Holding_Playmaker Duet Read online

Quietly, the waiter left the plate of brownies and vanilla bean ice cream on the table. A quick glance showed what I was looking for, but Asher hadn’t looked yet. She was watching me, and those eyes of hers…

  Shit, the colors were swirling and I could tell she was going to cry.

  “I would take your sass any day of the week, over not seeing your face first thing in the morning. I live for your laughter. And I have for years. Your laughs, your smiles. I hate when you’re sad, when you’re hurt. I would do anything to take your past from you, to ease some of that for you, but because of it, you are the strongest person I know. I love you so fucking much, you know.”

  “I know.” Her voice had gone soft.

  “I asked you once before,” I started, reaching with my free hand for the plate to slide it between us. She glanced down and I heard her slight intake of breath, knowing she saw her ring there.

  “But Asher Spence, would you please make an honest man of me, and agree to marry me?”

  With my eyes on hers, I caught her answer.

  Between her nodding, her hand over her mouth, and the tears falling down her face, I knew her answer was the same one she gave me in a car, two years ago.

  But this time, we were different people. We were a little bit older. We were a little bit wiser.

  And I could definitely say we loved a hell of a lot deeper.

  “Yes, Porter. A thousand times, yes.”

  It was playoff season and as excited as I was about the fact San Diego was within tasting distance of the Cup, I was more excited about the fact I was going to be meeting my baby girls soon—we ended up deciding to find out their genders, shortly after moving to San Diego.

  Every time I had to get on a plane, my brothers had to drag me.

  It was fucking difficult leaving Asher behind, knowing that she was close to popping.

  She had a scheduled C-section this coming weekend, and I was so fucking thrilled to hold those little girls. Potentially two games between now and then. Just four days.

  Four days, and I would become a daddy.

  Asher and I found a condo in the same building as Jonny. While it wasn’t ideal living in a condo—with two babies and a large dog, the trek up five stories was going to be a pain—we just needed a place to settle. The condo was on month-to-month but as badly as I harped on it, I knew that San Diego was going to offer me a nice package to re-sign at the end of the season.

  When that happened, Ash and I would look at houses.

  Set roots down.

  A place to put our ‘Established’ sign that Ace made at one of those board and brush arts and craft stores back home.

  Asher and I married in a quiet ceremony on the La Jolla shoreline, just she and I. We were planning to do the whole shindig this summer at the lake house, but I had needed my name on her now.

  Hell, she’d been a Prescott for years. This was just a legality.

  Mom was a little upset to learn about the fact she hadn’t been invited, but she’d get over it.

  Hell, she already got over it.

  While the team was in St. Louis, Avery and Sydney were staying with Asher. Even though she hated that I stuck my sisters on her, I wasn’t about to leave Asher alone and fending for herself. She was thirty-five weeks. She wasn’t staying on her own.

  I walked through the still-empty arena, Starbucks coffee in hand—I eventually graduated to the real deal—enjoying the quiet. I headed down the stairs and toward the away locker room, where music was already blasting, as my teammates got ready for the game.

  If we won tonight, we would be ahead in the series, three-to-two. One more game, and the Stanley Cup series was there.

  Charleston was knocked out in the first round, and I tried to feel bad about it.

  But I didn’t.

  Nico and I partied hard that night—after I tucked Asher in bed, of course.

  I stepped into the locker room and tossed my now empty cup into the garbage. Caleb jumped up from the bench, his pads on but his sweater still off. “Where’s your phone?”

  I frowned, patting at my jacket pockets. “I don’t know.” I felt it then and pulled it out. “Here. Why?”

  There were hands on my shoulders suddenly, squeezing and shaking me. “You’re needed on a plane, baby brother,” Jonny informed me.

  “No...” I said, drawing out the word in my confusion.

  “Portsy,” Nico hollered from the bench as he laced up his skates. “You’re having babies. Go home.”

  Everything stopped.

  “No, she’s having them on Saturday.”

  “Porter. Let me say this slowly, so you understand,” Winksi said, joining in on the party. “Your wife is in labor.”

  Ten hours later, standing at Asher’s side after she squeezed the ever-loving life out of my hand, we welcomed Presley Brielle and Peyton Ryleigh into the world. They were red and white, and squirmy and slimy, but damn, if they weren’t the two most beautiful little girls I ever laid my eyes on.

  Life as we knew it would be forever changed.

  But hell, my life changed one September day when I was nineteen.

  This was just the icing on the cake.

  “Daddy!”

  I woke up seconds before the weight of three newly turned seven-year-olds crashed onto me, shrieking loud enough to wake the neighbors. I felt Asher roll away, and did my best at keeping the kids’ attention away from her as she quickly slipped into her robe.

  For every single last birthday of these three rugrats, I had been on the road.

  For every single last birthday of these three rugrats, I could only Skype them on this day—and I’m man enough to admit that the moment they left the room, and it was just Ash and me on video chat, I bawled like a baby.

  It didn’t help matters that my wife screenshot it too.

  Every frickin’ year.

  The Enforcers were a top-notch team and because of that, you damn well better believe that every time we were in the Western Conference finals, and there was a chance that we would be playing over the twins’ birthday, I used my Captain powers to the utmost extreme and made sure the guys played their hardest.

  If we could win it in four and I could be home with my girls for their birthday, I made sure to light that fire under their asses.

  The triplets, though, were a different story.

  I swear—my kids were born in the middle of mayhem as punishment to me for giving my parents such hell as a kid, as well as myself, for being born with terrible timing.

  Ashlyn, Annabelle, and Porter—yes, my wife talked me into a junior, poor kid; we called him Skip—were supposed to also be a scheduled C-section but Baby A—that would be Skip—decided to start the game early, sending Asher into labor while I was in the middle of a flight to the East Coast, somewhere above Montana, and there wasn’t a chance in hell I would make it home for their births.

  Thankfully, I had a pretty awesome extended family; Sydney Skyped the entire thing for me, and Avery took my place, holding my wife’s hand.

  Needless to say, from day one, I had cried on the triplets’ birthday.

  This year, though, while we were still on an East Coast tour—you would think being a Prescott, my siblings could do something about this fucking schedule—we had the day off. The moment the game was over last night, I pulled on my dress clothes, gave my obligatory post-game interview—I had a reputation for only interviewing after changing—and boarded a plane.

  Not even Asher was expecting me to come home.

  I had snuck into the house, checking on my five—sometimes I couldn’t believe it myself—kids before quietly entering the master bedroom, stripping myself of my clothes, and kissing my wife awake.

  She still had slight issues with sex—issues that would very likely never go away—so I knew better than to just sink into her to wake her up. Instead, I kept my hands light on her, over her sleeping shirt, my lips feathering lightly over her face.

  When she rolled to her back and beamed up to me, I was kicked in
the gut with the love I had for this woman.

  We had our occasional moments. There were times we were fire and kerosene—we were both stubborn to a fault and sometimes needed our own timeouts—but when that fire wasn’t blazing mad and red, it was a fire much like an autumn sky—the prettiest of sunsets in shades of bright oranges and purples and pinks.

  She was still my best friend, still my better half.

  I could not picture my life without her in it.

  Now though, as our triplets attacked me in our recently well-used bed, was the wrong time to remember I didn’t lock the bedroom door before making love to my wife.

  But it wasn’t the first time we were woken up in a state of undress.

  There had been many stories over the years of how mommy rolled right out of her sleep shirt, or that daddy’s pants got stuck in the sheets somehow.

  “You’re home!” squealed my little Belle. Annabelle was triplet C, and had been the smallest of the three. Where Peyton and Presley looked identical—I remembered the comical fear that they were, they looked so much alike—Annabelle and Ashlyn truly were identical and had been what was called twin-to-twin transfusion babies.

  …Meaning Ashlyn was an asshole in the womb and took almost everything from Annabelle. Ashlyn was definitely the most headstrong of all five of our kids, something that wasn’t surprising in the least, considering her womb-antics.

  Annabelle though...

  For as small as she’d been, as small as she still was, she was strong like her momma.

  I heard the bathroom door click shut and pulled myself up to sit against the headboard, making sure to secure the comforter around my hips as I did so. Annabelle turned to sit on my lap, her back resting against my chest and her fingers tracing over my bracelet tattoo, as Ashlyn straddled my legs and Skip sat beside me, his legs crossed criss-cross applesauce style—when I was a kid, we called that Indian style, but, as I learned with our oldest two, that was politically incorrect.

  “Can you make pancakes?”

  “French toast!”

  “No, ice cream cake! Let’s have ice cream cake!”

  The triplets all spoke at once and I couldn’t help but smile, hugging Belle close to my chest as they fought over what to have for breakfast, even though we all knew where we’d be going this morning.

  Ice cream cake—which came from Skip, and totally my kind of breakfast—was definitely out of the question.

  Asher wouldn’t go for it.

  The triplets continued speaking over one another, talking about their week and how much they missed me. I heard a door open and before long, my nine-year-old ladies were in the room as well.

  All four of my girls looked like their mom; it was going to be a problem—sooner than later, I was sure. Apparently, Pres had her first kiss last Friday on the bus.

  At nine.

  Shoot me now.

  Better yet, let me get my own gun ready for a showdown.

  Shit, this was terrible. I wasn’t ready for it.

  Hugs and kisses and conversation pursued, and I enjoyed every fucking minute of it.

  I knew at nineteen, that Asher was my place to land. It took us a while to get here, but I wouldn’t trade a moment of it.

  Not now, knowing that this was all waiting for me.

  I showered quickly and, towel wrapped around me, walked into the large closet that was attached to our master bathroom. I could hear five different voices all chattering their dad’s ear off.

  I smiled as I pulled on a shift dress.

  Raising five kids during hockey season wasn’t the easiest, but it was moments like this one that made it all so worth it. The first pregnancy scared me—terrified me, really, when I learned there were two in there—because I didn’t think I had what it took to be a good mom. The second pregnancy, though…

  The second pregnancy terrified Porter.

  Everything from my pregnancy with the twins, was worse with the triplets. When we got pregnant the second time, multiples weren’t on our radar. My doctor told us that the likelihood of my HG returning with a single pregnancy, was slim.

  So, when I spent a week in the bathroom, we knew something was up.

  In the end, though, I thought Porter and I were doing a damn good job.

  The girls weren’t interested in hockey, and while I liked to tease Porter that it was his pushing that made Skip interested, I was pretty sure the boy was ready for skates long before Porter strapped them on him.

  Deciding that my husband probably needed to get in the bathroom by now, I moved my slowly drying mass of hair over my shoulder and left the warmth of the bathroom.

  “Alright everyone,” I spoke over their voices. “Go get dressed so we can go to breakfast.”

  That was our tradition—fancy breakfasts, as the twins once penned them.

  Really, it was just breakfast at the same mom and pop restaurant year after year. When we moved to San Diego, Porter made a point of restarting the tradition in our new city.

  All five little people—God, the twins were getting tall; when did that happen?—left the room and three bedroom doors closed shortly after. I followed suit, closing our own door, being sure to do what my husband failed to do last night, and locking it before making my way back to the bed.

  The whole time, Porter continued sitting there, bare-chested, and that sexy half-smile beckoning me. At thirty-three, the man still had it. He was still the full package.

  He still pissed me off, but made me laugh in the very next breath.

  His heavily tattooed, muscled arms were still the place I felt the safest—the most loved. Where I felt wanted and needed.

  My troublemaker found his way to a tattoo chair more often than not, and these days, his entire right half was covered in ink, from shoulder to ankle. Mostly grays and blacks, but the kids each had splashes of colorful ink in his sleeve, splashes that matched the watercolor slashes on my arm. On his back, to the right of his spine, were five footprints—each one a copy from their birth certificates.

  If you weren’t looking for it, Porter simply looked like a guy who liked tattoos, but if you knew what you were looking for, you saw his family woven in and throughout; we were the base of it all.

  The only tattoos he had on his left side were his wedding band, his ‘Mom’, Bri’s bracelet, and the giant Roman numeral XI—but now there were two ribbons woven through those two letters.

  Again—his family.

  “What’cha staring at, beautiful?” he asked, his crooked grin prominently displaying that dimple I loved to trace.

  “At my husband,” I answered quickly, easily. I hitched up the skirt of my dress and straddled his lap, the evidence of his arousal pressing firmly against the very core of me. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling his face to mine, so I could give him a proper good morning kiss.

  His tongue licked over the seam of my lips and he kissed me back, his arms snaking around my hips, but he pulled his mouth away from the kiss before I was ready.

  “I gotta piss,” he spoke against my lips.

  I chuckled against him, my lips curling up and my arms tightening around his neck, keeping him near. “Yeah, I know. Man of habit. I just wanted a moment.”

  “I’ve got lots of moments for you,” he whispered, his eyes piercing and staring into mine. In his eyes, I saw truth.

  I saw love.

  I saw forever.

  Our journey wasn’t the easiest, no, but I didn’t think we’d been ready for forever when we first met. I had too much to work through, emotionally. And while there were some steps in that process I would rather not have gone through, it led me to learn that it was okay to open up and lean on someone.

  Leaning on Porter had been the scariest thing I had to do in those first few years. It was why I’d pushed him away.

  But he didn’t give up on me.

  And for that, I would be forever grateful.

  I had a family, a family I never would have imagined for myself at seventeen.

 
“Seventy games to go,” I reminded him, still locked in close. Retiring at thirty-three hadn’t been his dream, no, but when his bad knee started bothering him again last season, he and I had a long talk about what came next. He was ready to be home more.

  He nodded. “Seventy games to go. What are you gonna do with a has-been like me?”

  I tilted my chin up so I could nip at his nose. “Probably love you. Maybe give you more chores around the house.”

  “Ah, so I’ll have to work for my keep.”

  I couldn’t help the fast smile and shrugged a shoulder, loosening my arms so I could lean back in his lap and take him in fully. “Well, yeah. You won’t be bringing in the money any more. I’ll be the bread-winner.”

  I fully took over Studio 11 back home a few years ago, and pretty much just shot summer weddings; it worked for us. With his retirement, though, I’d be able to open up my availability for the year. A little anyway, because—

  “You know damn well I can’t just walk away from the Enforcers organization. They’ll have me in some fancy office before the retirement ceremony is aired.”

  I pursed my lips, pretending to contemplate this fact.

  I was well aware that my husband was likely going to stick with hockey, in some form or another, after retirement. Caleb was still the head coach, with Jonny as the goaltending coach. It wouldn’t surprise me if they moved Porter into the soon-to-be vacant assistant coach position. Mike, one of the two current assistant coaches, was due for a promotion, and was looking at head coach positions on the East Coast.

  I wanted my husband around more, yes, but hockey was Porter’s life. It had been from the moment I met him. But, just like he had when we first met, he made more than enough room in his life for me and now, for the five kiddos who gave us more hell than either of us had been prepared for.

  We should have been.

  Prepared, that was.

  They looked like me and acted like him.

  It was quite the wild ride, this love that Porter and I built. I wouldn’t trade it though.

  His hands dropped down to the lower crest of my ass where I was sitting on him. I teasingly moved over his growing erection, which only served to lift the hem of my dress up a little more. Soon, his fingers were on my bare skin.