50. Violet

Chapter 50

Violet

“Look, here comes Daddy!”

Jake sits up straighter in his seat as he points at the ice. Sawyer comes gliding across it, beaming through his helmet shield, and slides to a stop on the other side of the glass. I scoop Jake up into my arms and hurry to the glass to meet him before the game starts. The Aces just finished their warmup, so he doesn’t have much time.

Sawyer kisses his glove and places it against the glass when we get there. Giggling, Jake returns the favor, slamming his palm against it with a loud thwack.

“Nice jersey,” Sawyer says through the glass, his gaze heating as it settles on me. “No offense to your brother or anything, but I think my number looks much better on you.”

My heart flutters. “Can’t say I disagree.”

“And we match!” Jake adds, pulling his jersey away from his chest to show it off.

“Just as you should. Anyway, I’d better get out of here before the game starts.”

“Good luck!” Jake and I say at the same time, and Jake giggles.

Sawyer holds his hand up again and tugs up the sleeve of his jersey. He’s wearing the hair tie I gave him for good luck a while back. I didn’t even know he kept it, but I love that he did and that he’s wearing it now.

He grins at me. “I’ve got all the luck I need.”

“I forgot I gave you that,” I tell him, nodding at the hair tie.

His smiles warms. “Well, I didn’t. I’ve worn it during every single game since you did. I told you. It’s my good luck. And I like having a reminder of you on the ice with me all the time.”

I swallow past the sudden lump in my throat, and he holds my gaze for a moment before the screech of a ref’s whistle tears his attention away from me. The ref waves him off the ice, but before he goes, Sawyer turns back to me and puts his hand on the glass one last time.

“I love you,” he mouths.

“Love you too,” I mouth back and rest my hand on the glass against his.

“Go get ’em, Daddy!” Jake calls, and Sawyer grins at him before he turns and skates away.

I carry Jake back to our seats and get us settled in. He insisted on getting a foam finger on our way into the arena, and I couldn’t tell him no, so I help him get it back on his little hand and can’t help laughing when he starts waving it over his head. It’s almost as big as he is.

It’s not hard to believe the Aces made it to the playoffs this year—they’ve been playing amazingly—but it’s kind of wild that the season is almost over already. It feels like it just started.

But when the lights dim and the announcer starts introducing the team, I scream at the top of my lungs along with Jake. And by the time the Aces shutter their opponents 4-0, I’ve been screaming so much that my voice is hoarse. Sawyer takes a victory lap with the rest of his team, all of them pumping their sticks in the air, and when he spots me, he beams.

Jake and I hurry to the family and friends lounge after the game to meet the guys after they get cleaned up. They strut into the room one-by-one, clearly feeling themselves after such a blowout win. Sawyer approaches Jake and me with a playful grin, then scoops Jake up in his arms and shakes him like a pom-pom until he giggles.

“How about your old man, huh?” he asks Jake over his giggles, and I can’t help laughing along with the kid as Sawyer lowers him and props him on his hip, then reaches to pull me in for a three-way hug. We squeeze Jake tight, and my heart floods with happiness as I rest my head on Sawyer’s sturdy shoulder. When my gaze drifts up, my eyes meet Reese’s. He’s standing across the room watching us, and he smiles and nods approvingly at me.

It took a while, but Reese has come around to Sawyer and I being together, just like I knew he would. Sawyer treats me like a queen, and Reese knows it—especially after he found out Sawyer bought a house on my word alone.

“You ready to get out of here?” Sawyer asks as he pulls away.

“I want to stay!” Jake insists, waving his foam finger.

“I don’t think so, buddy. It’s a school night, and it’s already almost past your bedtime,” Sawyer says, tugging the foam finger off Jake’s hand.

“Do I have to go to school tomorrow?” Jake whines, fixing me with his puppy dog eyes as if he thinks I’m going to overrule his dad while he stretches and reaches for the foam finger that Sawyer is dangling over his head.

“Yes, you do,” I tell him and tap his nose affectionately. He frowns and slumps against Sawyer’s shoulder, looking defeated. “But I’ll pick you up tomorrow and we can do something fun. How does that sound?”

“Yeah!”

“But that’s only if you get to bed on time tonight and behave tomorrow,” Sawyer adds, and Jake nods emphatically.

“I will, I promise!”

“Alright, then let’s get this show on the road,” Sawyer says and gives Jake back his foam finger.

The little boy puts it on in a hurry and the two of them start making the rounds so they can say goodbye to the rest of the team and their families. Everyone knows it’s a school night so none of them give Sawyer a hard time for ducking out early.

Jake hums the Aces theme song and waves his giant finger all the way back to the car and doesn’t stop even when Sawyer gets him buckled up in his booster seat. He closes the door softly and turns to me. “He’s going to pass out back there before we leave the parking lot, watch.”

I chuckle because I don’t doubt him, then climb into the passenger seat. Jake’s still singing in the back, his foam finger flashing in the rearview mirror as he waves it. But his energy wanes as we hit the road, and after about ten minutes, he’s out just like Sawyer said. His head slumps against the window, bobbing with every little bump in the road.

Sawyer smiles at me and reaches for my hand. “Told you,” he whispers and links his fingers with mine, then rests them both on my leg. We drive the rest of the way to our new house on the north side of town quietly, so we don’t wake Jake up, but like he’s got some superhuman sense for it, he jolts awake as soon as we pull in the driveway about twenty minutes later.

Sawyer carries him inside and I follow them to Jake’s room to tell him goodnight, but Jake insists on his dad reading him a bedtime story, so Sawyer gives in. I head back to the living room and sit to wait for Sawyer on the couch, listening to his soft words drift down the hall and admiring the work I’ve done in the house. Sawyer insisted that I decorate it exactly the way I wanted it so it can be our house in every way, so that’s what I’ve done.

It feels like home . And it’s been years since I’ve been able to say something like that.

I hear Sawyer coming down the hall a few minutes later, but rather than joining me, he strides into the kitchen. He must be getting Jake some water or something.

My hands move automatically to my hair to start twisting it into a bun while I wait, which is always a bit of a struggle. But Sawyer reappears a few minutes later carrying two bowls and brings one over to me—just like we used to do every night when I was still nannying.

“It’s your favorite, cornflakes and ice cream,” he says as he hands me one of the bowls.

“Aw, thanks.” I drop my hair to take a bite and groan at how good it is while Sawyer sits down next to me.

“Here, let me help.” He sets his bowl down on the coffee table in front of us and leans over to take my hair in both hands. I keep snacking on the ice cream while he works.

I’m expecting the final result to be a mess, but when he makes a satisfied noise and leans back, I glance at my reflection on the darkened TV screen. My brows shoot up in surprise at how perfectly smooth my hair is.

“Wow, this is actually… really good?” I say as I run my hand over the bun.

Sawyer flushes and shrugs.

“I watched a bunch of YouTube videos to learn how to do a bun for your hair type,” he says sheepishly, and my heart aches with how much I love him. I can’t imagine another man in my life ever doing something like that—and luckily for me, I don’t ever have to.

“So, how was your day?” Sawyer asks as he reaches for his bowl and scoops up a healthy spoonful of the ice cream. “We haven’t really had the chance to catch up today.”

“Things with the new office are still a little murky, but they’re starting to take shape. Michelle is pretty confident we’ll be able to formally open sometime in the next few months, but she doesn’t mind me working from home until then.”

“That’s good news. So I take it the contractor I recommended turned out to be okay?”

“Yeah, I think the company is moving forward with him. Thanks again for making that connection, by the way.” Sawyer clinks his bowl against mine.

“We’re a team now, remember? If there’s anything I can do to help, I want to do it.”

He isn’t kidding, either. Since we started this satellite office venture, he’s been my biggest cheerleader, and he hasn’t missed an opportunity to offer his help. He hasn’t missed an opportunity to tell anyone who will listen how amazing he thinks I am, either—not that I’m complaining.

I finish my ice cream and set the bowl on the coffee table to crawl onto Sawyer’s lap. He laughs and rests his bowl on the armrest beside him. I steal a kiss from him and his body responds immediately.

“You played so amazingly tonight,” I say softly, and his eyes twinkle as he pecks another kiss on my lips.

“Well, there was this really beautiful woman in the crowd I was trying to impress.”

I grin at him, linking my arms around his neck. “It worked.”

Our lips lock, and Sawyer groans into my mouth as his cock stiffens between us.

“Fuck, I need to be inside you,” he groans when we part, his voice rough and low.

Without thinking twice, I move his bowl to the table and stand to shuck my pants. He hurries to tug his down as well, and I sit back down in his lap, easing his cock and all its piercings into me.

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the incredible way it feels when he stretches and fills me like this, no matter how many times we do it. It’s always shocking in the best way, and this time is no different. My breath hitches in my lungs with every inch of him I take, the last of it coming out in a final sigh of pleasure as the base of his cock meets me.

Sawyer peels my shirt off over my head, so I tear his off too, desperate to bring our bodies closer together. When we’re fully naked with each other, he cups my face in both of his hands. Our eyes lock, and I can practically hear the connection crackling between us. He’s staring into me in the most perfect, intimate way, like he can see my soul. I’ve never let myself be this vulnerable with anyone before, but it feels right.

Everything with Sawyer feels right.

I come just from the intimacy, my forehead resting against Sawyer’s as I grind up and down on him to work myself through it. He clutches my hips, reaching for my lips with his, and I kiss him just to keep the sound of my voice down so I don’t wake up Jake. My body shudders out the last of its release and Sawyer grunts, bucking up into me as he comes too, flooding me.

My head drifts to Sawyer’s shoulder when it’s over, and we stay that way with him still inside me, our chests rising and falling rapidly as we try to catch our breath, until Sawyer chuckles. I sit up to look him in the eye.

“What?”

“I just can’t believe all of this is real. That you’re here, and that we’re doing this. I haven’t stopped feeling that way. There wasn’t a single part of me that saw you coming, but I honestly believe every little plan I’d ever made for myself went right out the window the day I walked in on you naked and singing.”

He slides his fingers through my hair and palms the back of my head, staring at me with adoration in his eyes.

“And when I think about all the things that had to fall perfectly in place for that meeting to happen when and where it did, it blows me away,” he murmurs. “If I hadn’t taken Jake to Reese’s place, and if he hadn’t left Chewy there…”

“And if I hadn’t had to leave Chicago abruptly right when I did,” I add, and he nods, his eyes warm.

“Exactly. All these things fell right into place. And as much as I don’t want to give him the credit for it, your brother played a big role in all of this. If he hadn’t suggested the crazy idea of you nannying for me, we probably wouldn’t be here together right now.”

I guess I hadn’t thought about it like that before, but now that Sawyer has laid it all out, I see how right he is. There were so many points where things could’ve gone totally differently, and in a weird way, if it weren’t for things going horribly wrong for me with Elijah in Chicago, it’s possible Sawyer and I never would’ve crossed paths again.

But we did, and now our paths are inseparable.

“And that’s why I want everything with you,” Sawyer adds with a fierce intensity in his eyes. “A family, a future, an entire fucking life.”

Tears spring to my eyes, but he reaches up to wipe them away with his thumbs.

“I mean it,” he continues. “I’m not really sure how it’s possible, but every second I spend with you, things just keep getting better. You’re the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about before I go to sleep at night.”

I nod through the sting in my eyes and throat because he’s describing exactly the way I feel about him.

“When you moved out to California, I felt like I’d lost a limb or something,” he says in a low voice. “I could technically survive without it, but I didn’t feel whole anymore. You’re everything to me, Violet. Everything. I don’t know how I ever lived without you before. Fuck, I wasn’t really living at all back then. And I won’t live without you ever again.”

“No, you won’t,” I tell him firmly, my voice suddenly rushing back to me. “Because I can’t live without you either. I learned that the hard way out in California. No matter what I did or how hard I tried, that apartment always felt so damn empty. I kept looking for you, turning around and expecting you to be there. But you weren’t, and that was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to live with.”

“It’ll never happen again. I promise you that,” he insists, and pulls my head toward his to kiss me tenderly, his lips barely brushing against mine at first. But passion overtakes him, and his tongue parts my lips to give me the kind of deep kiss that says everything I need to know about how he feels about me.

When he pulls back, he holds my gaze with something burning in his eyes. “Will you marry me?” My breath catches in my throat. I can hardly believe what he just asked me. “I’ve been trying to find the right time to ask, the perfect moment. But nothing has seemed quite as perfect as this moment, in this house I want to share with you.”

I swallow. “Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Sawyer kisses me hard, sealing the promise between us. He tries to reach for his pants, but with me still in his lap, he can’t quite get there.

“Will you help me?” he asks, wiggling his fingers toward his pants on the floor behind us. I laugh and scoop them up off the floor by one pant leg with him holding me up for support, then drop them on his chest. “Thanks.”

I watch him rummage in the pockets, searching for something. The first pocket doesn’t turn up what he’s looking for, so he switches to the other and his brows raise when he finds it. He pulls out a small jewelry box, and my throat seals shut. I’ve already told him I’d marry him, but seeing him holding a ring makes it feel so much more real.

He shrugs. “I’ve been carrying it around for weeks, just waiting for the right time, like I said.”

It touches me to know that he’s been working on this for so long, and that he’s known he wanted to pop the question. He opens the dark blue velvet box and reaches for my hand, then pulls the ring out and slips it onto my finger. It fits perfectly.

I gaze down at the brilliant, sparkling diamond shining back at me. It’s so beautiful that it takes my breath away, and my heart feels so full with love for him that it could burst. Sawyer reaches for my chin and tips it up to bring my gaze back to his.

“I can’t do it until the season ends, but as soon as it’s over, I’m going to get my vasectomy reversed.”

My eyes widen. “Really?”

He nods seriously. “I told you I want everything with you, and I meant it. I want this too. I know you want kids, and I want to have more with you.”

My heart swells, and I throw myself at him to kiss him again, losing myself in it. I feel like I’m in some sort of amazing dream, and I don’t ever want it to end. I cling to him, my body vibrating with love, and Sawyer’s cock swelling inside me again convinces me that all of this is real, and that he’s not going anywhere—now or ever.

He’s mine.