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He’d set up a spot for me in the corner of the shop, with a comfortable chair, a table where I could sit and watch game tape, even if I was only obsessing over my own misses or near-misses, and one of Wanda’s knitted blankets for when I dozed off during a particularly rough week.
“Shouldn’t have brought it up,” Sammy said to Mo. “Now Bett’s got that look on his face.”
“What look?” Mo asked.
Branson Quinn leaned over and squinted at me, getting all up in my face. “Oh shit, yeah. It’s the same smushy look Carmichael gets when anyone mentions his new girlfriend.”
I smacked his gut with the back of my hand. “Fuck off. If you had a boyfriend as hot as mine, you’d get this look on your face, too.”
Thankfully, my team had been cool with Vaughn from the very beginning. I’d been stressed to the point of nausea about coming out to them until the GM had mentioned his daughter and her wife casually in conversation when shooting the shit with a few of us at training camp. Before the first home game, the team captain had made sure Vaughn was welcome in the family section. I’d heard later that it had taken Vaughn about ten seconds to charm all the wives and girlfriends, and when his face started appearing in their social media posts, I’d known we were all good.
Sammy snorted. “Bro. Pretty sure the two of you are married since I was actually at your wedding.”
I felt heat surge into my cheeks. It had only been two months, and I still wasn’t in the habit of saying husband outside of a sultry tease gasped directly into Vaughn’s ears late at night when my breaths came too fast and his dick felt too good. “Right. I meant husband.”
The rest of the team hooted at this and continued giving me shit about it all the way to the airport.
While we were boarding the plane, Mo even pulled up some of the photos from the oceanside ceremony in the Bahamas to remind me of the event.
In all of the shots, Vaughn’s grin was a mile wide and his nose a little sunburned from the day before when we’d spent too long flirting and playing in the water before meeting up with everyone else for dinner.
Sammy nudged me with his elbow. “Quinn’s right, you know. You do get a smushy look on your face when you think about your man. It’s sweet.”
“Fuck off.”
“No, really. The two of you are lucky. I see the way he looks at you. And he brags about you to all the families at the games. Kelly tells me all the shit that goes down in the family section.”
Mo leaned across the aisle. “My mom said…” He looked around and lowered his voice. “Reynolds’s sister was coming in hot for Vaughn at the Miami game, right? He shut that shit down ASAP. And she’s gorgeous.”
I huffed out a laugh. Elliot Vaughn would never in a million fucking years step out on me. Even if he was tempted, which he wasn’t, all I’d have to do was ask him sweetly if he wanted an open relationship. The idea of me sleeping with anyone else made him fucking feral. Not only would he growl at me for even suggesting it, but he’d take it out on my fucking ass in the very best way to remind me who I belonged to.
“I’m not worried,” I said. “I once smiled at a guy at a restaurant to thank him for loaning me the ketchup from his table, and I thought Vaughn was going to take the guy out back and teach him a lesson.”
“That’s right,” Mo said with an emphatic nod. “As it should be.”
As he and Sammy continued to share memories from my wedding, I felt the vibration of a text in my back pocket.
I pulled out my phone and saw a message from Vaughn with a picture of Linney, since he’d gone down to visit Dalton and Arden in Tritt for a long weekend while I was playing in Vegas. I wasn’t looking forward to getting home to an empty house tonight, and seeing the picture made me wish there was a way to teleport myself to Georgia tonight instead of waiting for his return late tomorrow.
In the photo, Linney was sitting on an old tree stump with her chin in her hands. Her strawberry blonde curls formed a warm, messy halo around her head in the setting sun.
Why the frown on our girl? Who upset her? Surely no one denied her anything. She’s never even heard the word no before.
Vaughn
She asked a bird to come closer and it flew off. Bad bird. The worst. Thought Dalton was going to fetch his rifle and hunt it down. Arden just laughed.
Maybe we should buy her a pet bird for Christmas.
Vaughn
You’re evil and I love you for it. But I’ll refer you back to the mention of a firearm…
Okay, so no bird. Maybe we should take her to Disney World again.
Vaughn
I need you to know that the field goal late in the third was so pretty it made me want to throw up.
