Rites of Passage

by Catherine Gayle

  Had I been living in a hole? Yeah, probably. A dark one. A lonely one. And for so many years, I hadn’t even been able to see the sun. There’d only been the darkness.

  But now… Now it was like the clouds were starting to part overhead. There were still thunderclouds on the horizon, and I knew it wouldn’t be perfectly sunny all the time. But at least I could see the light, and I knew there was more on the way.

  I buried my head and got back to cleaning up. The chair needed to be thoroughly wiped down and disinfected, and I needed to tidy up all my ink. Before I knew it, there was a knock on my open door.

  I whirled around, expecting to see Whitney. Instead, Drew’s big, sexy frame filled the doorway. I grinned, dropping everything so I could head over and feel his strong arms around me.

  “Hey! What are you doing here? I thought you’d be heading home for your pregame nap around now.”

  He obliged me, of course, picking me up off my feet for a kiss that left me wishing we could sneak out right now, or maybe hurry to the bathroom for a quickie. But Whitney would be here any minute, so sex was out of the question.

  Damn it.

  “Seeing you was a hell of a lot more important than getting a nap. It’s all about relaxing, anyway, and nothing would help me relax if I couldn’t lay my eyes on you right now.”

  “You just missed my baby tattoo couple,” I said. I took out my phone and scrolled through the pictures so I could show him.

  “And you’re okay?” he asked slowly.

  I shrugged. “I cried. A lot. They cried, too. Everyone cried. But they got their tattoos, and a few tears never hurt anyone.”

  He planted another kiss on my forehead, but Whitney came up and knocked on the window before we could do anything else. Good thing I hadn’t seduced him into a quickie.

  “You ready for me?” she asked.

  Drew backed away, letting Whitney come into the room. “You’re still coming to my game tonight, right?” he asked.

  “As long as Rick is serious about letting me have the night off.”

  “He’s serious!” Rick called from somewhere in the general vicinity of the lobby. “And he might let you have more nights off for his games if they start to win, too. Because you could be their good luck charm or something.”

  Drew winked. “I’ll have to see what I can do about that.” But then he closed the door to my room so Whitney and I could have some privacy.

  “He’s hot,” she said appreciatively.

  “He is.” I might have been blushing. Because Drew wasn’t just hot; he was mine. “Now, you ready to see what I’ve come up with?”

  “I’ve been ready for a long time.”

  I took out my sketches and laid them on the table for her, but then I looked up and laughed. Because Drew was standing on the other side of the window holding up a sketch that Dagger must have drawn.

  He deserves to get laid, it read, surrounded by hearts and flowers and dragonflies.

  Drew waggled his brows comically, pointing at the sign.

  I nodded. “Later.”

  That caught Whitney’s attention, so she turned to look and burst out laughing, too.

  “Promise?” he asked, his voice muffled by the closed door between us.

  “If you score, then you’ll score.”

  “Ultimatums now, huh?”

  “Yep,” I replied. Not that I had any intention of holding out on him. Because like he’d said to me before he left—we didn’t know what would happen. I fully intended to take whatever life threw at me and hold on to it with everything I had.

  And right now, life had thrown me Drew.

  I wouldn’t be throwing him back.

  I WAS TOWELING off after a grueling practice when Zee came up to me with a goofy grin on his face. Spurs had just put us through a hell of a bag skate. In last night’s game, the whole team had shit the bed, so we definitely deserved it—but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Zee would be grinning like that.

  “Just got the results of the latest blood work,” he said. “Still negative, just like I told you I would be.” They’d been testing him regularly ever since the final game of last season, and every time his test came back negative, I was the first person he told—even before Dana.

  I held out a hand to shake. “Glad to hear it.” Hell, glad to hear it didn’t even come close to how I felt about it every time he gave me news like that. Inside, I was dancing a jig.

  I wanted to get home to be with Ravyn so we could celebrate, but I wasn’t so sure she’d be in the mood for a celebration. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Which meant it had been a year since her baby’s birth. I was fully prepared to spend the next few days holed up in my house with her crying all over me. Because this was what I’d signed up for when I’d gotten into a relationship with her. The good and the bad, the laughing and the crying. All of it.

  For the most part, she was doing amazingly well. But there were probably always going to be things that would trigger her depression. That only proved to me how deeply she was capable of loving, though. If she didn’t love that baby so much, it wouldn’t hurt her as much as it did to not have him in her life.

  I was a hell of a lucky man to be the one she’d chosen to give her love to, and there wasn’t a chance I’d forget it anytime in the next millennium or so.

  “Anyway,” Zee said, drawing me in for a bro hug, where he was slapping me on the back. “Hope you and Ravyn have a good Christmas.”

  “Same to you and the family,” I said.

  Zee and the rest of my teammates didn’t know how hard Christmas would be for Ravyn, and I didn’t want to bring them down by pointing out that it might not be such a great time for everyone. Some things just needed to stay between us.

  I finished drying off and getting dressed, then made my way home.

  Ravyn should be there waiting for me to get back. She’d spent the night, and since she didn’t have to work for the next several days, I’d left her in bed on my way to practice.

  When I came through the door, there was no sign of her anywhere. Hadn’t she gotten up to eat, at least?

  “Ravyn?” I called out.

  No answer.

  I headed into the bedroom. She wasn’t there. The bed was made, like she hadn’t been there at all.

  Well, damn.

  I took out my phone to text her and find out where she was, but there was a message waiting for me.

  Actually, it was a picture.

  Of Ravyn with a puppy. And it wasn’t Snoopy, either. They were standing next to one of the paintings she had for sale at the gallery, and it had a big “Sold” sign hanging over it, and she was grinning from ear to ear. The pup was scrawny, scruffy as all hell, and looked like it might have fleas, but Ravyn was as happy as could be.

  Instead of responding, I dialed her number and headed back into the living room to sit on the couch.

  “Hey,” she said, answering on the first ring.

  “Did you adopt a puppy?”

  “We did,” she replied.

  We.

  Now, I could have gotten upset that she’d made a decision for us without consulting me, but I was too busy internally doing a Tarzan-chest-pound move over the fact that she’d made a decision for us to bother being mad.

  Because it meant there was an us.

  I still couldn’t get over the fact that she loved me.

  “So why did we adopt a puppy?” I asked, my amusement threatening to choke me with laughter.

  “Because so many of my paintings have sold this month that the gallery asked me to double how many I provide them with, which meant I had some extra money lying around. And because I get lonely when you’re gone on road trips, and I feel guilty about stealing Ethan’s puppy all the time. And because it seemed like a better next step for us than jumping straight into adopting a kid.”

  “So this is like a trial run or something?”

  “Or something,” she agreed, laughing.

  “So where is our puppy going
to live?” I didn’t want to push, exactly, but Ravyn already stayed at my house more than her apartment—even when I was gone with the team—and I’d asked her a couple of times to think about moving in with me.

  She fell quiet, which meant she was thinking hard. “Where do you think he should live?” she asked after a moment.

  That was an easy question for me to answer. “I think he should be with you. And I think you should be with me.”

  “Hmm,” was all she said.

  Hmm? What the fuck did hmm mean in a situation like this?

  “Can you open the front door?” she asked then.

  “You’re here?” I was already on my feet, though, and racing for the door. When I opened it, I burst out laughing and dropped the phone into my pocket. Because I clearly needed my hands for other things—like taking the massive pile of art supplies out of her hands before it all collapsed on the puppy she was leading on a leash.

  “I figured you were right,” she explained. “And maybe it’s time for me to move in.”

  Hell yes, it was time. Past time. I hauled her stuff into the dining room and tossed it on the table while she picked up the puppy and got a million puppy kisses.

  “How much more do you have?” I asked. “I can get Bear or some of the other guys to help.”

  Ravyn walked into my arms, which was exactly where I wanted her to be. “The rest can wait. There’s no rush.”

  That was true. Because I intended for us to have forever.

  The puppy stretched up and licked my face, getting his tongue in my mouth. I was laughing too hard to gag, especially because he was wriggling so much and wagging his tail so fast. That little guy couldn’t have been happier, and it was impossible to be anything but happy when seeing him.

  “So where’d you find him?” I asked.

  “In a box on the sidewalk by the art gallery. It said Free to good home. Whoever had put him in there, they’d just left him.”

  “They’d left him like that? Things like that piss me the hell off. Makes me think of how Bear said they’d found Snoopy tied up in a garbage bag on the side of the road.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I figured we could be a good home for him. And besides, I’ve been there before. They probably aren’t bad people. They just know they’re not the right people for him right now.”

  And it hit me. She probably felt like she’d done the same thing. But Ravyn had given her son to someone who would make sure he was taken care of. She hadn’t dropped him in a box and left him, hoping someone else would come along and take over. It wasn’t even close to the same thing.

  “So we can be his people instead,” I said, shoving all of that aside for now.

  “Exactly.”

  I kissed her on the forehead, and the puppy tried to get his tongue in my mouth again. “Any idea what you want to name him?”

  She backed up for a moment, and her brows drew together. “I was thinking about Devon.”

  Holy hell. “Do you think you can handle that?”

  She blinked a couple of times, but it didn’t stop the tears from pooling in her eyes. Still, she nodded resolutely. “I think it’ll be good. And this is perfect timing, too. It’ll be a good way for me to remember him, and to prove to myself that I’m capable of taking care of someone other than myself. Maybe not a baby yet, but someone.”

  “You take care of me,” I murmured.

  She chuckled and rolled her eyes. “That’s debatable. I’d say the opposite is true.”

  “We take care of each other,” I insisted. “And now we can take care of Devon together.”

  “Yeah? You mean it?”

  “I do.” And then I felt something that distinctly resembled a flea bite on the side of my neck. I slapped my skin, then gave Devon a thorough once-over. “And I think it’s time we get started on that. First item on the list is a flea bath.”

  “Have you ever given a dog a flea bath before?”

  “Nope.” I took out my cell again and sent off a quick text to Huggy Bear to see if he had any dog shampoo he could bring over. “We can figure it out together.” And if all went according to plan, we’d be figuring it out together for a very long time to come.

  Catherine Gayle is a USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty contemporary hockey romance and Regency-set historical romance novels and novellas, with over than half a million books sold. She’s a transplanted Texan living in North Carolina with two extremely spoiled felines. In her spare time, she watches way too much hockey and reality TV, plans fun things to do for the Nephew Monster’s next visit, and performs experiments in the kitchen which are rarely toxic.

  If you enjoyed this book and want to know when more like it will be available, be sure to sign up for Catherine’s mailing list. You can find out more on her website, at The Sin Bin, at Hockey Romance, at Facebook, on Twitter, and at Goodreads. If you want to see some of her cats’ antics and possibly the occasional video update from Catherine, visit her YouTube account.

  RITES OF PASSAGE is Book 4 in the Tulsa Thunderbirds hockey romance series, a spin-off from USA Today bestselling author Catherine Gayle’s Portland Storm series.

  BURY THE HATCHET

  SMOKE SIGNALS

  GHOST DANCE

  RITES OF PASSAGE

  RAIN DANCE

  RAIN DANCE will release on August 17, 2017.

  Prefer to buy your ebooks in boxed sets? The Tulsa Thunderbirds series will gradually be released in boxed set formats. Look for TULSA THUNDERBIRDS: SQUARE ONE, a set containing Bury the Hatchet, Smoke Signals, and Ghost Dance, on December 29, 2016. More boxed sets will follow.

  Want to join in the discussion? Join Cat’s House, a reader group on Facebook for Catherine’s books.

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