My Hockey Roommate's Filthy Desires novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Counter at Larkin's

By Wednesday the Gazette story had been shared four thousand times, and two men in gray coats were sitting in the arena stands every morning.

Teddy said they were scouts.

"Pro teams," he told me on Pell Street, with a bowl of cereal going soft in his hands. "They watched the hat trick. They've also read the paper. They want to know if he's got a problem."

"Does he?"

"He's got you." Teddy grinned. "Which isn't a problem, ma'am. It's a plan."

Maddox came home at noon with a folded sheet of paper and put it on the kitchen table without a word.

I sat down and read it.

It was an offer from a pro team in Colorado.

A contract starting in the spring, after the season ended, three years long, with a number at the bottom that made me read it twice.

"They called my agent," he said. "He's a guy from home. His whole office is two rooms."

"Maddox, this is..."

"I know."

"This is everything you wanted."

"I know what it is." He sat across from me and rubbed his jaw, and he did not look at me. "It's a thousand miles from here. You've got a scholarship that runs to May of next year. You're pregnant. Your doctor's here."

"So?"

"So I'll say no."

"You will not."

"Prescott."

"You will not say no." I put the paper down. "You've been skating since you were four. You told me that. Your mother drove you to the rink at five in the morning for eleven years."

"And I love hockey. I do. I love it less than I love you, and I can't have the one if it costs me the other."

His voice was low and steady, and I wanted to cry.

I thought about a small kitchen in a house that no longer existed, and a brother who had wanted to play college baseball, and a car that had never got where it was going.

Nobody had taken that from my brother on purpose.

This was a thing someone could still choose.

"Look at me," I said.

He did.

"You are going to take the contract. We're going to figure out the rest."

"How?"

"I don't know. I'll finish what I can online. I'll have a baby with a scholarship and a view of the mountains. We'll make it work."

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