Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 82888 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82888 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Tears form again. “You’d give up hockey for me?”
“I love you.” Fuck if those words don’t sound more right than anything that’s ever come out of my mouth. “I love you, and I want to be with you, so if you want to stay here in Coudersport, so will I. If you want to give Pittsburgh a try, we’ll do it together. But always together.”
Tillie flings herself at me, buries her face in my chest, and mumbles, “Ah luf u tooh.”
Chuckling, I wrap her hair in my hand and tug her head back. “What was that?”
“I love you too.” She smiles up at me, tears still twinkling in her eyes.
“So, where do you want to live, Ms. Marshall?” I ask.
“With you,” she replies, and that’s the exact answer I need to hear.
CHAPTER 27
Tillie
We pull past a house so beautiful, I can’t wrap my head around it. It’s aglow with light, done in red brick with black shutters and cream trim. It has gabled roofs and sits in an L-shape with a round turret tucked into the corner that rises three stories and is mostly paned glass. A massive chandelier illuminates a curved staircase that winds up the turret made of gleaming white marble.
Cars line the street on both sides, and it’s a block down before we find a place to park.
I wipe my hands on my dress. “My palms are sweating.”
“Mine too, babe.” He turns off the truck. “This is the first team social event I’ve been to since the crash.”
“At least you know these people,” I grouse playfully. “I’m just a small-town girl who thinks Vienna sausages are an appropriate canapé to serve at a party.”
Coen snorts and leans in for one of his fast kisses. “You most certainly don’t think that about Vienna sausages, as I happen to know you’re a foodie. Yes, you may be a small-town girl, but you’re going to charm the socks off everyone here.”
Brienne Norcross’s house sits in a gated community just north of the Pittsburgh city limits. Tonight is a welcome-back party—not for Coen—but for the team as a whole.
Training camp starts tomorrow and I’m spending the week in Pittsburgh with him. Once the season starts, we’ll have to face the struggles of on and off long-distance dating.
“Let’s do this,” he says, leaning in for another kiss, and it settles me.
Everything about this man steadies me in all ways, and he considers it his job. He took that responsibility on the minute I agreed to live my life with him.
We had six weeks together in Coudersport before it was time for him to come to Pittsburgh and walk back into the hockey world. Tonight, the team parties at the owner’s house, and tomorrow they step onto the ice.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say the past several weeks have been idyllic. The first order of business after Coen flipped my world upside down was to move my stuff into his cabin.
Well, our cabin now.
We then began construction to convert my house into a studio. Coen and I did the demolition together and we decided to keep the trees. It keeps us private although he laid a stone path through the woods that separate the two properties and then moved some of my mom’s sculptures to help guide the way when I make the walk. It took almost the entire remainder of summer for us to transform the interior of my place into an artists’ haven with rooms for painting and pottery.
I hope to add a covered area in the back for welding, as I have all my mother’s equipment. I’m not qualified to teach it, nor pottery, for that matter, but I will invite guest teachers to come in, and the studio is for those who already have the skill and knowledge but not the means to produce their art.
When we weren’t working on the studio, we were still together. We’d grab lunch or dinner in town, take long drives, have game night with Ann Marie and Xander, or he’d take me fishing. I like to sit on the bank and watch. Fishing’s not my favorite, but Coen most certainly is.
Among the more humorous things that happened over the remainder of the summer was when Cici and her group tried to ingratiate themselves with Coen. Word spread around town that he owns a place and is becoming a fixture in some local establishments, Masha’s being one of our regular hangouts.
Cici and her gang don’t know how to give up. They want to hang with the famous hockey player, which is probably the most interesting thing that’s ever happened in their lives. It’s pitiful, if not amusing, that they’re trying to get to Coen through me. On more than one occasion, Cici has approached me like we’re long-lost friends, and I’ve ignored her the same way I do when she slings insults.