“This is also for you,” I say when the spectacle is over. I hold out the ring box. “There are actually two compartments in here.”
She turns to me, eyes shining. “Sorry, what?”
“Lift off the ring holder.”
Charli does, revealing a necklace in the bottom of the box. “What is…oh.” She holds up the choker-length necklace made of many tiny stones in black and bright rainbow colors. “Neil! This is badass. Are the colored stones from…?” She raises curious eyes to mine.
“Yup. From the Vegas ring. The other stones are called black spinel. I asked Vera to find a designer who could make the ugly ring into something cool.”
“Damn,” Charli whispers. “I’d have bet that couldn’t be done. But wow. This is amazing.”
“Let’s put it on you.” I put the box onto the table, and Charli turns around so I can clip the necklace around her creamy neck.
“I need a mirror,” she says.
I beckon her inside, where she looks into the mirror on the bedroom wall. “Hubby, it’s amazing. You’re amazing.”
Behind her, I wrap my arms around her waist and kiss her neck. “You know we’re going to have to let my mother throw us that party now, right?”
She laughs. “Fine. I’m not wearing a fluffy white dress, though. That ship has sailed.”
“Whatever you want.” I kiss her neck again. “I love you.”
She turns around and hugs me. “Not as much as I love you.”
“If you say so. But…” I pull away and grab the divorce papers off the bed. I offer them to Charli. “You want to do the honors?”
She grabs them and then gets ready to tear. “Never tell me how many billable hours this woman charged us for.”
“Deal.”
She rips the papers, and they flutter to the bedroom floor.
On the way home, we use one of the larger Drake jets to accommodate all our friends. Charli and I sit side by side holding hands. “So, I got you an engagement present, but it’s a little weird.”
She rolls her head against the leather seat to look at me. “Now I’m nervous. I hope it didn’t cost more than a hundred bucks, Drake. You know I get antsy when you spend a fortune. And I’m already wearing a fortune in jewelry.”
“Hmm. This cost a little more than the jewelry. And you can’t even use it.”
“Great pick then, hubby. What did you do?”
I tap my fingers nervously on the tray table. Charli looks pointedly down at them, so I stop. “The sports complex for Draper and Parkhurst. The one that was going to be named for a child molester?”
“Yes,” Charli says slowly. “What about it?”
“I got them to drop his name. In fact, I got them to promise they would never name any building or any part of the campus or the curriculum after him.”
She leans toward me, eyes wide. “Really? How?”
“By donating a little more than sixty-five thousand dollars. Well, a lot more. Actually, it was—”
She clamps her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to know. I probably wouldn’t think it was a great investment.”
At two million bucks, she probably wouldn’t. So I guess I’ll just keep that figure to myself. “It’s going to be a really nice facility.”
She removes her hands. “But you and I had to change in those dank old locker rooms. We lived.”
“You, meanie.” I squeeze her knee. “Do you really want to deprive the teens of wooden locker cubbies and new carpeting in the team colors? There’s an indoor soccer field for wintertime practice, too.”
“Ooh.” Her eyes light up. “Okay, so I guess it sounds cool. But keeping that asshole’s name off it sounds even better. I can’t believe you got them to agree to it.”
“It was a really interesting conversation. But here’s the thing—we got naming rights. So now we have to decide what to call it.”
Charli sits back in her seat. “Naming rights? Like—the Drake Family Gymnasium?”
“Baby, no. I was thinking the Charli Fern Higgins Gymnasium.”
“You’d really name it after me?” she squeaks.
“In big-ass gold letters, doll. What better way to get back at that asshole? Splash your name all over the entrance.”
Her smile is enormous as she leans in and puts her chin on my shoulder. “That’s… wow. I like your style. But I have a better naming idea. I like—the Charli and Neil Drake Gymnasium.”
“That does have a certain ring to it,” I whisper.
“In big-ass gold letters,” she agrees. “I’m totally sold.”
T H E
E N D
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ALSO BY SARINA BOWEN
MORE BROOKLYN HOCKEY
Rookie Move (Leo & Georgia)
Hard Hitter (O’Doul & Ari)
Pipe Dreams (Beacon & Lauren)
Brooklynaire (Nate and Rebecca)
Overnight Sensation (Castro & Heidi Jo)
Superfan (Silas and Delilah)
Sure Shot (Bess and Tank)
Bombshells (Anton & Sylvie)
Must Love Hockey (Jimbo & Emily)
And don’t miss these players in their spin-off books:
Moonlighter (Eric Bayer & Alex)
Bountiful (Beringer & Zara)
COLLEGE HOCKEY
The Year We Fell Down #1
The Year We Hid Away #2
The Understatement of the Year #3
The Shameless Hour #4
The Fifteenth Minute #5
Extra Credit #6
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you so much to Sue Moss, attorney at law, for straightening out my understanding of New York divorce law. Who knew the law was so bonkers?
Also, thank you to Anna Schlissel for your expert advice on Neil’s diabetes.
Thank you K.J. Dell’Antonia and Jess Lahey for your constant support and company!
Thanks to Jenn Gaffney and Natasha Leskiw for your tireless efforts to make these books shine and reach their full potential.
As always, thank you to Edie Danford for your insightful edits, and to Claudia F. Stahl for your impeccable proofreading.