Page 27 of On His Team

“So, Laurens.”

I look over and ask, “What?”

He sets a pair of steel in the rack. “Did he say Donovan punched that eyelet?”

“He did.”

“I think he did it himself.” Cole shakes his head and starts the machine again. “They always do it themselves. Then they bring it to me in pieces.”

I don’t know why that bothers me. It’s not even important. It’s a skate eyelet.

But Rowan said Donovan fixed it. I was here when he said it, and Cole deciding that Rowan lied doesn’t sit right with me.

“No,” I say.

Cole looks over. “No what?”

“If Rowan said Donovan fixed it, then Donovan fixed it.”

Cole looks at me in disbelief.

I widen my eyes at him. “Hey, Mr. Donovan?”

“What is it?” Donovan says.

“Did Rowan Laurens bring in his skate and have you punch an eyelet in it?”

Donovan is quiet for a moment, and then he says, “Yeah, he did.”

I lift my eyebrows at Cole.

He rolls his eyes and turns back to the sharpener.

I go back to the blade guards, feeling significantly more satisfied than the situation deserves.

Cole doesn’t look at me for the rest of the day.

I had a crush on Rowan back in September. It lasted about two weeks, which is a respectable amount of time for me. Mara says I collect crushes like loyalty points, and I can’t even argue with her because most of them disappear the second a man does something mildly unattractive.

Rowan’s did too.

Or I thought it did.

The annoying thing is that talking to him just now was more interesting than looking at him ever was.

He also survived Schaefer and Ives, which currently makes him useful.

I finish the bin and think about how I could juice him for information. I wonder if he still has his notes and files from his event project.

I get home with my hair smelling like the room and drop my bag inside the door hard enough that Lucy looks up. She’s at the kitchen table with three textbooks open and a pencil in her mouth.

“Long one?” she asks.

I close the door behind me and drop my keys. “Nine pairs of socks are missing.”

“Where are they?”

“If I knew, Lucy, they would not be missing.”