HALLE

THE NOISE FROM THE ARENA lobby is yet to die down even long after the game ended and people started to leave.

I managed to secure myself one of the tall tables and seats that border the room to attempt to draft a chapter. Henry tasked me with saying no more, which I’m putting into practice by telling myself no when I try to do anything that isn’t working on my WIP now that Thanksgiving is done.

The manuscript was a good distraction from how sad I felt on Thursday after I got home from work to an empty house and Gigi and Maisie were too sleepy to talk. Mrs. Astor hosted her family and was sweet enough to leave me a plate in the fridge. She also stole my cat, but she did have the courtesy to forewarn me. One of her granddaughters is autistic and Joy helps her regulate at busy family events, so I don’t mind sharing her.

A work in progress at least needs to be in progress, and now the load feels lighter, even if it’s only temporarily. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself for being behind and actually do something about it.

I’ve been surprisingly—or unsurprisingly, depending on how you look at it— productive after my total meltdown. I realized I wasn’t uninspired, something I previously struggled with; I’ve been distracted.

Sure, I doubt anyone would judge me for spending so much of my time under a sweet, hot hockey player, but still, I’m a woman with goals. I can have it all and I will, I just need to actually try. I can’t continue to be distracted by a pretty face and a stellar personality. Even if it is the prettiest face and the most stellar personality.

Speaking of the prettiest face. Henry exits the door that now has two No Entry signs much to the happiness of the people still hanging around. There’s cheers all around when they spot him, and as happy as it makes me to see him be celebrated, I cringe for his sensitivity to loud noises.

I attempt to focus on planning how I’m going to make my make-believe people kiss and 1ght, instead of trying not to laugh at how unimpressed Henry looks as people stop to talk to him. When two women approach him, his name on the back of their jerseys, the ability to pay attention to my laptop gets that little bit harder.

I can hear one of them laughing loudly from across the room, and the other puts her hand on his arm. I don’t hear what Henry says, and I’m still pretending to be working when I spot him walking toward me in my peripheral vision. He stops next to me, the chair I’m sitting on putting us at similar heights so I can see how big his smile is when I turn to face him. “Hello. You won,” I say simply. “Two days in a row and I saw them both. Does that make me your biggest fan?”

“Of course I won.” He kisses me hard, dropping his bag on the Roor to tangle his hands in the hair at the nape of my neck. He only breaks us apart when the passing hockey fans start whooping. He rests his forehead against mine. “You’re my lucky charm. I told you: science.”

Kissing in front of people is not something we do, even after the incident at the hotel, but as the two women in the Turner jerseys storm oI, I suspect maybe the kiss wasn’t for my bene1t. “You can just reject people, y’know. You don’t need to put on a show for them.”

He leans back to look at me, his hands still resting on my neck. “What are you talking about?”

“Kissing me. The girls in the jerseys. Just tell them no.” “I did. Then I came over here to celebrate our win.”

“Hmm,” I grumble. I still feel like he was using me to send a message to people he’s too tired to deal with. “If you say so.”

“Are you being unreasonable to start a 1ght?” he asks. “It’s 1ne if you are, but can you save your rage until we get home? If we’re going to 1ght about this, we should 1ght about it somewhere we can make up.”

I stare at his chest and shrug. “We’re not 1ghting, and I’m not being unreasonable.”

“My bad. I meant dramatic.” I mumble that I’m not and he tugs a little on my ponytail to force me to look up at him. “And you are.” He pecks my lips and I melt like the weak woman I am. “But I don’t mind. We haven’t had a 1ght yet. It’s a good experience for you.”

“If you tell me I’m dramatic one more time we are going to be 1ghting,” I

drawl.

He grins, and after a losing streak, seeing him genuinely happy after a game is a dream. “You’re not doing a lot for your ‘I’m not dramatic’ case.”

“We’re o cially 1ghting,” I declare. In my head I sound serious and intimidating, but he gives me that damn smirk and kisses the tip of my nose, and it’s clear he does not care one bit.

“Two wins and a 1ght with you? I’m so lucky. I have to get back, but you’re going to wait here, right?” He peeks at my laptop screen where my Word document is open. “What are your imaginary friends doing today?”

It sounds patronizing, and it is in reality, but Henry started calling my characters my imaginary friends when I said it felt weird calling them their names, and I like when he shows an interest now that I have something to actually tell him. “They’re not communicating and instead are dancing around what they want from each other.”

He scoIs. “Sounds like us.”

“We communicate,” I argue. “We just communicated that we’re in a 1ght because you kissed me to get rid of some women you’re too tired to entertain.”

“Halle,” he says softly. “The only person I want to entertain is you. You and your dramatics keep me totally occupied. I kissed you because I’m a really big fan of kissing you. Some might say obsessed. It’s the 1rst thing I thought about doing when I got oI the ice. Being here listening to you create imaginary conRict is going to get me into an actual conRict with Faulkner, but it’s worth it.”

“An obsession sounds pretty dramatic if you ask me,” I mutter, burying my head in his chest to hide my face from him. “You should go do your leadery duties and leave me to my imaginary friends, I guess.”

“I’m excited to 1ght with you when I’m done,” he says, kissing my forehead.

“Can we save the 1ght until a later date? I’m kinda a big fan of not 1ghting with you ever,” I say teasingly.

He nods as he laughs, walking away. It’s not until he’s going back through the no-access door that I realize quite how many people are watching me. I dig my headphones out of my purse and concentrate on my characters dancing around what they want from each other, and definitely not on Henry saying that sounds like us.

THERE IS NO FEELING MORE unnatural than silence in Henry’s house.

While everyone piled in here earlier to celebrate their much-wanted wins, when they all headed out Henry told them he was staying in tonight with me. I’m pretty sure he said “with Halle” so they couldn’t argue with him, and I don’t mind being his get-out-of-jail-free card if he’s tired from the adrenaline.

As soon as I made myself comfortable on his bed with my laptop he disappeared into another room, and when he came back, he was wearing his painting clothes and had a fresh canvas under his arm. He did not entertain my excitement that I was going to see him do something more than sketch. Instead, he sat on the Roor and opened a small palette of paints, and that’s where he’s been since.

I don’t know what he’s painting, but given he’s never let me see his work properly before, I’m too scared to ask in case it causes him and his canvas to scurry oI somewhere else in the house.

“I can feel you watching me,” he says as he swishes his paintbrush against the material.

“Watching sounds creepy. I’m admiring. I love your artwork—the little you show me, anyway.”

I only get to see the things he does for me, not for himself. The drawings of Joy, the Rowers he draws because I prefer them to real ones now, the portrait of Quack Efron being a distinguished gentleman wearing a suit, and not forgetting the things he draws on me.

Henry places the paintbrush between his teeth and stands from the Roor with his palette and the towel it was sitting on. He throws the towel onto the bed

beside me and puts the paint down. With one hand he closes my laptop and puts it on his bedside table, takes the paintbrush out of his mouth with the other, and sets it next to the palette.

“What’re you doing?”

He climbs on top of me, straddling my hips so I can’t move. “I’m painting.

Can I lift your shirt up?”

“You’re going to paint on my stomach?” I ask, already knowing the answer before he nods. “It’s not Rat.”

“I have seen your stomach before,” he says, like I’m ridiculous for even pointing it out. “Why does that matter?”

“It’s just not toned, and I have some marks,” and I’m pretty sure there’s a few

black hairs beneath my belly button that I haven’t tweezed.

“It isn’t weird to me that you have stretch marks.” He pulls the arm of his T- shirt up and Rexes, twisting until I spot the faint faded lines on his biceps. “I have them. You don’t need to feel insecure.”

I wouldn’t say I immediately feel super defensive, but there is an aspect of how I want to react that is to defend myself. I know my body isn’t what society would de1ne as perfect, but I’ve worked hard to love myself through the years when it’s felt like everything is designed to convince me not to. “I’m not insecure. I like my body,” I say. “Other people seeing it isn’t something I’m used to, that’s all. I was just worried it wouldn’t be a good canvas.”

“You’re my perfect canvas, Halle. Every part of you. But good to both of those things. I like your body, too, and I like being the only one to see it.”

Perfect canvas. “What are you going to paint?”

“You’ll have to wait and see.”

I lift my T-shirt and tuck it under my bra to keep it out of his way. He doesn’t talk while he gets to work. Starting with large strokes across my ribs and below my belly button, followed by hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller dabs and Ricks. He hums to himself, occasionally pausing to sit back to assess his work.

Every brush stroke feels like a kiss against my skin, and when he checks if I’m okay, I can only nod, because the tenderness of it all is too much. It feels so personal and so special, and he wants to do it with me.

He climbs oI me and works from my side, lying on his stomach. Then my other side, then between my legs. Every so often he asks me if I need anything, but I say no because I don’t want this to end.

It does end and he makes me lie on the bed until it dries so I don’t ruin his

masterpiece.

“Do I get to paint on you next?” I ask, moving very slowly as he helps me get oI his bed and walk toward his full-length mirror.

“No. I’ve seen your doodles. You’re really bad at art.”

“You’re so rude sometimes, do you know that?” I grumble, scowling at him over my shoulder as we walk across the room.

He covers my eyes as we take the 1nal few steps. “Everyone tells me not to 1lter what I say until it’s time to tell them they’re bad at art. Are you ready?”

“Show me.”

Henry takes away his hands but stays close behind me; his face presses into my neck, kissing over where my pulse is hammering. Lilac and lavender swirls intersect with pearlescent white clouds across my rib cage; soft hues of pinks and blues and greens decorate my skin in the most delicate way. White and yellow blend seamlessly into it all. It takes me a second to realize what it is. “You like meadows. It’s the 1rst thing you ever drew on me.”

“I spend a lot of time daydreaming about lying in them. Feels like it would be peaceful. I’ve developed a fondness for daisies, too.”

There’s an H on the lower left corner of my stomach in thick, black cursive.

It’s the only bold color on my stomach. “You signed me.”

His 1ngers dance across the skin beneath his initial. “How does it make you feel when you look at it?”

“Pretty,” I respond, answering honestly and feeling more vulnerable than I have before. “You always make me feel pretty.”

“You feel like that because you are pretty, Halle.”

“Promise me you’ll let me experience going to a meadow with you.” “I promise.”