37. Nelly

Chapter 37

Nelly

“ I didn’t know you liked Whoppers,” I said, my brow furrowing as I looked down at Matty after he’d loudly proclaimed his order to the man behind the concession stand: one juice box and a pack of Whoppers. “You didn’t get them at the last game.”

“The last game wasn’t playoffs,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“What do you mean? Why does that matter?”

“They’re a good luck treat!” he chirped, and I furrowed my brow, turning my attention from him and leaning over the counter. “Any chance I can check the allergens on the box?”

“Sure,” the man said, shrugging his lanky shoulder beneath the oversized Atlanta Fire jersey. He reached under the counter and pulled out a box, turning it over to the back before passing it to me.

I skimmed it, making absolutely sure that there weren’t peanuts in the ingredients, but I felt the stares from the people waiting behind me like daggers in my back. “All right, two packs of those, a juice box, and a Diet Coke. ”

“Get another one for Daddy,” Matty added, pulling at my jersey insistently. “For after the game.”

“All right, all right,” I chuckled. “Sorry, three packs of Whoppers.”

“Anything else?” he asked, eying me warily as his hand hovered over the touch screen.

“No, that’s it.”

He didn’t say a word, but the total flashed up on the card reader in front of me, and I tapped Seb’s card before shoving it back into my wallet. I grabbed our snacks and our drinks, throwing them into the fabric backpack I’d brought with us, and hoisted Matty up onto my hip so I wouldn’t lose him in the crowd of people.

Intermission still had another ten minutes at least, and I was tempted to stay out of the inner area of the arena, my rear sore from sitting on the hard seats. I found a calmer spot a little away from the main doors and set Matty down, squatting down beside him as I fished out his juice box.

“Your Daddy said that tonight was important,” I said, watching as Matty fumbled a little with the straw before he managed to push it through the top. “But that they won’t be eliminated if they lose. I’m not quite sure how it?—”

“Nell.”

The word interrupted the string of chatter coming through the speakers above, and my ears perked up for half a second.

“Daddy?” Matty said, his head tipping back as he looked at the ceiling, his eyes locking on the speaker.

“I don’t think that was Daddy,” I chuckled. “They probably said something that sounds like my name. It means nothing ?—”

“Nelly Moreno?”

Okay, nope, that was Seb, and he had absolutely said my name. Why the hell is he calling on me over the loudspeaker? Doesn’t he have his phone?

“I don’t… I don’t know where you’re sitting, baby, can you stand up?”

My eyes went wide as the realization set in that he was looking for me — and I wasn’t in there. Something must have happened. Adrenaline dumped into my system immediately, propelling me, forcing me to act. “Shit,” I breathed, wrapping an arm around Matty and hoisting him back up onto me.

“You’re not supposed to say that,” Matty giggled.

“Our little secret,” I shot back.

I pushed into the crowd again, aiming for the open doors, fighting for leverage in the slow-moving sea of people who didn’t seem to have a care in the world. But none of them were having their names called over the loudspeaker by the father of the child they were looking after, and none of them were wrapped up in complex feelings with said father.

“Goddammit, I can’t… I can’t see you.”

I managed to push through, and the moment I was through the bottleneck of the door, the space widened out and I was able to move quicker, easier, freer. Seb stood in the center of the ice, a couple of feet in front of the guys who had been chatting away about hockey facts. He clutched their microphone in his hand, his gaze scanning the crowd above.

“Daddy!” Matty squealed, his feet kicking on either side of my body as he sat heavily on my hip. But it was too loud, and we were too far, and there wasn’t a chance he’d hear Matty.

I pushed forward further, security blocking the front rows along the boards. “Seb!” I shouted .

His head whipped to his right, to me , his eyes wide as he took me in. He was still in his gear, but his helmet was off, his mouth guard out, and fuck , even covered neck to toe in padding and guards, even with his hair slick with sweat and his black eye, he looked like a dream.

“Hi,” I said, confusion setting in from his lack of panic. Why… why was he looking for me? Is this not an emergency?

“Hi,” he said, the mic a little too close to his mouth. The word boomed over the speakers. “I needed to say something to you, and you might think I’m insane or that this is cringe, but I don’t care.”

I readjusted Matty on my hip, my stomach sinking and twisting. There were two obvious ways this could go — either he was batshit crazy and about to profess that he was in love with me, or he was going to break it off with me in the most spectacular, history-book-making way possible. My hands trembled at the idea of either of those options, and I tried to hide them by holding Matty.

“Nelly, I… I know that nothing has, well, been easy for you for a while. And I’m sorry for any bit of that I’ve had a hand in,” he said, the words a little shaky, a little breathy. “The years haven’t been easy for me either — at least, not until you came into my life.”

Seb’s voice echoed through the arena, hushing the crowd to alarming levels save for a few murmurs and scattered whispers. I tried to tune them out, tried to focus entirely on him. I still couldn’t tell where this was going, and I was thankful I hadn’t eaten dinner or touched the box of Whoppers. They’d absolutely be making a horrific return to the surface if I had.

“I wasn’t expecting it. Any of it,” he continued, shifting slightly on his skates. His free hand curled into a fist, his knuckles white as if he were holding on for dear life, and across the rink, a thud rang out as Luke practically slammed into the boards, his eyes wide as he watched Seb. “I was just trying to figure out how to be a good dad and a good player, how to make it all work without screwing one or both up completely. And then you appeared out of thin air. You saw me, Nell, really saw me, even when I struggled to see myself.”

Matty, completely oblivious to the weight of wherever his father was going with this, tugged at the collar of my jersey. “Why is Daddy on the speakers?”

I swallowed, smoothing my hand over the top of his mop of brown waves. “Shh.”

Seb caught the movement, his eyes flicking briefly to Matty before settling back on me. “You haven’t just made my life better. You’ve fixed so many things I didn’t realize were broken, you’ve filled a hole I was trying to ignore. You’re here , tonight, cheering me on when I know damn well that was hard for you. You care about my son like he’s your own, and that’s—” He paused, his voice cracking slightly. He covered his mouth with the back of his hand, his nasal exhale going straight into the mic. “That’s something I’ll never be able to thank you enough for.”

My breath hitched, and I tightened my grip on Matty, tucking my lower lip between my teeth. If he was breaking this off with me, I was going to fucking kill him, but something in my head screamed that he wasn’t, that I’d been right with my first thought.

“I know you’re struggling with this,” he continued, pulling his hand away and repositioning the mic. “And if you decide that you can’t deal with this, that this is too much, that you can’t trust me, I’ll understand. I’ll take that, baby. It’ll fu—It’ll hurt, but I will figure out a way to push on.”

The arena buzzed faintly with whispers and mumbles, but they barely registered. The backs of my eyes burned, and my vision blurred as his words sank in, wormed their way into my chest, and cracked it.

“Nelly,” Matty whispered, pulling again on the fabric around my throat.

Seb took a shaky breath into the microphone. “But I love you,” he said, his voice clear and almost steady. “I love you, Nell, not just for what you’ve done for me, for Matty, but for who you are. For the way you fight me on what’s best for him, the way you care, the way you make everything… better , just by being there. For your inconveniently timed references, for staying up with me until one in the morning watching the same episode of Survivor I’ve seen ten thousand times before, for the way you forgot to ask for your days off because taking care of Matty seemed to come as second nature for you.”

His hand shook, and he tilted his head up, his skates moving forward a few feet. The lump in my throat was too big to swallow, and I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to say, locked in the strongest freeze response of my goddamn life. Even Matty had gone still.

“I love you for all the progress you’ve made after what you went through,” he said, his voice trembling as he came to a stop just a foot from the boards. “And I know this doesn’t fix anything, baby, but I just needed you to know. You’re it for me. I don’t want anyone else. And if there’s even a tiny piece of you that feels the same, that wants to fight for this, just… just know I’ll happily spend the rest of my goddamn life proving to you that you can trust me.”

I needed to move, needed to do something , but I was locked in fucking place, locked behind everything I wanted to say and the overwhelming urge to run. But I didn’t want to run. I didn’t want to run away from this, even if he was absolutely right — I did think he was insane for this. But in the most ridiculous, best way possible.

His hand reached the board, and he gripped it, the wood nearly splitting beneath his fingertips. His hand holding the mic came down, only five or so feet between us and two security guards. “Please say something,” he said, his voice breaking as his lower lip worried. He didn’t announce it for everyone to hear this time. Just those within earshot of him. “I can’t… I can’t lose you, Nell. Not like this. Please.”

Matty twisted slightly in my arms. “Nelly, you have to talk .”

The words jarred me enough to break through, pulling me out of the almost unbreakable haze I’d found myself in. Seb watched me, his mouth parted, his eyes focused wholly on me, his dark curls flattened to his head. Behind him, on the other end of the rink where Luke watched with bated breath, a woman with auburn hair and an Atlanta Fire jersey on stood beside Luke and Coach Casey, her hand flat on her chest and a smile on her face as she watched Seb.

I’d been wrong.

I must have been wrong.

“Seb,” I breathed, pushing forward an inch before security stepped in my way. They blocked my path entirely, and even with Matty reaching out and pushing against their arms, they didn’t budge. “Let me through!”

Seb’s voice came back through the loudspeaker this time. “She’s obviously with me, you fucking idiots. Let her pass.”

Matty’s eyes went wide.

“Don’t repeat what he said,” I said quickly, and Matty nodded.

The two men huffed their annoyance and parted just enough to let me through, and I scrambled, nearly tripping over the step down to the front row as I pushed myself toward the closed gate he leaned against.

I didn’t waste a single second panicking. I didn’t throw away what was in front of me.

The moment I was close enough to touch him, I reached a hand out, tucking it against the side of his neck and pulling him to me.

He kissed me.

It was raw but restrained, the positioning difficult as he practically leaned half his body over the board, but he didn’t let it stop him from channeling every bit of what he’d said into it. His hands cupped my cheeks, the shaking of them so much more obvious now, and even as Matty giggled and made fake gagging noises, he didn’t stop. Even as the crowd came back to life and hesitantly cheered, he didn’t stop. He kissed me, and he kissed me, and he kissed me, and all I could think about was how stupid I’d been, how headstrong and angry and confused because of myself . I’d put him through hell because of me.

“I’m sorry,” I croaked the moment he gave me room to breathe. “I should have believed you. I never… I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“I know you didn’t,” he muttered.

“I-I love you,” I stammered, tightening my grip on Matty as his hips began to slide.

His lips tugged up at the corner, his eyes locked entirely on mine. “You mean that?”

I huffed out a choked chuckle. “I mean it.”

His mouth trembled, but he pulled me to him again, pressing a brief kiss against my lips. “Thank God for that,” he mumbled .

“ Daddy , I’m right here,” Matty groaned, his finger poking Seb in the cheek.

Seb laughed, his forehead falling to mine for the briefest seconds before he turned to look at his son. “Hey, bud,” he said, wrapping his hand around the side of Matty’s head and pulling him toward him, his mouth meeting Matty’s temple. “Sorry for swearing.”

“You said the worst word!” Matty giggled.

“Shh,” Seb hushed him. “I’ve got to go before Coach screams at me.”

“No,” Matty whined.

“It’s okay,” I insisted, wiping the underside of my eyes with my palm. “We can see Daddy after he wins, okay?”

Matty pouted as I took a step back, but Seb’s grin didn’t dare fade, not for a second, as he pushed back off the boards, skating backward for a few feet. Bye , he mouthed, and then he was turning, taking off toward the other side of the rink and throwing the microphone back to the wildly confused men standing in the center.