Beck snorts. "Is that what you're calling sleeping with a different girl every night of the week?"
Thorne's grin fades and he rolls his eyes. "Don't be jealous. I haven't done that in a while, not that you've been around enough to notice."
"What, suddenly you're not the biggest manwhore on the team?" Beck shakes his head. "You earned that title by sleeping with three puck bunnies in one day, man. Two of them at the same time!"
My cheeks burn when Thorne turns his head to look at me, and then continues the conversation in a lower voice. Do I already know that my crush is a ho? Yes. Do I like my brother rubbing it in my face?
No, I don't.
I've memorized which version of him shows up on which days. Low on sleep Thorne is sharper around theedges, slower to joke. Comfortable Thorne leans into doorframes and lets his guard down with the rookies. And then there's the version I almost never see. The one that appeared in his cabin on the Fourth of July. That one is quiet and specific and aimed directly at me.
I’ve been turning that version over in my hands for three weeks, like something I found on the ground and can't figure out where it belongs.
Standing, I start to gather my stuff. I came down to capture some footage, but I've got more than enough. My cramped office will be a nice, quiet place to upload video files to various platforms. It also has a distinct lack of bro-ed-out hockey players.
As I'm packing up my stuff, Scout Nash and Juliet Monroe come up to me. Scout pushes her blonde, curly hair over her shoulder and gives me the most genuine smile.
"Hey!"
“Hey. How have your migraines been?”
She rolls her eyes and smiles. “It turns out that if I have a certain type of cheese, I get a migraine 24 hours later. Isn’t that the craziest nonsense you’ve ever heard?”
“Wait, so gouda is fine but one of those funky aged cheeses makes you sick?”
“It’s a little unclear still. I’ve cut all cheese out of my diet. I’ll start reintroducing fresh mozzarella, ricotta, cream cheese, and cottage cheese eventually.” She shrugs. “I haven’t had a headache since, so I’m pretty sure that we’ve caught the culprit. The cheese-prit?”
I groan. Scout’s always full of terrible, not-quite jokes, but the way she says them is so damn nice I can't do anything but laugh. "It’s been a while. We should get together soon."
"We should convene the Coven," Juliet says. "Preferably with a lot of tequila."
I wrinkle my nose. "Tequila gives you rugburn on your face."
Both women give me an alarmed expression. Scout reaches out and touches my wrist. "What now?"
I wave a hand. "It's something my friend Indie says."
"Ohhhh." Juliet nods. "Got it. Well?—"
As she's speaking, two tall men come around the side of the rink. One has almost-shaved dark hair and wears an obviously expensive suit. An agent or a lawyer, I'd bet. The other is in a Los Angeles Sharks hoodie and jeans, with long, messy, dark hair that's pretty en mode for hockey dudes right now.
Actually, scratch that. It's always a classic hairstyle with hockey players. His eyes scan the three of us, lighting up when he sees me. His accompanying smirk makes my stomach flip.
I can’t help but stare. The stranger has the kind of cheekbones that make you wonder if his parents were some kind of lesser gods. There's a scar through his left eyebrow, thin and old.
He moves the way the biggest person in every room moves, like he's already decided the space belongs to him and is simply allowing the rest of us to use it.
Then he turns his head, and I notice the small device tucked behind his right ear, half hidden by his hair. My stomach drops before my brain catches up with why.
Konstantin Kuznetsov is taller than I expected, which is saying something because I already expected tall. Dark hair pulled back, a scar through his left eyebrow that didn't come from hockey, and the cochlear implant tucked behind his right ear that he makes zero attempt to hide. I should have recognized him immediately when I saw the familiar dark hair pulled back.
I know Kuznetsov's numbers the way I know my own. Forty-seven goals last season, sixty-one assists, more penalty minutes than any forward in the Western Conference. Plays center, left wing, right wing, wherever you put him, which sounds useful right up until you remember that Los Angeles buried the story of what he did to Dabrowski so fast it made your head spin. His own teammate. Four days in the hospital. Whatever Dabrowski said or did, Kuznetsov's response was so far outside any reasonable boundary that the Sharks' front office paid significant money to make sure the details stayed private.
“What are you doing here?"
I whip my head around to find Juliet bristling. She isn't talking to the hockey player, but to the sharply dressed man in the suit.
The man grins and says, "Well, hello to you too. Scout, you're looking?—"
