Best kisser.
Best fuck of my life.
And now, the woman who just sprinted away from me like I’m a goddamn threat to her sanity.
“You should know who that is, because that’s our owner’s daughter. Caleb’s daughter.”
Silence. My thoughts all come to a screeching halt.
“What?” I whisper. Because I heard him. But I don’t understand.
He chuckles. “Yeah. Best you never talk to Bri again, man. I don’t think Caleb would be cool with knowing you were sucking her face before you hit his ice.”
And then he leaves me there. Standing in the middle of the gym, still reeling, still trying to process as my brain plays a cruel little highlight reel of the past year of my life. The kiss. The night in my hotel room. The teasing. The cake. The way she lifted me in this gym. The smart mouth. The green eyes. The serendipity.
The woman I spent an entire night with naked. The woman who vanished immediately after, leaving me with nothing but an empty bed, a bruised ego, and aBluebirdtattoo burned into my memory. The woman who is, apparently, also my new team’s owner’s daughter. The woman who knew. And said nothing.
She knew. The whole time she was laughing and stealing cake and letting me bench press her in a hotel gym, she knew exactly who I was. She looked me in the eye and gave me a fake name and let me kiss her like I was something new to her.
She knew.
Fuck. Yeah. Lochlan’s right.
I’m screwed.
Chapter 7 – Brianna
The bar is quiet tonight, which is exactly what I needed for this final study session. I’ve come to learn that Brookhaven Brews always smells like old wood, coffee and something deep fried. On a Tuesday night in late August with the summer crowd thinning out, it feels like the closest thing I have to peace right now.
I moved here ten months ago on the advice of a stranger who slept with my temporary roommate, Alexa, after my one-night stand with Seth Tremblay. Then, I met Penn, one of the forwards for the Mayhem, during my internship and he said it sounded like exactly the kind of place I'd romanticize into my whole personality within a week. He was totally right.
I took the train out on a whim, walked the main street once, found a coffee shop that only served drinks out of holiday themed mugs and a window seat overlooking the town that the lake is wrapped around, and never really went back to thecity except for work. It reminds me a little of the Midwest but without all the tornados and dirt.
I've got my textbooks spread across the bar top even though I finished my doctorate program exactly one week ago, because old habits are hard to break and also because flipping through highlighted pages full of my detailed notes feels like holding onto something familiar when everything else feels slightly unmoored. In another week I'll be sitting for the NPTE exam. It’s the last one standing between me and my license as a Doctor of Physical Therapy, and after that, my promotion with the Manhattan Mayhem becomes official.
Has the forced proximity with my father helped mend our relationship? No.
Has he tried? Also no.
I always try to see the good in people. I believe that almost everyone has the capacity to love, to be loved and is worthy of being shown kindness. But my father—his past actions and his present ones—remain the exception to my rule. That and he’s avoided me almost entirely.
Did I ever think I'd be working in hockey post-graduation? No.
Did I expect to spend a year interning with my estranged father's team and somehow, against all reasonable odds, fall in love with the team and the sport? Also no.
But here we are. The players are funnier and kinder than I expected, the work is genuinely satisfying in a way that surprises me every day, and the only real complication, the one I've been carefully not thinking about for the past ten months, officially moved to Brookhaven a few days ago and lives four houses down the street. Yes, I just found out that Seth Tremblay now lives in the same city as me.
I shove a French fry into my mouth and flip to a page I've already read four times while trying not to think about how awkward that run-in will be.
"What are you doing here tonight?" My roommate Natasha Carpenter slides up beside me, hip bumping mine, her apron twisted slightly from whatever crisis she just handled in the back of the bar. She reaches across the space and steals one of my fries.
Natasha Carpenter has managed Brookhaven Brews for the past three years and is, in almost every measurable way, my complete opposite. Where I'm looking for the small, beautiful moment in every interaction, she’s looking for chaos and a good time. Where I want to squeeze your hand and tell you it's going to be okay, she wants to bury the problem and move on, pretend it doesn’t exist. She is unsentimental and practical and occasionally terrifyingly wild, and somehow, she's become one of my favorite people in the whole world.
"Free food," I say. "Struggling new-grad budget."
She gives me a look that says she gets it. It’s true. Her parents are billionaires but estranged from her and her older brother and my father is disgustingly wealthy. We’ve both made a personal policy of not touching a cent of our family’s money beyond what my father agreed to fund for my final year of school, because taking anything else feels like letting him off the hook for twenty-seven years of absence and zero effort. I'm not interested in doing that.
"I have something that might help with that, actually." She leans against the bar, arms crossed, with the expression she gets when she's about to tell me something I'm not going to like. I've learned to read that expression over the past ten months. It's different from her regular resting face, which is usually lighter.This one has a slight tension around the eyes. "I need to tell you something."
