The Hockey Star's Forgotten Baby Mama novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: The Fire Escape

I didn't say anything back.

I walked around the counter.

He straightened up off it, slowly.

I stopped close enough to feel the heat off him.

"Say it again," I said.

"I've been in love with you since the fire escape."

"The other part."

"It was always you."

I took his face in my wet hands and kissed him.

He made a sound against my mouth.

For one second he didn't move at all.

Then his hands came up, one in my hair and one flat on my back.

He kissed me.

It wasn't careful.

It wasn't the kiss of a man asking permission.

It was hungry and deep and a little desperate, and I gave it back exactly as hard.

My back hit the steel counter.

He lifted me onto it without breaking the kiss.

My knees opened around his hips because they wanted to.

He tasted like the cornbread he'd stolen off the line.

His hand slid under my fleece and found bare skin at my waist, and stopped there, spread wide and warm.

I pulled his hoodie up by the hem.

He broke away, breathing hard, his forehead against mine.

"Not here," he said. "Not in your kitchen. Not with a camera over the dock door."

"There's no camera in the kitchen."

"Leighton, there's a camera everywhere your father owns."

He was right. I hated that he was right.

"My place is ten minutes," he said. "Your place has Stevie and a five-year-old with a label maker."

"She's four."

"She's four for six more weeks. Come home with me."

I looked at him.

His hair was wrecked from my hands.

His mouth was red.

He was waiting again. He was always waiting.

"Okay," I said. "Yes."

His apartment was on the top floor of an old brick warehouse by the river.

Big black windows. Exposed pipes. A couch, a TV and no food in the fridge except mustard and a single sad lemon.

"You eat like a raccoon," I said.

"I eat at work. My nutritionist feeds me."

Outside the bedroom window was an iron fire escape, slick with January rain.

I stood in front of it and didn't say anything.

He came up behind me.

"I rented it because of that," he said quietly. "In August. Before I knew you were here. I saw it and signed the lease the same day."

"That's insane."

"I know."

I opened the window.

The cold came in. So did the sound of the river.

I climbed out onto the iron grate in my socks.

He followed me, because of course he did.

The lights of the bridges smeared gold on the black water.

The rain had stopped. Everything dripped.

I turned around with my back to the rail.

"This doesn't mean I've forgiven everything," I said. "I want that on the record."

"Okay."

"It doesn't mean you get a key. Or a toothbrush. Or a say."

"Okay."

"It means tonight. It means I want you, and I'm a grown woman, and I'm allowed."

He came closer. One step. Then another, until there was no room left.

"Tell me what you want," he said against my ear. "Out loud. I'm not guessing with you. Not ever again."

I put my hands on his chest, under his hoodie, and felt his heart slam.

"I want you to take me to bed," I said. "I want all of it. I want you to remember my name this time."

"Leighton," he said.

He kissed my jaw.

"Leighton."

He kissed my throat, below my ear, where my pulse was going wild.

"Leighton Vanderhoff."

I pulled him back through the window by his hoodie.

I pulled him through the window and he came, hands catching my hips as my back hit the edge of the bed frame.

He kissed me again, slower now, like he was relearning the shape of my mouth.

I shoved his hoodie up and he let me, arms lifting, and it hit the floor.

The scar through his eyebrow was right there, the one I memorized five years ago in a hotel room while he slept.

I touched it with my thumb.

"Lee," he said.

"Leighton."

He went still.

"Leighton," he repeated, low, like a correction he wanted to earn.

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