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Astrid worked at keeping her face neutral. “That makes two of us.” She pulled the door shut behind her. “Let’s go get brunch. I’m starving.”
“Whatever you want, Button.”
She slipped her arm through his, and they headed down the stairs. Her dad was halfway into a semi-rant about weirdos online who claimed potatoes weren’t breakfast food by the time they got down to the lobby. Astrid was making all the right noises at all the right times, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that what she really wanted right now was the one person she couldn’t have, at least not publicly: Cal. And that couldn’t happen.
Chapter Forty-Three
That afternoon, Astrid knew something was wrong when her phone rang and Nola’s face popped up on her screen. Nola always texted.
Gut churning, Astrid answered. “Nola, what’s wrong?”
“You…okay?” Nola said, her question broken up by static. “I saw…on train… Don’t freak…mother fuckers… Call back…”
“Nola?” Astrid hollered into her phone. “What’s going on?”
“On my way… Fucking assholes… Be okay…” Then the line went dead.
Half a second later, a picture of Thea in an inflatable T. Rex costume lit up her phone.
Astrid’s stomach collapsed in on itself and sank down to her toes. Whatever was wrong, it was bad.
“What is going on?” she asked as soon as she hit the answer icon on the video call. “Is Nola okay? She just called, but she must have been on the train, so I only got like every three words.”
Thea passed by the neon sign in the Flying Sow Pub’s window, her hair whipping around her as the sky grew darker by the second. “She’s fine, but how are you? Are you a complete mess?”
Astrid looked down at her chipped toenails, the mystery bruise on her shin that she’d gotten who knew how, and the loose lounge pants and tank she’d changed into after brunch with her dad. Yeah, she wasn’t going to the ESPYs ready but wasn’t a total wreck.
“What is going on, Thea?”
She hissed out a “fuck me” under her breath as she turned the corner of Astrid’s block. “You haven’t seen it.”
Forget her knees. Forget her toes. Forget the floorboards. Her stomach did a clench-and-twist move that sent it falling all the way down to the center of the center of the center of the planet.
Way past panic, Astrid tried to hold her phone steady and asked, “Seen what?”
Thea’s mouth twisted in sympathy and then fell half into shadow as she walked into the alcove of Astrid’s lobby door just as the first drops of rain hit her phone.
“I’ll show you everything. Don’t worry, I brought the vodka.”
Thea held up a half-empty bottle of Ciroc Ten-X vodka that Nola had swiped from her boss’s office liquor cabinet—on the day she’d told him to go fuck himself and quit her soul-sucking corporate job. They’d finished a quarter of it that night, toasting to all the horrible things that would befall that shitbird of a man. They’d finished a second quarter the day Thea had gotten passed over for a promotion to assistant paleontology chair that she had completely deserved, which went to a trust-fund nepo-baby who totally hadn’t, but his family had a wing named after them at the Harbor City Natural History Museum.
The fact that whatever had happened was bad enough to break out the disaster vodka meant it wasn’t just bad, it was cataclysmic. Hand shaking, Astrid hit the button that unlocked the lobby door.
…
“So we find out who it was and we make their life hell,” Nola said. “Agreed?”
Eyes still watering from the takes-no-prisoners punch of her vodka shot, Astrid sat on a stool at her kitchen island and watched Nola pace the length of her living room. It was strange seeing her take on the job of slightly unhinged avenger. That was usually Astrid’s role in their little threesome. However, she’d been too busy staring at the photo of her and Cal after dinner last night to go on a rant.
They looked cute together, happy, at ease. He was smiling down at her as she was talking, using her hands a lot per usual. They were walking through the Breakaways neighborhood, past the mom-and-pop restaurants, the local dives, and the art galleries. There were people on either side of them, going in either direction, but she and Cal looked like they thought there was no one else in the world but them. If it wasn’t for the headlines, she’d probably love the photo.
But those headlines? They fucking ruined everything.
The back page on the Harbor City Post ran with HAT TRICK: ICE KNIGHTS LOVE TRIANGLE. The byline was that of Astrid’s nemesis from the wedding that wasn’t days. The reporter had published some of the worst rumors confirmed by anonymous sources who probably didn’t exist and definitely didn’t know what they were talking about.
Not surprisingly, her latest story about Astrid included a sixty-percent true blow-by-blow account of how Tig had dumped her and the most gruesome details of Cal’s last game before it became some kind of wild fiction about how she was dating Cal and Tig at the same time. The story went on to say that this was sure to cause disruption in the Knights’ locker room as players would be forced to choose between their goalie and their coach’s daughter once again.
Hockey Heroes went another route with the headline ONCE-SCORNED BRIDE GETS REVENGE ON KNIGHTS’ JONES. The story had posted an hour after the Post had broken the news, and it was almost pure bullshit. Not surprisingly coming from a sports site where the editor had been accused of being a total asshole to most of the women in his orbit, the story focused on how Astrid had been waiting for her perfect moment to get back at Tig. Her devious plan was to date Cal in order to make Tig jealous and fuck up his return back to a hall-of-fame-worthy save percentage. They’d even called her the zombie bride.
