Chapter 14

Three days later,Delia stepped off the plane to a sleepy airport. Mary was right that flying in the morning made for less ruckus, but she abhorred dragging herself out of bed at four thirty in the morning. Even with a hat and glasses, their off-time strategy hadn"t saved her from being recognized—proof that her online presence was exponentially growing. At least she had her new security detail.

Their chaperone in Toronto had been Bryce—basically a member of the King's Guard. No smiles. All efficiency. He didn"t say much in the airport and didn"t accompany them on the flight. The company Mary had hired said another security guard would meet them on this end, and they'd kept their promise. A young Vin Diesel look-alike had been waiting for them at the gate and was trailing the two of them to baggage claim.

Delia pulled out her phone and kept her head down with her hat lowered over her eyes. Her hair was pulled back into a bun at the base of her neck to make her even less recognizable.

Did you land safely?

Any bumps? I know bumps make you nervous.

Did security show?

Delia grinned at the messages from her mom. She answered them, then turned to Mary. "Where are we staying?"

Mary grinned. "You"ll see."

Delia rolled her eyes. "Why are you and Tony being so cryptic? It"s not like I"m going to tell people where we"re holing up for the month."

"It"s just more fun to make it a surprise."

"For it to be a surprise, I"d need to know something about this city." Delia stopped at their assigned luggage carousel, her mind spinning. Had they booked an apartment? That Airbnb? Mary wouldn"t be pretending this was going to be a good surprise if it was a nasty extended-stay hotel.

Or would she? Delia imagined dirty shag carpet, cigarette burns on the sheets, and bars over the windows. They"d had to stay in one of those rooms once when she was first starting out. Vancouver had not been kind to them that trip. It would be like Mary to bring something like that back for nostalgia's sake. Delia shuddered.

"I"m sorry to bother you, but my daughter is positive you"re a famous singer." A woman with a blonde bob tucked behind her ears stood next to them, gripping the hand of a little girl who looked to be about ten.

Delia smiled down at her daughter. "What kind of songs do you think I sing?" The little girl pulled her hand free and started listing them off, beginning with her first album and moving on to the songs on her most recent one, then jumping into the singles she"d played live but hadn"t officially released yet. Delia laughed. "That"s impressive. What"s your name?"

The little girl bounced on her heels. "Norah. Can I get a picture?" Her smile was contagious, and Delia nodded without hesitation. She crouched down and put an arm around Norah as her mom stepped back and held up her phone.

"Thank you so much. I love your music. I love your shows." Norah stepped back and snatched the phone from her mom, swiping to see the photos.

Her mom stepped forward. "Thank you so much. She has ADHD, and music is the only thing that helps her get her homework done."

Delia"s heart squeezed. "You have ADHD, Norah? So do I!"

Norah"s eyes lit up. "You do?"

Delia nodded. "Yep. I take medication for it sometimes, except when I"m writing or performing. Then I have to use my superpower."

Norah"s little brow creased. "I don"t know what medication would feel like."

Her mom sighed. "She doesn"t want to feel like there"s something wrong with her."

"Oh I get that. At least you have the option. When I was growing up, everyone told me my head was in the clouds, and I should figure out how to pay better attention."

Norah's jaw dropped. "My teachers tell me that all the time."

Delia crouched back down to look at Norah eye to eye. "Our brains are special. I used to wish I was like everyone else, but now I"m grateful I"m not."

There was so much she wanted to tell Norah. That school was probably going to suck for a while longer. That even when she got out of school, she was still going to have to do things that felt like pulling teeth, and she'd mess it up plenty of times before she got it right. That the world was never going to be perfectly built for people who wanted to stay up until two in the morning and sleep until noon, but that it got easier to adjust as you got older. That her creativity was so much more expansive than she knew, and as she scratched away those layers of expectation shellacked onto her through her teenage years, she'd continued to discover new ways she didn"t fit and new ways she did.

Since her bags were already dumping onto the carousel, she settled on, "Find what your brain loves, and do it as much as you can. Don"t worry if you get sick of it and move on to something else. It"s not quitting, it"s just opening a new chapter."

Norah nodded, absorbing every word like an acoustic panel. Delia didn"t know if any of that advice would"ve been helpful for her at that age when she was struggling to make sense of the world around her. At least it could"ve given her hope that there was something to look forward to. The mother-daughter pair thanked her again and walked away. Delia scanned for Norah's father, but they looked to be alone. Maybe he was at home waiting for them. Delia chose that narrative as she waved and walked back to help Mary with the bags.

Mary grabbed a luggage cart, and they worked together to load their eight bags onto the metal rails, then walked with their guard, Alvin—Mary had gotten his name while she'd been talking to her young fan—to the parking garage. The cold air snapped against Delia"s lungs. It had been frigid in Toronto, but that was next-level arctic.

"When is it spring here?" Delia zipped up her coat.

Alvin chuckled. "On and off between now and July."

Mary laughed at the expression on Delia"s face. "It"s next to the mountains, which means bipolar weather. It"s fun."

"I have enough uncertainty in my life, thank you very much."

Alvin led them to a black SUV and opened the back hatch. He loaded their bags in, and Delia took the cart back. She jogged, hoping that would get her blood pumping.

"You can just leave it on the curb!" Mary called out, but Delia would do no such thing. She'd worked at a grocery store where people left their carts strewn across the parking lot and it had been the worst part of her shift to gather them up. Even the sound of the luggage cart knocking into the others made her wince.

She turned back to the car, and something shiny caught her eye. Delia bent down and picked up a scuffed toonie. She jogged to Mary's window and held it up like she'd just won the lottery.

Mary gave her a look as she opened the door. "Seriously? It's disgusting."

Delia rubbed it on her jeans. "That"s a coffee, my friend."

Mary slid over in the back seat for Delia to squish in. "At some point, you"re going to be less cheap, right?"

"Like when I"m finally getting royalty checks?" Delia fastened her seatbelt. "Yeah, I doubt it." Mary snorted, and she held out her hands in defence. "I hate wasting things. There were years when we barely had enough for two meals a day. If I didn"t eat every scrap of food at school lunch, I was going to be hungry until six o"clock. Unless I wanted to eat a plain baguette for an after-school snack. Which I did on multiple occasions."

Mary took off her coat and straightened her hair. "You"re as bad as your mom. I don"t think she"s going to quit her jobs, even if you are bringing in money."

Delia scoffed. "She will. Once she sees we have enough savings."

"She won"t know what to do with herself."

"I"ll force her to take a spa day. She"ll get addicted and never look back." Delia doubted her mother's body would let her work much longer, even if she wanted to. She hoped it wouldn't have to get to that point.

Mary chortled. "I"ll believe that when I see it."

They wound through the airport streets and into the city. Though she"d been to Calgary plenty of times, it was still shocking how much it didn"t feel like a big city. There was one small plot of high rises off in the distance, and the rest of the buildings were suburbs popping up out of prairie grass—brown, dead prairie grass. She doubted they'd be there long enough for her to see it turn green.

"Where are we staying?" Delia asked, and Mary shot her a look.

"I"m never going to tell you now. You know that, right?"

Delia slumped back, recognizing a lost cause when she saw one. She pulled out her phone, and her heart started to thump. She hadn"t texted Jack since the other night after the show. Tony said he knew when she was coming in and that he was on hold for a planning meeting. Since she would be local, Tony wanted to get every one of their outings and public appearances on the books so he and the Blizzard"s head of marketing could properly amplify them.

It felt clinical, but that was a good thing. The night before, her mom had caught her daydreaming twice over dinner. She"d picked up Mediterranean food and they"d sat together in the living room and talked for an hour or so. Twice during dinner Delia had let her mind wander off, and both times it landed on the same subject: Jack. The hotel room. Bond movies. Pizza.

It had to be because anytime she went online, she saw pictures of him or pictures of herself next to him. Her brain was being inundated. Plus, the woman in those pictures seemed like a figment of the media"s imagination, and her brain fixated on dissonance. Like obsessing over it would force it to make sense, which it hadn't. She existed here in joggers, and a hat pulled low while that girl was living a fairytale romance.

Thatgirl was far more exciting, but the story was already scripted. She knew the ending, and it wasn"t a happily ever after. It was a very strategic, very public break up. It was moving back to Toronto and releasing her new album. It was never talking to Jack Harrison again after the playoffs.

"Holy shit." Mary shoved her face up to the window, and Delia dropped from her thoughts, landing back on the seat next to her.

"What?" She shoved closer to try and glimpse whatever had caught Mary"s attention.

"I was not expecting . . . that." Mary sat back, giving Delia a clear view, and her jaw dropped.

"Is that—?" She couldn"t finish the sentence. How could she describe what was waiting for them on the sidewalk as Alvin pulled their SUV up to the curb?

If she had a way with words that weren"t song lyrics, she would"ve described it as overwhelming masculinity. The hockey player calendar every Canadian woman didn"t know they needed. Jack stood on the sidewalk with at least ten other men with broad shoulders and all the athletic hotness. Every single one of them, whether they wore joggers and long-sleeve T-shirts or baggy jeans slung low on their hips with toques and puffy vests, looked like they belonged in a Zack Prior cologne ad.

"Was this the surprise? That we"re moving in with Jack and all his friends, because I don"t think I"ll be able to think straight with all of this happening. If they"re walking around in boxers every morning . . ."

Mary laughed out loud. "Reign it in, Melise. I had no idea these guys were going to be here."

"Did I manifest this? All of my complaining about no decent guys in Toronto, and then we move to Calgary where it"s dripping with testosterone-riddled hot hockey players?" Delia scanned the line, but her eyes kept slipping back to Jack. This was worse than shag carpet.

She sighed and dramatically fanned herself.

Mary laughed out loud. "This was the thing that broke you? You talked with effing Zack Prior last week, and now you"ve devolved into a cat in heat?"

"Zack Prior was kind of a douchebag." Delia's hand slipped as the car pulled to a stop, and she scrambled back to her middle seat, hoping Jack hadn't seen her cheek pressed against the glass. "I don"t even know what to do with this."

"This wasn"t my surprise, I?—"

"My face is on fire, Mary. Jack's arm around my shoulders on the way into the studio is the most action I've gotten in—I don't even know! I can't feel my toes. Jack is going to see my splotchy skin!"

Mary grinned like the Grinch. "Are you going to tell him that you"re imagining tripping and falling into a pile of sweaty hockey players?"

"I'm serious!" Delia smacked her shoulder just as Alvin opened the back hatch. The guys on the sidewalk moved to the back of the car, and Delia snapped her mouth shut. Holy shit was right. In less than a minute, all their bags were out of the trunk, the backseat was clicked back up, and Delia and Mary were standing on the sidewalk watching a line of men walk their bags into an adorable brick house.

"I think I"ve landed in someone else"s erotic fantasy," Delia whispered.

"Not yours?"

"My imagination is not this good."

Mary linked arms with her and pulled her up the walkway. "This is the surprise, by the way." She gestured at the house. "Tony reached out to Jack to see if he had any recommendations for places to stay. Turns out his teammate Tyler and his fiancee Emma restore historic properties in the city. This is one of the first ones they completed, and they offered to rent the whole thing to us."

"How many rooms?"

"There are only four, so Alvin will have one, you and I will have ours, and then . . . well, it"s totally up to you, but the other one could be for Jack. If you two thought it would be convenient to be in the same place."

Convenient.Delia blinked. "But Jack has a place."

Mary nodded. "Right, so probably unnecessary. But it"s available for whatever. Maybe your mom could come out and visit. More importantly, there won"t be random people staying here and realizing they"re next door to Delia Melise."

Delia and Mary walked into the building, and she wondered if she had secretly been submitted for an episode of Property Virgins. She half expected someone to jump out with confetti. That or all the players to start stripping. Instead, Jack walked toward her with a man who had a perfectly straight nose and a smile too pretty to belong to a hockey player.

"Hey." Jack shoved his hands in his pockets, and Delia"s throat swelled like she"d just gulped down boiling hot tea. "This is Tyler. He owns the place."

Delia nodded, her hands clamped around the straps of her backpack. Her voice came out like she was in the middle of being strangled. "Hey. Thank you so much for letting us stay here."

Tyler nodded. "Emma will be here later, she had a shoot she couldn"t get out of."

Delia wondered what kind of shoot but couldn't find her way to words with the thousand other questions bouncing around her head like ping-pong balls.

Jack motioned to the other players, holding their bags. "Want to tell us where to take these?"

"Oh, right. Yes. The ones with the ribbons are mine, all the others are Mary"s."

Jack nodded and passed along the instructions. The guys hoisted their bags up the stairs like they were white-gloved servants from the Swan Princess. Delia watched in awe until she realized Jack was still standing next to her. And suddenly, the words coalesced. "What just happened?"

Jack grinned. "You got Snowballed." Delia pursed her lips, and Jack ran a hand over his face. "That didn"t come out right."

Delia breathed a laugh. "I mean, depends on your definition of ‘right.'"

Jack chuckled. "These are all my teammates from the Snowballs."

"I got that much. But don"t they have better things to do on a Friday?"

He shrugged. "They do, but I told them you were coming in, and after Mary signed the contract with Tyler, they were all magically available." He leaned in. "I think they just wanted to see you in person."

She blushed. "They don"t know . . ."

He shook his head. "My sister Clara and her husband are the only people who know about the contract. I signed the nondisclosure, remember?"

"Sure. Of course." Delia glanced around at the cozy living room. The window that let streams of light into a white-washed kitchen with a chrome hood over a gas stove. One by one, players made their way back down the stairs. They smiled at her. Raised eyebrows at Jack.

"You bring things to move in, too?" a clean-cut guy wearing a puffy vest asked, clapping his hands on Jack"s shoulders.

Jack shook his head. "No, I?—"

The player held up his hands. "Sorry, no pressure. You"ve only been dating for what, a couple of weeks? I didn"t mean to make it weird."

Jack turned to Delia. "This is Curtis. He"s been married for fifteen years and has four kids. He"s always trying to shove us to the altar."

Curtis scoffed. "It"s not my fault you all have an aversion to healthy relationships."

"Leave me out of that!" Tyler called from behind the stairs. He pulled a box from the storage closet, then grabbed a space heater from the back and shoved the box back in.

A player with wavy blond hair and a tattoo peeking out from the underside of his shirt sleeve strode toward them. More stories. Delia glanced at Jack's arm, but it was covered.

Jack pointed. "This is Brett."

"Hi, Brett." Delia put out a hand, and he shook it. "What do you do?"

"Construction."

"He"s a general contractor and project manager for a bunch of corporate and residential stuff around the city," Jack clarified.

Delia grinned. "Impressive."

Brett shook his head. "Not as impressive as this guy. He"s living the dream."

Jack"s eyes darkened, and Delia slingshotted back to their conversation that night over tacos. The guilt over his success. The loneliness he'd gotten so practised at hiding.

Every teammate there was proud of him—clearly, they were invested in his life outside of hockey. But Delia knew from personal experience that it didn"t matter how much people wanted to be involved in your life if you were intent on shutting them out.

"He definitely is. We both are." Delia smiled at Jack, hoping he caught what she was throwing. They might only be connected by digital signatures, but he didn"t have to be alone in this. They could be friends, couldn"t they? Maybe they already were. The idea made her insides fizz. "Why don"t you introduce me to the rest of the team, and then I"ll go unpack."

Jack gave a silent smile of thanks, and the understanding in his eyes gave her more pleasure than it should have. He led her around the room and introduced her to the other men coming down the stairs. Ryan, with the man bun and a daughter who was definitely going to kill him when she got home from school and found out he"d met Delia Melise without her—Delia assured him she"d be happy to take a picture another time. Mike, with the long braid down his back. André, who waved with a cigarette in his hand from the front porch. Country, who she might"ve grinned a bit too widely at when she was introduced, and Jack might"ve noticed. She met Sean, their captain, Steve, Suraj, and Darcy. Not Rob because he was a social studies teacher and had a student competition he couldn't get out of, and not Fly because he"d aged out of the team last year, and Jack had taken his place.

She loved that they mentioned their teammates who were missing. Like they were still a part of the team. Delia, on the other hand, forgot almost all of their names within ten minutes of walking up the stairs and then decided she was a terrible person. She'd need to study up online in her downtime so she didn't seem like Katie Mackey the next time she was with the team.

Delia slumped onto her bed and stared at her suitcases neatly stacked against the wall. The room was beautiful. A long window stretched across the far wall, bathing what looked to be original, restored hardwood in golden afternoon light. The smell of aged wood and the subtle scent of lavender from a bag of potpourri on the dresser was dreamy, just like the four-poster bed crafted from dark, polished walnut. The quilt was soft under her fingertips.

Delia stood and perused the rest of her new living space. There was a cozy reading nook featuring a vintage armchair upholstered in soft, emerald velvet. A simple glass table held a stack of books and a brass lamp. She already knew her guitar would sit there. That thought gave her a momentary panic attack before she remembered that she"d seen the case downstairs next to her backpack. She"d go down and drag it upstairs later.

The frames on the walls held pressed flowers and mountain watercolours. Delia trailed her fingers along the thick door trim as she walked into her private bath and gasped. There was an actual clawfoot tub. The fixtures were brass, and there was a full oval curtain rod to turn the tub into a shower, though Delia doubted she"d use that. Her mother had the only tub in their house, and while she knew she was welcome to use it, she"d never actually soaked there.

This was incredible. She hadn"t been thrilled about moving away from Toronto for a month, even though it did mean a much-anticipated collaboration and plenty of media coverage. She liked her life at home, and she hadn"t ever spent more than ten days away from her mother, which, at twenty-five, sounded a bit pathetic.

It wasn"t, though. They"d only had each other since she was seven years old, and it wasn"t stupid to love someone, especially when she had so few someones in her life to love.

But this. She stared again at the tub. This would be an actual vacation. Something that wouldn"t feel like much of a sacrifice, especially if she could convince her mom to come out for a bit. A fat royalty check would do half the convincing.

Delia couldn"t keep the smile off her face as she waltzed back into the bedroom and tipped her largest suitcase onto the floorboards. She flipped open the top and piled her clothes onto the bed. Underwear. Bras. And not just the practical ones. She"d debated when she"d been packing at home but had ultimately decided to bring most of what she owned in that regard. Sports bras. Lace numbers.

Her mind landed back at Jack without permission. How she'd stayed in his hotel room instead of going with Mary. How she was still a little turned on after seeing him standing in front of the house . . .

Delia"s head snapped up when a floorboard creaked. A black lace bra was looped over her fingers. And Jack was leaning against the doorframe.