“Good time for what?” I asked, taking her hands in mine and giving them a gentle squeeze since she seemed nervous.
“To share my surprise with you.” Her gaze darted to Emily and Sarah, and she flashed them an apologetic smile. “I wasn’t sure how you’d take it, so I kept the arrangements I made a secret until now.”
“C’mon, tell him,” Sarah urged.
“Yeah, I want to know, too,” Emily added with a nod.
“Do you want to get out of Black Mountain?” she asked me with a mischievous gleam in her eyes.
I didn’t know what she was up to, but I was down for whatever she wanted to do. “Sure. Where do you want to go?”
“Lots of places. I thought we could take an extended trip over the summer. I want to show you all my favorite places around the world and booked us tickets and hotel rooms for the first few weeks to get us started.” She grinned and wagged her eyebrows. “Starting at the beach in California, where we can hang out at a house on the beach in our swimsuits all week long.”
“You know how much I love the beach.” Sarah jumped up and down. “Count me in.”
“Me, too,” Emily agreed. “As long as you’re cool with us crashing part of your vacation.”
“The house I rented has three bedrooms, so there’s plenty of room.” Emme stared up at me with wide eyes. “But only if Corby is okay with you guys joining us for part of the trip.”
As long as I got to spend time with Emme, I didn’t mind if her best friends hijacked her plans. “It seems only fair that Emily and Sarah join us since I would’ve come along if you three did a girls’ trip instead.”
“Woohoo! This is awesome.” Emily did a fist pump to celebrate.
“I need to buy some new swimsuits before we leave.” Sarah pointed at Emme and asked, “When do we leave?”
“The reservation is for two days from now. Corby and I have something we need to do tomorrow before we leave.”
Emme was full of surprises today. “We do?”
She gripped my biceps and went up on her toes. Whispering near my ear, she added, “I thought we could go see your dad before we head to California.”
“Shit, Emme.” I pulled her close and buried my face in her neck. Although the hockey season had been over for a little more than two months, I still hadn’t made the drive up to the prison to see my dad. Emme and I hadn’t really talked about it again since the day I told her about what happened when my mom died, but somehow, she must have known the decision had been weighing on my mind all this time. It took me a moment to pull myself together enough to say, “I’d really fucking love to take you to meet my dad, baby. Thank you for giving me the nudge I needed to finally go up there.”
The following morning, Emme and I hit the road in her BMW. Luckily, she was okay with me driving because concentrating on the road kept me from freaking out during the five-hour trip to the prison. Going through prison security with her at my side was uncomfortable and humbling, but she hadn’t complained about a single step of the process. As we entered the lobby area to wait for my name to be called, Emme tugged on my arm and pointed at a kiosk in a corner on the opposite side of the room. “From what the guard said, we should have enough time to add some money to your dad’s commissary account.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. “What?”
She tugged me across the room and pressed some buttons on the screen before holding her hand out. “I need your license.”
I pulled out my wallet and handed it to her. She held it under a scanner and gave it back before she explained, “I did some research into prison life, and everything I read said you can help your family member be more comfortable by adding money to their commissary account. As long as we’re here, I thought we could take care of that for your dad.”
Yet again, my girlfriend’s kindness blew me away. She didn’t care that my dad was in prison for killing a man. The only thing that mattered to her was that I loved him. “Shit, I only have a couple of twenties.”
“No worries, I hit up the ATM yesterday.” She pulled a stack of bills out of her purse. “It said online that some prisons have a limit to how much you can add. If this place doesn’t, I wanted to make sure your dad could buy anything he needs since he’s been on his own in here for so long.”
Emme’s money had never been a problem for me, probably because she’d never made an issue of it. She spent what she wanted on the things important to her, but she didn’t throw her money around to impress other people. But I never wanted her to doubt that I was with her because of who she was and not what she could buy. Wrapping my fingers around her wrist before she could insert bills into the machine, I rasped, “You know I love you and not your money, right?”
“You love me?” she gasped, her eyes going wide.
This wasn’t the romantic setting where I’d planned on telling her about my feelings, but visiting my dad in prison was significant to me and somehow made this the perfect moment. Cupping her face in my hands, I whispered, “I love you so fucking much, baby.”
Her smile was brighter than it had ever been before as she answered, “Thank goodness, because I love you right back.”
The grumbling of someone behind us about how long we were taking stopped me from following my declaration of love up with a kiss. Emme worked her magic on the kiosk and got the cash deposited seconds before the guard called my name. Since Emme’s name wasn’t on the approved visitor’s list yet, she couldn’t see my dad with me. I got her settled in a seat closest to the guard’s station and brushed a kiss against her forehead. “I’ll be back soon, baby.”
“Take all the time you need,” she insisted, pulling her e-reader out of her purse. “I have plenty of books to keep me from getting bored.”
Leaving her behind, I followed the guard to the area where prisoners visited with their family. When I saw my dad sitting at the closest table, dressed in his prison uniform, my vision grew misty. He’d aged so much in here. I wanted to kick my own ass for taking so long to come see him.
“Corby, my boy. It’s so good to see you.” His blue eyes, so much like my own, scanned my tall form. “You’re all grown up now.”
I smiled and sat down. “I’d better be grown up because the woman I’m going to marry someday is sitting out in the lobby, waiting for me.”
“Tell me all about her,” he urged.
We spent my first visit to the prison with me sharing the story of how I fell in love with Emme.
19
Emmeline
Five weeks into our summer break, Corby’s big day to determine what was going to happen with his hockey career was here. We’d flown from Paris to Montreal a few days early to do some exploring before we needed to be at the arena. The excitement in the air was contagious, and I could almost ignore the crowds of people and media around us. Most of the reports that had come out in the past month had Corby listed as a probable first round draft pick.
At first, I’d been super confused by how it all worked since I’d thought college athletes weren’t supposed to play professional sports. But ice hockey must’ve been full of rebels because they had their own rules, and players could be drafted without actually signing a contract to play for the team that picked them. From what Corby had told me, he was going to play college hockey for at least a couple of seasons before he’d be ready to take the ice as a professional player. I didn’t fully get how it all worked, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to hear his name called early. The earlier the better because my butt was a little sore from sitting here so long.