Even now, they have each other. I wish they’d focus on that instead of focusing on how angry they are with me for leaving them with our sick father. If only they could grasp the fact that it’s better for all of us if I’m not there.
My phone lights up. I half expect to see Serena’s face smiling up at me, calling to try and mediate Anya’s bitterness and my reaction to it. It’s not my sister. It’s Whitney, and I’ve never been so happy to see her name on my phone.
“Hey.”
“What are you doing?” she asks.
I glance around my living room. “Watching a horrible movie and arguing with my horrible sister. What about you?”
“Just finished my horrible shift,” she says, and I hear her car start up in the background. “Want to go out? Autumn’s in. I need a fucking drink, Ards. Nancy was back with a vengeance today and smacked me so hard that I met God.”
I cough out a laugh, thinking about a glass of smooth red wine sliding down my throat.
“Icebox?”
“Ooh. Hoping to run into Big Boy?”
I roll my eyes. “Half price bottles of wine on Thursdays. You know the drill.”
She laughs in that sing-song way she does. “I’ll swing by in thirty minutes.”
“One glass for the pre-game, or one bottle?”
I don’t know why I asked, I’m already walking to the kitchen to uncork a fresh bottle of Cab.
“Bottle, baby,” she says, a long sigh leaving her throat. “One glass won’t nurse my pride back to life after a seventy-year-old backhanded me into the next year.”
I pull down three wine glasses and smile, grateful I have two sisters who can still stand me, even if the other two wish I were the one getting smacked around.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
arden
I try not to,but I can’t help it. I keep searching for him in the crowd. I know where he is, inexplicably, no matter where I move in this bar. I’ll use the excuse that he and his team typically stick to the booths at the back, in the dark and out of sight. It’s like their own personal VIP section. It’s not surprising they are where they are, because that’s where they’ve always been.
What is surprising is that I can’t stop looking.
He hasn’t seen me yet. I’m positive if he had, he would have come over. Don’t ask me why, it just seems like the kind of thing Carter Forkerro would do. In his mind, I’m fairly certain he thinks we’re practically friends now. He’s charming and ridiculously sweet until he’s not. He’s like a Sour Patch Kid.
Declan is there too, sitting next to a blonde girl in one of the booths. She’s very pretty. She’s been here with him more than a few times. I’m assuming she’s his girlfriend. I wonder if she’s the woman he broke his phone over. If so, I get it. She’s gorgeous, but not in the way where she looks like every other girl in this bar. There is justsomethingabout her.
Annoyingly, Carter looks mouth-watering tonight. For a moment, his taunt about being a teensy bit intrigued has validity. He’s in a black, knit shirt with an open collar and black dress pants. Gold watch on his arm, simple gold chain on his neck, and a black belt with a gold buckle on his waist. Laid back and luxurious. That’s how I’d describe him. Doesn’t look like he’s trying too hard, but looks better than every man in this bar with little effort on his part.
I’ve seen the headlines about him. After he tried to drag me into this mess, it was hard not to keep snooping. Much of the online world does not believe he has a girlfriend, or that if he does, they don’t believe she is the reason he threw that punch. That’s the downfall of your reputation preceding you, I guess.
A girl isdefinitelythe reason that he threw that punch. Me. I’m just not his girlfriend. So, the online sleuths are half right.
The kid pressed charges. Saw that, too. Carter is probably going to have a court date and everything, all because he tried to help me get a stupid boy off my case. There’s a bit of nagging guilt in the back of my mind, I won’t lie. I justify it by remembering he chose to throw that punch and he can afford the charges.
I won’t let myself think about the other consequences that defending me may have caused him. I’ve been seeing the rumours online. Reading the whispers. A trade or a hiatus floats in between the lines.
Again, because of me.
I’m checking on what he’s doing again. I glance over my shoulder, lips on the rim of my glass, when I see it. When I seethem.A group of guys, phones casually pointed toward the hockey players’ table. You’d think it was just a fan snapping a quick photo, but I can see their screen. This isn’t a club. The lights are low in here, but they’re on, and that young man didn’t dim his screen in the slightest.
He’s zooming in on Carter, who is leaning against one of the booths. There is a girl with long, black hair talking to him and a cute little brunette beside her. They’re looking up at him with big smiles and love-sick eyes because, yeah, Carter garners that reaction from women.
The boys snap a picture, huddle around the phone, and when one of the women leans closer so that Carter can hear them, they snap another. A different woman in the frame this time. This has the potential to become a smear campaign.
