Page 52 of Pucking My Bad Boy Enemy

"But here's the thing about this team. We don't measure the year by the Cup." A grin spreads slowly across his face. "We measure it by this. By a family that keeps getting bigger." He turns to us, and his voice goes rough. "To Jax and Margot. Who took the long way. And got here at the perfect moment."

Later, I catch Derek and Dr. Olivia by the bar. Now they're just standing too close and not looking at each other, and it’s so obvious that they like each other.

"You're staring." Jax's arm slides around my waist from behind.

"I'm scouting. It's for the pool."

"Put me down for New Year's. Derek doesn't do anything fast except hit people."

He pulls me out onto the grass for the last dance of the night, the string lights swaying, most of the team gone soft and sentimental around us.

He holds me the way he's going to hold me for the rest of my life, and I put my head on his chest, over a heart I know now beats slow and easy when I'm this close.

I lift my hand between us, and the ring catches the string lights, and next to it now there's a plain gold band. And I still can't quite believe either one is real.

"It only took me four years, a plan, a fake boyfriend, a spreadsheet, a viral airport photo, and an enforcer with a camera phone that saved the day."

He laughs, and kisses my forehead.

"You made it happen. Good girl." And I feel him smile against me.

"You helped, Puckboy." He laughs, that real one, and I hold onto my husband and dance in a field under string lights with our families around us.

Turns out the girl in the freezing car knew exactly what she was doing.

Happy Ever After: Margot

Jax stands at our stove in a Blizzards tee gone soft, a dish towel slung over one shoulder, stirring a pot of something that smells like heaven.

I sit on the counter with a glass of wine and the private, smug knowledge that the entire city of Chicago thinks it knows this man and not one single person alive knows him like this.

"Taste." He holds the spoon out flat over his own hand so it won't drip onto me.

I taste. “It's perfect.”

We eat at the island, and somewhere between the pasta and the second glass of wine he drops it, casual, like it isn't the funniest sentence in the entire history of our marriage.

"We finished the sex spreadsheet, by the way."

I choke on my wine. "We what?"

"Your spreadsheet." He is deeply, insufferably pleased with himself. "I checked. Every milestone. Crossed off, completed, retired with honors. We are, and I want this on the record, fully caught up on your entire original curriculum, Mrs. Hunter."

"That took months."

"It was a very thorough list, taught by a very generous professor." He tops off my glass, grinning like a menace. "So we’re ready to start my spreadsheet."

"I finally get to see it?"

"Yes. It's ambitious. You're going to want to stretch first."

I laugh, I can’t help it. My husband will do anything to make me happy. Even learn my love language using spreadsheets.

The tabloids will tell you he's the bad boy. The league's favorite disaster. My first and worst assignment, the enemy they dropped on my desk. They're wrong about all of it.

And I was right and he never saw me coming.

Best blindside of both our lives.

THE END