Dropping Gloves

by Catherine Gayle

  Behind me, our families quietly moved into place, along with just about every guy from the team and all of their loved ones. I handed the wig to Laura. Levi came up to stand next to me. He fished out the jewelry box from his pocket and handed it to me. I nodded, shoving it into my own pocket.

  Kellan joined her to sing the second verse, and the crowd went wild. The lighting changed when they got to the chorus again. Everything went a deep blue, except for a spotlight hitting the disco ball overhead, giving the effect of stars twinkling in a perfectly clear night sky.

  Everything picked up for a big push to the end, but then the band members dropped out one at a time, until it was just the drummer keeping a rhythm along with Kellan and Katie. Two voices and a simple beat, thumping like a heart. By the time they came to a finish, there wasn’t a single person in the arena still in his seat.

  A cameraman focused in on the two singers, and that image replaced the video her brother had made.

  Kellan grinned at Katie. She smiled and waved at the crowd, and she made to hand the mic back to him, but he shook his head. “Keep that. You’ll need it.”

  She shook her head in confusion, and that was when he caught my eye and waved me onto the stage. “There’s someone here who needs to talk to you,” he said.

  It took a second—and a none-too-gentle shove from Burnzie, along with a cuff to the back of my head and, “At least you bothered to fucking comb your hair after you showered this time”—to get my feet moving.

  The spotlights blinded me, and I blinked a few times as I crossed the stage. By the time I reached the pair of them, my eyes had adjusted. Kellan handed me his mic, but my hands were shaking so badly I didn’t know if I could hold on to it. The crowd was so quiet that you could hear every time someone shifted in his seat or coughed, which only made me more nervous. What the hell was I thinking? Katie was used to getting up on a stage in front of people. She had cameras on her all the time, and she knew how to say what she wanted to when the spotlight was on her. I couldn’t even figure out what to say in front of twenty fucking teammates, though.

  Yet here I was, with twenty thousand people waiting for me to make an ass of myself.

  I bit the inside of my cheek and forced myself to start talking even though I wasn’t sure what was going to come out of my mouth. “This is kind of weird for me. Usually when I have this many people watching me in this building, they don’t care what I have to say as long as I put the puck in the net.”

  “Why don’t you try scoring four next time, you slacker?” some guy shouted from one of the front rows, and everyone who heard him laughed.

  “I know,” I said. “A hat trick’s not enough. I’ll work on that.” The interruption threw me off for a second, but it did at least loosen me up some.

  I focused in on Katie, trying to tune everything else out. She laughed, but the tears she’d been trying to hold back since this whole thing had started were streaking her cheeks with mascara.

  “I still remember the first time I ever saw you,” I said. “You were sixteen years old, and so full of life I couldn’t help but watch you across the room all day. We were at an Ice Breaker event for the Storm, and I was an eighteen-year-old rookie who was scared to death and intimidated as hell to be around these guys I’d been trying to emulate my whole life. But then I bumped into you. Literally.” The crowd laughed, but I kept powering through. “You blushed and stammered an apology, but I blushed harder and couldn’t figure out how to say a damn thing because you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. You said something about my dimples, which embarrassed me more than ever. I think I fell in love with you in that exact moment. But then you walked over to your dad and planted a kiss on his cheek. That was when I realized who you were. He looked back at me with one of those threatening looks he always seemed to give me, and I was pretty sure I’d already earned a spot on his shit list just for accidentally bumping into you.”

  Even with her tears, Katie chuckled. She ducked her head down, and I caught a glimpse of Webs standing in the wings. I was pretty sure he winked at me. I still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that he was not only okay with this but encouraging me.

  “I didn’t think it was possible, but I only love you more now,” I said. “Every day, I love you more than the day before. I used to be scared of your father.” More laughter from the crowd. “Now I’m just scared of a future that doesn’t have you in it. We don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s no crystal ball that will show us exactly where we’ll be in a month or a year or ten years or even fifty. But I know this. However long we have, you and me, I want us to spend it together. I want to be right by your side through it all. I want to hold your hand when you’re scared, and I want to carry you when you can’t go on. And no matter what, when it’s our last day together—whenever that may be—I want to know that I loved you more on that day than I did any day before it.”

  I dug the ring box out of my pocket, but my hand was shaking so badly I dropped it on the stage. I bent down to retrieve it, and Katie said, “Yes,” into her microphone, loud and clear. The word echoed in the arena.

  I laughed. “I haven’t even asked the question.”

  “So get on with it,” she said. Her tears hadn’t stopped flowing. “Ask me so I can say yes, because I can’t stand it.”

  I dropped down to a knee, and I tried to open the box, but I kept fumbling with it. She tucked her microphone under an arm, opened the box, set it back on my hand, and gave me a get-a-move-on look, waving her hand for further emphasis. The audience roared with laughter.

  I couldn’t help but join them. “Katie Weber,” I said, choking on my laughter. “Will you marry me?”

  She drew the mic out again and put it right up to her mouth. “Now can I say yes?”

  Shouts of “Yes!” came from all around us, including more than a few from our friends and family.

  She raised a brow in question.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Yes!” She dragged me to my feet and kissed me so hard I dropped the mic, but then everything else faded away, and it was just the two of us.

  By the time we finally broke it off, Kellan had apparently retrieved the microphone.

  “Well, I’d say that was well worth the price of admission, wouldn’t you?” He winked at us. “You all be sure to put pictures up on Twitter and Instagram and whatnot, okay? This is the kind of news that should be shared with the world. How often do you go to a rock concert and end up witnessing a proposal?”

  Katie put the ring on her finger and took my hand. She led me off the stage to the wings as the band started playing the next song. Everyone circled around us, offering congratulations and hugs and handshakes.

  Webs caught my eye and angled his head off to the side for me to follow. Since some of the women had already dragged Katie in the other direction so they could gush over her ring, it was easy enough to follow him. I just had no idea what he wanted this time.

  He crossed his arms, taking up a familiar, threatening stance. I’d given up on trying to figure him out. He’d been trying to get me and Katie back together for months. He’d told me I would make a good son-in-law, and he’d helped to pick out the ring. Now—now—he wanted to rip my balls off again? What the fuck was I supposed to do?

  “For almost twenty-three years,” he said, “Katie has been my little girl. She’s been my responsibility. Mine to protect. Mine to guard her heart. I haven’t always done a good job of it. I’ve failed her more times than I care to admit, and she’s been the one to suffer the consequences. Now it’s your turn. You’d better do a much better fucking job than I did. You understand me?”

  For once, I understood him perfectly well. I nodded. “I might need help sometimes, though. I don’t think she’ll ever stop needing her father.”

  His lips twitched, and I knew he was fighting either tears or a smile. He slapped me on the back. “Good man. Go make my little girl happy.” Then he turned and walked away.

  I made my
way back into the melee of friends and family, looking for Katie. She was easy to spot in the center of it all, her bare head shining like a beacon. She beamed up at me when I reached her. But then she grabbed on to my arm and pulled me away from the crowd.

  “Mom wants to talk wedding dates already,” she said.

  I laughed. “She doesn’t mess around.”

  “Never has, never will.”

  “Do you want to start planning?” I asked.

  Katie shook her head. “I am not going to have a naked head in both my prom pictures and my wedding pictures. That’s not going to happen. No setting a date until we’re sure I’m done with chemo for good, so we can know that I’ll have hair.”

  “Fair enough.” I kissed the top of her head. “But can we do it while your hair’s short and spunky?”

  “You like it like that?”

  “I love it like that. Because it means you’re healthy.”

  “Oh.” The single word was marshmallow soft.

  She put her arms around me, hugging me close. As soon as I did the same, she melted against me.

  “I always love your hair,” I murmured, my lips against the smooth skin of her head. “Long, short, thick, thin, any color you want it to be. I even love it when you don’t have any. Because I love you.”

  “Have I ever mentioned you’re perfect?” she murmured against my chest.

  I opened my mouth to argue with her, but she cut me off.

  “Perfect for me.”

  She got that right. We were perfect for each other.

  The instant Jamie opened the door, both kittens came racing for us. Jamie had his arms full with the overnight bag I’d had with me at the hospital and the prescriptions they’d sent home with us. Blackbeard had made it halfway up Jamie’s body before he realized I was the easier climb. He leaped from Jamie over to me, catching his claws on the fabric of my coat before shimmying the rest of the way to my shoulder.

  At least I was wearing a coat.

  “Is he all right?” Jamie asked, his voice full of concern.

  I nodded. At the moment, my throat hurt too much to talk unless I had to, so I was trying to use more nonverbal cues for communication.

  Jamie closed the door behind us and carried everything away, leaving me to deal with the kittens. I headed into the kitchen, Oreo doing her best to trip me up as I walked, and took out a dish and a can of the stinky kitten food. As soon as I popped the top, Blackbeard’s nose went into overdrive, and he jumped down to the counter. Oreo started crying, so I picked her up and set her beside her buddy to wait while I scooped it all out for them.

  Once they were happily munching away, I took off my coat. Jamie had returned by then. He took it from me and kissed my cheek before turning to hang it in the hall closet.

  The thyroidectomy had been successful. They’d gotten every bit of the tumor, taking every bit of my thyroid along with it. I was going to have to take meds for the rest of my life to replace it, but that wasn’t such a big deal. At this point, taking a few pills was the least of my concerns.

  I was cancer-free again. No more chemotherapy. No more radiation. My hair should start growing again sometime in the next few weeks, so there was nothing to stop me from making wedding plans with Jamie.

  Not only that, but I ended up as part of the ninety-eight percent of successful surgeries, not the two percent. Which meant no damage to my vocal chords. Which meant I could still sing, if I decided that was the path I wanted to take.

  After the concert on New Year’s Eve, Kellan and Emery had both sat down with me for a few minutes, offering to spend some time writing songs with me. I’d been floored. It was a good thing I’d already been seated when they’d made the offer, because there was no chance I would have remained standing.

  They were heading back out to finish up their tour next week, but we’d arranged to get together once they returned to Portland in February. By then, I should have fully recovered from surgery and be well on my way to being normal again. I didn’t know what kinds of doors this would open for me, but it only made sense to explore it. Songwriting might not end up being the right path for me. Singing might not, either. The only thing I knew for certain was that no matter what I decided to do, Jamie would be by my side.

  “How’s the throat feel?” he asked me now, leaning on the counter and watching our fur babies shoving one another out of the way so they could each get to their meal more easily.

  I scrunched up my nose. “Sore,” I mouthed, careful not to let any actual sound escape.

  “Would ice cream help? It’s chocolate. I remember you telling me once that if you ever turned down chocolate, that’s when I need to worry about you.”

  I grinned and nodded.

  He winked. He took out a couple of bowls and spoons, then headed for the freezer. It wasn’t a store-bought ice cream tub, though. It was a reusable plastic container, the type that people used for storing leftovers.

  I gave him a questioning look.

  “I made it,” he said, waggling his brows. “With the hand mixer you bought me.”

  I shook my head, wishing it didn’t hurt to talk. I wanted to tell him that you couldn’t just mix up ice cream and pop it in the freezer, that you needed an ice cream maker to churn it while it slowly dropped to the right temperature, or else you’d end up with frozen, icy chunks that were not what anyone would call ice cream. That was way too much to attempt saying, though, so I just watched, baffled, as he scooped out what appeared to be perfectly smooth, creamy ice cream.

  He put some in a bowl and passed it over to me with a spoon. “It’s fine,” he said. “I tested it out last night when I got home. It’s a recipe that Archie taught me. Just try it.”

  Dubious, I dipped my spoon into the bowl and put a small bite in my mouth. It was perfection. Smooth as velvet, rich and sweet but not overpoweringly so. It was so good I let out a moan, which I regretted because it hurt. I winced.

  “That good, huh?” Jamie leaned over the counter and kissed me, licking his lips as he backed away. “Yep. That good.”

  I went back for more, sighing in pleasure as the cold hit the aching spot in my throat. There was no way he’d made this. Not without an ice cream machine, at the very least, and even then he would have had to cook the custardy stuff before putting it all in the machine.

  “Where’s the machine?” I forced out, hating the raw, scratchy sound of my voice almost as much as the pain of forming the words.

  He was still scooping out some for himself. He set the spoon down in his bowl, turned to the cabinet, and took out the mixer I’d given him for Christmas. “Right here.”

  I shook my head. “You couldn’t have made this”—I pointed at my bowl—“with that.” I followed up by pointing toward the handheld appliance.

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” he said. He put the mixer away and finished getting his ice cream. The kittens had finished their meal, so he eased them down to the floor before carrying his bowl and spoon to the living room.

  I followed, curling up against his side, still as perplexed as ever.

  He kissed the tip of my nose before taking a bite of his dessert. “Two ingredients,” he said, mouth full. “Heavy cream and sweetened condensed milk. That’s it. Toss it in a bowl, whip it up, and freeze. This is what you get. I added cocoa since you love chocolate.”

  “Seriously?” I said, grimacing at the pain. I was going to have to try harder to avoid talking.

  “Seriously. Have some faith in me.”

  I had more than just some faith in him, but he continued to surprise me at every turn. One thing was certain. No matter how many years we had together, and I hoped there were so many that most couples would be sick of each other before it was over, there was no chance I would ever get bored.

  I took another bite, letting the frozen goodness soothe the aches in my throat the same way that Jamie soothed the aches in my soul.

  I’d told him once before that sometimes a person didn’t understand what they really want
ed until they’d lost it. Well, I’d lost him, and I’d gotten him back again. No matter how many wild and crazy hairs I got about things I wanted to do with myself, I would never forget that he was better than any dream I could conjure up. He was perfect—for me. And he was mine.

  Good thing I was smart enough to learn from my mistakes. I’d left him before and gotten burned. Now I could be with him and know there was no place I’d rather be.

  Portland wasn’t my home; Jamie was.

  There is nothing in this world that feels as good as being completely at home. Not even chocolate.

  Catherine Gayle is a USA Today bestselling author of Regency-set historical romance and contemporary hockey romance. 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, her blog, 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.

  DROPPING GLOVES is book 7 in the Portland Storm series. If you enjoyed it, please look for the other books in the series: BREAKAWAY, ON THE FLY, TAKING A SHOT (a novella), LIGHT THE LAMP, DELAY OF GAME, DOUBLE MAJOR (a novella), IN THE ZONE, HOLIDAY HAT TRICK (a novella), and COMEBACK. Another novella, HOME ICE, will be available in August, 2015, and LOSING AN EDGE, the eighth novel in the series, will release in 2016.

  BURY THE HATCHET, the first book of a new spin-off hockey romance series called the Tulsa Thunderbirds, will release in July of 2015. It will be followed by SMOKE SIGNALS in October, 2015.