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Cami snort-laughed. “Oh, Cal, you might still have all of your hockey money tucked away untouched, but you still can’t afford my silence on something this good.”
The nosy texts from his sisters were about to go into overdrive. Painful but worth it.
…
The second can of Diet Coke appeared on her desk the next day with five familiar-looking pink ballpoint pens taped to it.
Astrid tried her best to smother her grin and squash the giddy feeling making it hard to stand still, but there was no stopping it. She pulled off one of the pens and made it all of three seconds before giving in and sniffing the pompom.
Bubblegum. Silly? Yes. Immature. Completely. Put a smile on her face? Ear to fucking ear.
She’d been searching for the scented pens in every stationery shop in Harbor City for the past year and had come up empty. Where in the world had Cal found them? How did he even know to look for them? She’d never mentioned them.
“Well, that’s one way to keep Parvo from stealing your bubblegum-scented pens,” her dad said from the open doorway leading to his office. “I was telling some of the guys during lunch the other day about how when we were with the Rage, you swapped your pens with bubblegum-smelling ones with pink pompoms on them thinking he’d stop walking off with them.”
“Didn’t work because I’m too cool to deal with that toxic masculinity bullshit,” Parvo said from the other side of Astrid’s cubicle. “I look forward to long-term borrowing those pink pens, Pipsqueak.”
Astrid ran her fingers over the pens. They were the same shade as his sweater the night they’d met. Not that she thought about that night. Well, not a lot.
Okay, a lot.
Especially when she was staring up at her ceiling at night.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
CAL: Are you watching the game?
ASTRID: It’s the first pre-season game of the year. Of course I’m watching.
CAL: Jones is still a fucking mess.
ASTRID: But better than before.
CAL: Maybe. A little. You wanna watch the game up here?
ASTRID: That doesn’t seem like a good idea.
CAL: Why?
ASTRID: Because I seem to end up naked whenever I’m around you.
CAL: And that’s bad?
ASTRID: It’s not ideal, you know since we work together??? And the last thing I want is to make my dad deal with me being a drama magnet in the press again??? You know they’d love a juicy story about the coach’s daughter who got left at the altar by the team goalie sleeping with that goalie’s coach.
CAL: Explains why you ducked behind the jukebox when I stopped in The Flying Sow tonight to pay my rent. You almost knocked that guy’s pint out of his hand in your rush to get around him.
ASTRID: It wasn’t me.
CAL: Whatever you say.
ASTRID: Good night, Cal.
CAL: Good night, Astrid.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The third and fourth Diet Coke cans came on the same day, completely filling the inside of a small, yellow desktop fridge decorated with a Maine Coon sticker.
