My Hockey Alpha novel Chapter 128

Nina

Enzo kissed me. He didn’t pull away suddenly, or kiss me by accident. He kissed me softly and deeply, with his hands cupped around my cheeks. His scent overwhelmed me, making me relax into his body. It felt as though we were floating on a cloud, and everything else fell away.

When we finally pulled away, it was reluctant. We rested our foreheads against each other, breathing deeply. I closed my eyes, taking in his scent as much as I could.

“What made you turn around?” he asked as he led me to his motorcycle.

I stared at the ground, unsure as to how to answer. But I wanted to be truthful. “It was your scent,” I finally said. “I knew I had to turn back then.”

He nodded quietly. I wondered if he picked up my scent, too, but he didn’t say. As we climbed onto the motorcycle, he caught a glimpse of the baby blanket in my hand and pointed at it. “Is that…”

I nodded, holding it up. It was small, a bit tattered around the edges, and the pattern was faded, but it was the same blanket from the pictures.

“My mom said it’s the only link to my past… I think it might help me figure out who this woman is that keeps sending people to capture me.”

As I held it, I felt a slight tingling in my fingers. It was almost as though the blanket held some sort of magic, but I knew that was ridiculous. I pocketed it, then helped Enzo strap my suitcase down to the luggage rack on the back of his motorcycle. When we were finished, he handed me a helmet before we climbed on and drove away.

That night, Enzo took me back to a motel room that he had rented before all of this happened. It was a cheap, run-down motel along the side of the highway. Apparently, he’d planned on spending the night there until my mother calmed down, and then he was going to come back to try to talk to us and figure out what was going on.

I explained everything to Enzo as we made our way into the motel room, including the curse that his father hired a witch to cast on my brother. When I was finished, he sat on the edge of the bed with a confused expression on his face and wrung his hands.

“My father is a jerk, but I really can’t see him cursing a baby,” he said thoughtfully. “Sure, he might make threats, and I could see him bribing your mother to take you out of the country to get away from me… But I just know that he’s not that violent.”

I sighed. There were two small beds in the room, and I sat down on the other. “I don’t know. But either way, I promised my mom that I would find a way to let her come back. If I could strike up a deal, maybe--”

Enzo shook his head. “Let me handle it,” he said solemnly, then gestured toward the baby blanket in my hand. “You’ve got enough on your plate.”

I looked down at the blanket and nodded. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

“For now,” Enzo said, standing, “we’ve got an early morning tomorrow, and it’s already two o’clock in the morning. We should get some sleep.”

I agreed. We got ready for bed, then got into our own beds; despite our kiss, there was still a lot of confusion surrounding the arranged marriage, and we decided it was best to sleep separately. As I fell asleep with the taste of Enzo’s lips still on mine, however, I couldn’t help but notice that he kept the red scarf in his hand while he slept.

…

At some point during the night, I awoke with a yelp. I sat up abruptly in bed, panting from my most recent nightmare that involved Edward’s torture.

Enzo shot up, too, startled by my sudden outcry.

“Are you okay?” he asked from across the dark room.