Total pages in book: 25
Estimated words: 24377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 122(@200wpm)___ 98(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 24377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 122(@200wpm)___ 98(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
The only one who couldn’t be here is Genevieve, the youngest Fox sibling. She’s a surgical resident in London and she couldn’t get time off.
“I’m going to get some Skittles.” My best friend Marlowe practically has to yell at me from her seat beside Jack so I can hear her. “You guys want anything?”
“You can order that on the app and they’ll bring it to you,” I remind her.
She wrinkles her nose. “Yeah, but then you guys will have to pay for it.”
I laugh because the tickets Beau and I bought for the entire family, which are on a corner of the ice in the eleventh row, cost an absolute fortune. Even his position as a player on the team couldn’t get us the number of tickets we needed at a good price, and we couldn’t have bought a VIP box for any price because almost all of them went to corporate team sponsors.
We’re all here, though. This is the biggest night of my husband’s career. One of the biggest nights of his life, actually. We would have paid any price to have our family here for this.
“Order whatever you want,” I tell Marlowe as the players leave the ice after warm-ups.
Jack climbs into my lap and lays his head on my shoulder. The past few weeks of playoffs have been an absolute schedule buster for me. The kids travel with me for road games sometimes, but Charlie being in school makes it tough. Henry and Claire have been helping me get Charlie to and from school and keeping Sierra and Jack when needed.
When the team made the championship round, Beau and I told Charlie he could miss the school days he needed to so he could be at every game. No one is prouder of their dad than my blue-eyed, dark-haired son, who looks exactly like Beau.
When the lights dim for the pregame show, the entire row of our family jumps up with the rest of the crowd. I feel a tap on my shoulder and I look over and see Asher pointing down the row of people past him.
I lean forward to look and see my father-in-law pointing at me and then making a rocking motion with his arms.
He’s offering to hold Jack. God, I struck the lottery with my in-laws. My stomach is in nervous knots over this game and I’d love to be able to give it my full attention, even for a few minutes.
I mouth “thank you” and pass my youngest son to Asher, who passes him to Henry. Jack looks up, sees his grandpa’s face, and immediately puts his head on Henry’s chest to rest some more.
Beau skates out when his name is called and I join in the loud cheering for him. Charlie is jumping up and down with Anderson, both of them doing double fist pumps.
This city knows that my husband is their native son. He was born and raised in Denver, and everywhere we go, people want to shake his hand, buy him drinks and get pictures with him. I often hear people telling him how proud he makes his city, not just because he’s a great hockey player but because of who he is.
How did I get so lucky? It was reckless of me to ask a stranger to donate his sperm so I could become a mom. That could have gone badly, but instead, Beau broke down my walls and we fell in love.
We started out very yin and yang. Him usually smiling. Me, with a permanent worry wrinkle between my brows. But over our years together, we’ve rubbed off on each other. I find more joy in small things. He shares my worries about the ugly parts of the world dulling the sparkle of our children.
The energy in the arena is electric. I’ve never seen a crowd like this at any of the games I’ve been to since meeting Beau. The Coyotes fans want this win so badly, and their team wants to give it to them.
“Daddy!” Sierra spots Beau smiling up at us and she waves.
My heart still flutters every time I see that confident, happy smile of his. And when he’s having tea parties with Sierra or telling our sons what it means to be a good man, I melt.
Marlowe is still at it with her Cliterally Speaking podcast, and she recently did an episode about the sex lives of long-term couples. I’m not willing to discuss my sex life with the world, but if I’d been on that episode, I would have been on Team It Just Keeps Getting Better.
Beau is a pleaser in every sense of the word. He works at keeping our sex life fresh and exciting, and he tells me all I need to do to be his perfect partner is show up and surprise him with sexy lingerie every now and then.