show you a liar.
But something was there . . . Not just attraction, but something else. Something bigger. Stronger. Insistent. Something I don’t just want to explore, I need to. Have to. She and her kids and the chaos around them settled me in a way I haven’t been in a long time.
She needs air to fill her lungs and books to fill her soul. —Addie’s Secret Thoughts
“Tell me how it made you feel to have a man in your space again. Tell me you were okay afterward. Tell me you didn’t have nightmares after he left, because I haven’t seen you let a man in your space in over a year.”
I’m not sure what it says about me that I just realized all the punishments I threaten my daughter with are my actual adult goals. Staying home. Going to bed early. Having to be quiet for five minutes. And my favorite . . . getting spanked. I’ll never spank her, but I’m certain I wouldn’t mind being spanked once in a while.
It’s definitely Lennox’s world. The rest of us just live in it.
“I don’t believe in nice guys, Leo.” Lennox slaps her small hand over my mouth, and I blow another raspberry against her palm before answering her mother. “Guess I’m going to have to change your mind.”
Dust settles. Queens don’t. Keep fighting because there is no other choice.
“I want to be your everything.” I pull the covers over her and run a hand over her face. “But you’re gonna have to let me in for that, sweetheart.”
If you speak to me before I’ve had coffee, and I’m mean, that’s your fault. Not mine.
“I don’t see a mess. I see a woman who’s holding her family together. Fighting to give her girls the world. There’s more to your story, Adelaide James, and one day, you’re going to trust me enough to tell it to me.”
“I’ll do it,” he interrupts and my entire world tilts. “I’ll marry you.”
I’m a good man, a great fucking hockey player, and a pretty good friend. I’m not sure what I’m going to have to do to convince you I am a nice guy. But only to the people I give a shit about, and sweetheart, you are on that list. You have been since the minute you stormed into the arena, pissed at the world, and didn’t even look at me.”
Well, I didn’t see that plot twist coming.
Leo kisses Lennox’s head, and my heart cracks. “If you’d have left him earlier, you wouldn’t have her.” Fuck him for being so damn perfect.
Start over. Start late. Start scared. Just start. The first step is always the hardest.
But instead of her grandfather or her father taking her . . . taking care of her, Leo Sinclair is the first man in her life who stepped up, and I’m not sure how to feel about that.
“Waiting for permission.” “Permission for what?” she whispers, her warm breath turning to smoke in the cold air. “To kiss my wife, Adelaide.”
“Because Adelaide . . .” I breathe her in and slow down. “The minute I laid my eyes on you, I knew you were everything. Somehow, I just knew it. And I knew you were supposed to be mine. You and those girls. But you were never going to let me prove it. This way, I can show you why.”
#HockeyHottieForChristmas #ISawMommyKissingLeoSinclair
I pull the ring box out of my pocket and hold it in front of her. “Leo,” she sighs. “Please tell me you didn’t.” “Oh, baby . . . You’re going to have to get used to me doing—because I usually do.”
But if you back out in a month, I’m not even sure what the consequences are on the estate, but the consequences on that little girl sleeping upstairs . . . the one who already thinks you hung the moon . . . those will be huge.”
“I don’t want your money or your name, sweetheart. I just want you.” If her father were here now, I’d tell him exactly what he could do with both. “How about a compromise? I’ll take it legally but not professionally,” she offers. That’ll work.
Putting a kid to bed who claims she isn’t tired is like putting to bed that one drunk friend we’ve all had. First there’s the refusal. She will not go to bed. She doesn’t need sleep. Then there’s the request for water, and different pajamas because hers feel itchy, followed by begging for you to lay with them. Tossing and turning and some weird yoga-like positions. And finally, she’s asleep. Upside down with her head at the foot of the bed, one leg under a cover and her arm around her teddy bear. But sleeping so I’ll take it.
“You’re taking my name. And you’re standing here in another team’s colors again. Only this time I can’t take them off you.” “Oh . . .” I lean my head back against his bare chest, and suddenly I want it off. The tank. The shorts. I want them gone.
“Take off their colors, and I’ll give you everything you need,” he growls against my skin, and my clit throbs. “But I’m not giving you want you want while you’re wearing their colors.”
“Your jersey?” I laugh, thinking it’s going to be stiff and bulky like a typical jersey but knowing I’m going to sleep in it anyway because it’s his. But as he pulls it down my body, I’m shocked. “It’s soft.” “It’s the practice jersey I’ve had for a few years. Been washed about a million times. You want to wear colors, you wear my colors and my name, Adelaide.”
“Maybe I want real. Maybe deep down, I know I need everything you want to give me, and I’ve been fighting it and you . . . Fighting this thing growing between us.”
“Be sure, wife. Because once you give yourself to me, I’m never giving you back.”
Leo is mine, and I’m not sure I’ll ever want to be anyone’s but his.
“Are you coming back?” Damn. Are you, not when are you. Maybe it’s not just Addie who’s been hurt.
“You love her?” Nix asks. “Fuck yes, I love her.” Even if she’s not ready to hear it yet. “Then don’t fuck it up, brother.” I think about the girls lying on the couch and smile again. Yeah . . . I’ve got no plans to fuck this up.
It settles. No chance this woman is getting rid of me in a year. This marriage isn’t ending. And the way I feel about her and the girls isn’t changing. The three of them are mine.
“You get in first. Then me.” “Oh yeah?” I ask as I step into the scalding hot water and hiss. “Shit, baby. You trying to boil my balls?”
“Don’t be a baby, Sinclair. Why would I want to boil your balls? I have big plans for them.”
Do you want to know why storms have been named after women for over seventy years? Threaten my children and find out.
“Take care of our girl.” “My girl,” I correct her without turning around. “She’s my sister,” she argues, and right or not, that doesn’t matter to me now. “She’s my fucking world,” I tell her and don’t look back.
“Fuck no. He can’t have them,” I argue, and she finally looks up at me. “I love you, Leo.” She finally looks up at me, but it’s with hollow eyes. “I love you for the way you love them more than any man ever has and for the way you love me . . . But you can’t fix this.”
Gavin fucking Dryson is a dead man walking.
Once upon a time . . . She made it the fuck through . . . The end.
Life has its ups and downs. Probably the only squats I do.
“I knew it. Okay, yeah. We won’t tell anyone because I don’t want to hurt their feelings when they realize my dad is better than theirs.”
She called him her dad, and damn, she’s not wrong. In the few short months Leo has been in her life, he’s been everything a father should be.
I’m pretty damn sure he’s never going to let her down. He’s going to be the father I wish I’d had and I prayed my girls would have.
She didn’t survive the storm. She became it.
And as of two days ago, Izzy and Lennox are officially Sinclairs. Not that their last name ever mattered to me. They were always mine.
