“Game first,” he says to the room at large.
Right.
Game first.
Even if Muffy won’t be there tonight, I know she’ll watch the highlights reel. Can’t tell me half her wardrobe is Thrusters gear and she doesn’t care what happens during the games.
You’re damn right I want to make the highlights reel.
“Wait,” Klein says. “If you’re dating Muffy, who was the chick in the shower with you?”
I flip him off while a round of laughter and hoots go around. They all know I’m dating Muffy.
We talked about it last night.
Which means those assholes came into my place this morning knowing what they were walking into. “Remove those images from your brain, or I’ll do it for you.”
“We didn’t see a thing,” Rooster says. He’s already in his practice jersey and skates, but instead of his helmet, he’s still wearing his cowboy hat.
I’d bet money he has a stuffed Thrusty stored in there. I’ve seen him pull one out to hand to kids more than once after a game, though I don’t know why anyone would want it after it lived in his hat.
Gross.
“We saw enough to know he wasn’t alone,” Klein points out.
“You cheating on Muffy already?” Nick asks.
“No. That was my sister.”
An awkward silence falls in the dressing room, and I swallow a smile while I pull on my own practice jersey.
“You got issues, Jaegs,” one of the guys mutters.
“Or maybe he wants some privacy because relationships are hard enough when they’re all over the gossip pages,” Lavoie mutters.
“Wait, what?” I say at the same time Nick moves down the bench and gets in his face. “Talk. What?”
Lavoie rolls his eyes and lifts his phone. “Gossip pages. Tyler. Your sister-in-law is Daisy. She went to that funeral with you. And you didn’t think the rags would pick it up?”
I snag it and look at the site he’s pulled up.
Dammit.
There’s a shot of Muffy and me at the funeral. And another of us kissing. And a third of me holding the car door for her looking like I want to eat a piece of the metal.
The headline makes me want to eat this phone.
Mystery Girl in Daisy Carter-Kincaid’s Family Circle.
“Whatever.” I throw the phone back at him. “It’ll get two hundred clicks, all from inside this room, and that won’t be worth it for the gossips to keep digging. There’s no payoff in who I’m dating. I don’t sell magazines.”
That’s why I’m never in the gossip rags myself.
I’m never the draw.
Daisy is.
“Could help her business get some word-of-mouth advertising,” Klein points out.
It could, but the idea of the public at large picking apart a business called Muff Matchers that specializes in helping women who don’t fit the standard mold—let’s just say I’d have to quit hockey and spend the rest of my life egging houses and getting in bar fights after I hired a hacker to track down every last internet troll.
Fuck.
That wasn’t a fluke last night.
I love this woman. And I don’t know what to do about it.
Tell her?
Not a chance. She’d bolt faster than a starving lion chasing a gazelle.
I don’t even have any faith she’ll still be at my place tonight, much less when I get back from the team’s road trip out to Vegas and Seattle this week.
Lavoie and Ares settle on either side of me on the bench.
“Tell her,” Ares says.
“She might want to use the story for her own purposes,” Lavoie adds. “Let her make the call.”
Ares grunts.
Pretty sure that’s a grunt of that wasn’t what I meant and you know it.
He thinks I should tell Muffy that I love her.
“Right,” I say to Lavoie. “She’s smart about her business stuff. She’ll know if it’s good or bad.”
Ares grunts again.
Lavoie grins. “Go easy on him, big guy. It’s terrifying the first time it happens.”
And now I don’t know if he’s talking about me or the story.
Or both.
Coach walks into the dressing room. “Ten minutes, gentlemen. Applebottom, switch to white team today. Lavoie and Klein, marketing wants you for a video with Thrusty. Jaeger, medical. Now. You’re not getting on the ice until you get your head checked.”
Now I’m grunting.
I don’t want to report to medical. I want to go play hockey.
Apparently my doctor’s note hasn’t come through yet. Fucking dead body.
But I’d still do it all over again.
I grab my phone before I head down the maze to the on-site clinic, and I text Muffy on the way.
33
Muffy
Do I have an overdeveloped sense of right and wrong, or am I so new at being the one actually in a relationship that I’m suddenly feeling like a total jerk for sitting at a bagel shop with a guy who thinks we’re here on a date?
I know it’s not a date.
But he doesn’t.
He thinks he’s here to meet Octavia Louisa, formerly an airman in the Air Force, who likes crocheting and CrossFit, and is currently studying classic literature through an online master’s degree program.
He’s a single dad of a ten-year-old, working some kind of technical job at a telecommunications company, divorced because he got married too young to his pregnant college sweetheart, telling me about his mom’s cat without giving off unhealthy attachment vibes, and I’m rapidly deciding I could introduce him to Brianna.
Just to be sure, I accidentally spill my coffee.
And then my phone dings.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” I leap up, glance at my phone, realize it’s Tyler messaging, and my nipples harden into diamonds.
My date’s grabbing napkins and asking if I’m okay while I stand there getting wet in the panties at the mere sight of my boyfriend’s name.
Boyfriend.
I have a boyfriend.
It’s the weirdest sensation.
And also terrifying. I mean, apparently sex is good, but how long until he gets bored of me? Is this like a this week thing, or is it a we’re officially dating with the purpose of seeing if we’re compatible long-term thing?
“Octavia?”
Oh, crap. My date’s said my name like seven times, and I forgot he was talking to me.
Also, I don’t remember what his name is.
“Sorry,” I stutter as I dive in to helping clean my mess. “Family emergency.”
“Do you need to go?”
“No. It’s my cousin’s goldfish. He’ll probably make it. She’s a vet. She knows mouth-to-mouth.” Shut up, Muffy. Shut. Up.
My date peers at me with the kind of warm concern that Brianna deserves.
Or possibly he’s starting to question my mental state.
All good. This isn’t a date, after all.
I manage to end my not-date soon after so I can check the message from Tyler. Before I let myself click on his studly face, though, I prep a note to my date—Steve, that’s his name—to send after a while where I’ll apologize for being flaky, tell him this is a weird question, but I feel like he should meet my friend Brianna?