The Fall: Colorado Coyotes #6

Chapter One 

Cam 

“Where do you want this one?” Dom asks me, holding a box so tall I can’t see his face.

“Wherever the label says,” I murmur absently for at least the thirtieth time since moving day started this morning.

“It says Assorted Dildos, but I wasn’t sure if you liked to diddle yourself exclusively in your bedroom.”

“What?” I lunge toward the box, my cheeks warm with embarrassment. 

Who wrote that on one of the moving boxes? My twin sons are smart and they love playing tricks on me, but surely they don’t know what a dildo is and how to spell it. They’re nine. That would be a huge mom fail.

I inspect the box, my future brother-in-law waiting patiently. There’s nothing written on it.

“Why are you like this?” I roll my eyes and shove his shoulder.

“If the box had a label that said which room it goes in, I’d put it there. I do have a few brain cells to work with.”

“You’re basically my third child. Put it in the kitchen.”

In the year my boys and I lived with Dom, my sister Tess and her two kids in Dom’s luxurious Denver house, I got to know Dom a lot better. Even when he annoys me, I love him to death. He’s so good to Tess. He’s good to all of us, but her especially. 

“Hey,” Tess says as she walks through the front door. “Unpacking all this will take forever, you know. It’s not too late for us to just move it all back and forget this whole thing.”

I smile at her as she passes me a sandwich wrapped in white paper, having just returned from taking my boys Sam and Tate and my niece Hannah out for a late lunch. Tess has fought me every step of the way on moving out of Dom’s house. Even Dom said we should stay another year so I could save more money. He never charged me any rent to stay at his house, and being there while I finished my degree and started my new job took a lot of financial pressure off of me.

It was time, though. Dom and Tess have only been together for a little over a year, and my nephew Zane will be seventeen soon. With him leaving soon for college, I want them to have time to become a foursome.

As much as I love my sister, who is my best friend, my goal, as we both struggled to get by while I went to school part time, was to be financially secure and independent. To show my sons that their mom can and always will take care of them. 

“It’s a solid idea, but I think we’ll stay,” I tell Tess. 

She sighs dramatically. “I guess the rest of us will have to move in here, then.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

My new home is a neat three-bedroom ranch. It doesn’t compare to Dom’s, but it’s mine, and I’m able to give my boys something they’ve always wanted but never had—their own bedrooms.

“Seriously, you okay?” Tess asks me.

I meet her gaze and smile. She knows me better than anyone, so she knows that while this move is a good thing overall, I’m still haunted by memories of the reason we moved into Dom’s house in the first place. A guy I dated for a couple of months, Jake, stalked me. It was the most terrifying and helpless-feeling experience of my life.

Jake is in prison now, but it’s still scary to be moving out of Dom’s house, which has a top-notch security system. And also...Dom. Even though, as a pro hockey player, he’s on the road a lot, he was the one who caught Jake when Jake was prowling around his house. 

I shove aside the unwanted thoughts, reminding myself I’ve moved on.

“Hey, pass me that one.”

My heart beats faster at the sound of the deep male voice as Dom’s teammates Rowan and Beck walk through the open front doorway.

Tess squeaks and practically runs toward the kitchen. She knows I have a thing for Rowan and she wants to give us a chance to talk alone. 

“Come on, Boni, let’s go play in my room,” my son Sam says as he leads Dom’s Great Dane into the house. The twins adore Boni, and Dom told them Boni could spend the first night in our new house with them.

“You’re supposed to be unpacking your room,” I remind my son. 

“I will.”

Rowan approaches me with a smile, carrying several stacked pizza boxes. “Hey, are you hungry?”

The chastising look I mean to give him probably looks more like an adoring gaze. “You didn’t have to do that. I was going to get pizza for you guys.”

“Beat you to it.” He winks. “You should take a break; you’ve been on your feet all day.”

“I’m going to.” I scan the dozens of packed moving boxes stacked in the living room, feeling overwhelmed. “Soon.”
“You can’t unpack all this in one day.”

I sigh and pull the ponytail holder out from my hair, running my hands through it. “I feel like I should at least work until I’m too exhausted to do any more.”

“Or.” He enunciates the word dramatically. “We could dig into this double pepperoni, double cheese and talk about our upcoming date.”

I can’t help grinning, feeling my cheeks flush. Rowan is tall, broad-shouldered, always smells good and he remembers my favorite kind of pizza, which I told him more than six months ago.

Feigning thoughtfulness, I put my thumb and index finger on my chin and lower my brows. “I don’t recall accepting a date with you.”

There’s a playful gleam in his hazel eyes. “Don’t even. I’ve waited patiently for a year. You’re all mine.”

 My heart skips a beat at the sound of him saying those words. After Jake was arrested, I resolved to not date anyone for at least a full year. It felt like torture sticking to it when Rowan first asked me out right after we met for the first time on Thanksgiving last year. But given my track record with choosing men, I knew it was the right thing to do for myself and my sons.

I wanted to finish school and focus on being a mom and settling into my new job. It was surprisingly freeing, never even considering men or their interest in me. However, I did feel tugs of loneliness at times when I saw Dom and Tess giving each other secret looks or being affectionate.

“Technically, there’s still a month to go,” I remind Rowan. “It’s October nineteenth.”

“Right, but we have to coordinate our schedules. And I need time to plan my outfit.”

I burst out laughing. The gray sweatpants and well-worn Navy Coyotes T-shirt he’s wearing are his usual style. He’s a casual dresser other than the suits he has to wear after games. 

Those damn well-cut suits have made me question my sanity every time I went out with Tess, Dom and his teammates after games. Women swarm around Rowan like bees on honey. I’ve been telling myself for the last eleven months that there was no way he’d be single and still interested in me after my dating ban ends.

“Are you trying to starve me?” Dom and Rowan’s teammate Sergei scowls as he approaches, my son Tate tucked beneath one of his massive arms like a football. 

“You had a six-egg omelet and eight pieces of bacon for breakfast, I think you’ll survive.” Rowan holds out the pizza boxes to him. “Now go eat your pizza and stop scaring the pretty woman.”

Sergei manages to wrap his free arm around the half dozen pizza boxes and carry them to the kitchen, Tate not making a sound. 

I get misty-eyed watching them go. “You guys are all so great. Helping us move and taking my boys to do things all the time.”

When Dom and Tess got together, it wasn’t just her and her kids they welcomed into the Coyotes family, but me and my boys, too. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. I was questioning myself in so many ways after what happened with Jake.

“Nah, I’m the only great one,” Rowan says. “Ignore the rest of those assholes.”

I laugh. “Seems rude to ignore people helping me move.”

“Nope. Just focus all your attention right here.” He makes a circular motion of his face and chest with his index finger.

Part of me wishes I could jump into his arms and do just that. But another part of me is apprehensive about going on a date again, even with someone I already know pretty well and like. I’m twenty-eight years old, and not once have I chosen a man who ended up being worth a shit. It was one thing when it only broke my heart, but now I have two little boys who are a big part of the equation.

“Why don’t we go focus some attention on that double pepperoni pizza?” I say, peeking inside the wrapper of the sandwich Tess brought me. “And I also have a turkey sub if that sounds good.”

Rowan wrinkles his nose. “Not when pizza’s an option.”

“Did you guys get the last of the stuff from Dom’s?” I ask as we walk toward the kitchen.

“Yep. Everything’s here.”

Dom generously hired movers to bring our furniture from his house to my new one. He and several of his teammates moved all the boxes. They did the same thing when Tess and I sold our house six months ago. Having Dom’s teammates around all the time is something I’ll miss, even though I know I’ll still see them sometimes.

“Are you trying to talk her out of this nonsense?” Tess asks Rowan when we walk into the kitchen.

She’s still stuck on not wanting me to move out. I know the full reality of it hasn’t set in with me yet because I’ve been so busy with the move. Tess and I have lived together for almost eight years. 

“Might be a little late for that.” Rowan opens pizza boxes until he finds the one he’s looking for.

“Cam, sit here.” Dom gets up from his seat at the table.

I wave a hand. “No, I’m good. Don’t get up.”

“Already did.”

Sergei stands up from his chair at the table, carrying his paper plate over to the bag I left on the kitchen counter for garbage. Tate is still tucked beneath his arm, which is surely cramping or something by now. Sergei has his arm around Tate’s waist, Tate’s legs hanging down in back. 

“Hey, Mom,” Tate says, taking a bite of the pizza in his hand.

“You’re supposed to be unpacking your room,” I remind him.

“That’s what we’re going to do now.”

Sergei turns, his trademark serious scowl in place, and heads toward the hallway that leads to Tate’s bedroom. Boni comes trotting into the kitchen and walks up to Tate, who slips him the rest of his piece of pizza.

I look around at the faces in my small, bright kitchen. Besides Tess, Dom, Rowan, Sergei and Beck, there’s also Ben and his wife Stella. Tess and I grew up in Southside Chicago, and we had very little extended family to speak of. I love that our kids now have so many surrogate aunts and uncles through the tight-knit team.

And as much as I like Rowan, which is a lot, there’s a voice in my head telling me not to mess that up for my boys by dating one of Dom’s teammates. 

The past year has been smooth and happy. Zero heartbreak. Why mess with such a good thing?