Sucking in a deep breath, she looks over at me and says, “Big game tonight.”

“Yup,” I say with a nod. “Jude might try to stop in. He’s got a game in St Louis.”

“Aw, that’s cool,” she says, looking over at me. “Is your mom coming?”

“Yeah and Lucy and baby Angie.”

“That’s awesome,” she says, letting out a long breath.

Looking over at her, I ask, “Do you want to meet my mom?”

She grins. “How would that go?”

I shrug. “I’d tell her that your name is Baylor, I know that,” I say with a wink.

“Well, duh, but like would you tell her we are dating?”

“Do you want me to?”

“I don’t know,” she says, sucking in another breath. “Maybe.”

“Okay, we’ll think about it. We can decide after the game.”

“Okay,” she agrees, and then she looks away. “Is your dad coming?”

I shrug. “I don’t talk to him, so I doubt he’ll come.”

“When was the last time you spoke to him?”

Leaning against my knees, I look over at her. “The day he almost hit my mom, Jude almost killed him, and I lost all respect for him. I want nothing from him.”

“Wow,” she says, sitting up and leaning into me. “You’re better off without him.”

“Yeah,” I agree as I wrap an arm around her. Kissing her sweaty forehead, I wipe my mouth right away since I basically kissed dirt, but I really don’t care too much. Leaning against each other, we watch as the sun slowly peeks out from behind the hills, and I can’t think of a better thing to do at five in the morning. Sleep doesn’t even come close to this. But I hope what I’m about to ask doesn’t ruin our morning.

“Can I ask you something about your mom?”

I feel her tense next to me as she takes in a breath. I know it’s hard for her to say it, but she says, “Sure.”

“Did you ever meet her?”

Shaking her head, she leans against her legs before wrapping her arms around them. “Nope, never.”

“Have you tried?”

Meeting my gaze, she answers, “Nope, didn’t think it was fair to my dad. He’s always loved me, she didn’t, so why bring her back into our lives?”

“Fair enough,” I say with a nod. “But do you want to meet her?”

She shrugs, looking out at the picturesque view. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m like her, but my dad says she was really weak. Needy, and I’m not like that. But then I wonder if he says that because he hates her for leaving us. He really loved her, and when she left, he was devastated. But he says that I made it all better.”

I don’t say anything as I watch her. I can see that this is difficult, and I almost want to stop her, but she goes on, “I don’t know what it’s like to have a mom, but I do sometimes miss having that person to talk to. That’s probably why I’m so shut off to everyone. When I had a problem, I had my dad, and he’s emotionally inept about girlie things, so I was on my own. I guessed about a lot of things, and others, I just pushed away and didn’t deal with.”

“I’m sorry, Baylor,” is the only thing I can think to say, and when she looks back at me, she shrugs.

“It made me stronger; no need to apologize. I don’t feel sorry for myself, and you shouldn’t either. We are stronger for the people who leave us, you know? Being able to live without them just shows how much better we are. No one can hold us back but ourselves, and I, for one, am proud of the person I am. Yeah, I’m a little obsessed with winning and I’m a control freak, but I don’t need someone to love me.”

Reaching out, I cup her face and I feel horrible for the little girl who didn’t have a mother to love her, but I admire the gorgeous woman that is before me. Yeah, she’s socially inept like her dad, and she may have her issues, but she has quickly become everything to me.

“But you want to be loved,” I supply, and she looks away, her face heating with color.

“I’ve never been loved by anyone but my daddy, so I don’t know what it feels like. But yeah, I want to be loved by someone who deserves me. Who can deal with me,” she adds with a laugh before looking back at me, her eyes full of the need to be loved, but she just doesn’t know it. She doesn’t know how.

It’s the perfect time to say that I love her, but she pops up and stretches her hands up above her head. “Okay, enough feeling-sharing, that took a lot.”

Laughing, I nod my head as I stand. “You did good.”

She shrugs. “Yeah, sure, okay. Can you stop looking at me like that?”

I chuckle. “Like what?” I ask innocently.

“Like you want to wrap your arms around me and kiss the stuffing out of me,” she says, her face and neck turning red.

Grinning, I reach for her, pulling her to my chest before I dip her back, dropping my mouth almost to hers as she yelps out. “What a great idea.”

Looking up at me with heat and shock in her eyes, her mouth pulls into a grin before I take it with mine. Ignoring the dirt, the sweat, and her awkwardly flailing arms, I kiss all the tautness from her sweet body. As she relaxes in my arms, her hands coming up to cup my face, I can’t help it.

I fall even more for her.

I almost always get nervous before the first game. It’s just how I work. But for some reason tonight as I sway back and forth in the hall, I feel okay. I feel good about tonight. I’m ready. Baylor sways in front of me with Jace in front of her since we are to be announced by our numbers and positions. As I stare at the back of her helmet, her 50 staring back at me, a grin sits on my lips. She has her hair in a braid, down her back and tucked into her jersey, but when she looks back at me, her red lips are glossy and she is grinning.

“Excited?” I ask even though it’s very visible that she is.

She nods. “Ready to kick some ass.”

“Me too,” I say, tapping her ankle with my stick. “Let’s show them what they are missing.”

She gives me a cute little grin just as the announcer starts to call us onto the ice. When they call her name, she shoots out of the tunnel as the crowd cheers for her, and there is a certain kind of pride that burns in my chest. She’s well-loved around here. Yeah, some girls are jealous because she’s so close to all the guys, but people still respect her. She’s a force to be reckoned with. She makes this team a billion times better, and I couldn’t love her more.